by Libby V 
Brooklyn’s been squawking a lot about chickens lately, but you hear more about the trend of raising backyard birds than you do about foraging for the fungal variety. Chicken of the Woods, also known by its less tantalizing name Laetiporus sulphureus (or Sulphur Shelf…yum!), is also worth clucking about, as it’s in season now in your local forest, park, or maybe even your own backyard. And if you find a good…
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Thanks for the recipe shoutout! I’m definitely going to have to try your recipe for drunken ones 🙂 Anything with wine is awesome, right?!
There’s chicken of the woods AND hen-of-the-woods mushrooms? sheesh
And fried chicken mushrooms!
lovely Illustration!
Thank you, Paula!
Looked up your recipes as I now have some CoW and have been after some for some time. I was told of it by an old man and he told how nice it was.
He also said that you slice a piece off a living plant and don’t rip it away and what is left will grow again and you haven’t killed the plant and it will produce more. This sounds like a very sustainable plant
This is actually false. It is a heart rot fungus, not a plant and it parasites trees. Depending of which species of laetiporus will determine where on the tree it grows (either on the trunk shelf-like or at the base of the tree on roots). It will continue fruiting on the host tree until the tree is dead (and this fungus is always lethal to tree although it sometimes takes several years). What you harvest and eat is the fruiting body of the mycelium, so it doesn’t matter how you remove it from the tree. Just like whether you pluck an apple from a tree or cut the apple from the tree will not determine if apples fruit the following year.
Try chicken of the woods sautéed in a red curry with coconut milk, broccoli, cauliflower, dried tomatoes, onions, spinach etc etc anything else fresh from the fall garden. Delicious gift from the woods!
I added a bunch of sprigs of fresh thyme, half of cup of half and half, some water with vegetarian bouillon and corn starch. Made a lovely sauce.