One pound= $25.00 One pound dried= $75

Chanterelle mushrooms (genus Cantharellus) are probably the most well known wild edible mushrooms.

The mon is the golden chanterelle, Cantharellus cibarius.

Chefs and foodies love their delicate flavor -- it's sometimes described as "mildly peppery."

How to Identify They range in color from yellow to deep orange, which makes them easy to spot in the summer forest.

The caps can be as big as 5 inches in diameter, but 2 inches is closer to average.

And the caps are usually convex, wavy and generally funnel-shaped, unlike the round, symmetrical caps of some other mushrooms.

Aside from their brilliant color, the chanterelle mushroom's most distinctive quality is its false gills -- the true gills of some mushrooms are thinner, have sharper edges, are not forked, and are easily picked off of the cap.

The false gills appear more as wrinkles that are forked and wavy with blunt edges that run from the cap down the length of the stem, and they're the same color as the rest of the mushroom.

Another distinctive trait is their fruity apricot-like aroma.

Chanterelle mushrooms growing with ground cedar Chanterelle mushrooms growing with ground cedar

Look alikes Avoid the Jack O' Lantern mushroom which is poisonous but not known to be lethal.

Jack O' Lanterns usually grow in clumps on wood (not from soil like chanterelles) and have true unforked gills.

Where to find Golden chanterelle Golden chanterelle -- easily identified by their forked and wavy false gills. Chanterelle mushrooms generally occur from late spring through late summer or early fall.

They love moisture, shade and lots of organic matter.

Drenching rain followed by a couple of days of stifling heat is the natural sauna necessary to spawn a good bloom.

They largely grow near hardwoods like maple, poplar, and oak but it's not mon to find them around white pines.

I've seen a few online sources advising foragers not to waste time searching near blueberries. They say the two can't coexist.

I've found this to pletely false. A stand of blueberry in the dappled shade of hardwood canopy can be very productive.

Other tree species associated with chanterelles include birch, hemlock, and bay.

Look for them close to streams and other low lying damp areas.

They tend to pop up in the path of runoff or drainage where surface water carries their spores downhill.

After locating a few, a quick search up and downhill is generally a good bet for finding more.

How to harvest Once you've found your chanty honey-hole, tread lightly and carry a sharp knife if you like.

Having a careful step will ensure that you don't unnecessarily trample and disrupt the mycelium that spawns new growth.

When I find a good colony of muhrooms, I usually leave the smaller ones behind -- especially if there's a good chance of rain within a week or so.

A revisit after a thorough soaking will almost always result in much bigger chanterelles provided they're in good shape when you find them the first time.

Otherwise, checking an area more than once every couple weeks is probably a waste of time.

We also leave behind overly dirty mushrooms.

Leaf litter and organic matter are fine but dirt and grit can be nearly impossible to remove.

We used to cut our wild mushrooms because we believed leaving the base in the soil helped to preserve the mycellium.

Then I came across this 30+ year study on chanterelle picking and its effect on future harvests:

The results reveal that, contrary to expectations, long-term and systematic harvesting reduces neither the future yields of fruit bodies nor the species richness of wild forest fungi, irrespective of whether the harvesting technique was picking or cutting. Forest floor trampling does, however, reduce fruit body numbers, but our data show no evidence that trampling damaged the soil mycelia in the studied time period.

So pull or cut, but don't trample. We usually just pull them up right out of the soil and throw them in the harvest basket.

We use 16-quart rectangular wooden harvest baskets (the kind you buy apples in) for carrying mushrooms out of the woods.

They're big enough fortably walk with a good haul -- several pounds.

And they're loosely woven so spores can fall through on the way out of the woods, which hopefully results in more mushrooms next season.

I also like that the fact that they aren't as deep as they are wide, so your harvest won't be piled so high that they get crushed.

Cleaning Chanterelle torn in half For a thorough cleaning, tear chanterelles in half and scrape away any embedded dirt with a toothbrush. The first step in processing chanterelles, or any wild mushroom, is cleaning.

We've found that a toothbrush works best. You'll need to pull them apart for a good cleaning.

Grit can work it's way into the stem as the mushroom grows. Unless you split the stem to clean away any internal dirt, you'll likely get an unpleasant, cavity-causing bite of sand.

There are a few "grades" of dirtiness.

Perfectly clean? Perfect.

A little dirt or grit? Acceptable and fairly easily remedied with a toothbrush.

A fair amount of dirt? Acceptable for soup stock but not much else.

If you find yourself scraping away half of the stem to get rid of dirt, it's not worth the effort and you'll probably never get it clean. The best thing to do in this case is make stock and strain with a coffee filter.

How to preserve & store Once you've cleaned your harvest, use them right away, dry for storage, or sauté in butter and freeze (our favorite method as it preserves the most flavor).

But they're best when fresh and will last about ten days in a paper bag - not plastic - in the fridge.

How to cook Chanterelles are great in soups, stews, and sauces and pair well with the following wines, foods, and herbs:

light red wine heavier red wine venison and other wild game chicken pork fish beef veal eggs garlic thyme tarragon chervil chives onions ramps shallots