Spring 2020 issue Backcountry Journal

Photos by Holly Heyser
nights not colder than 40°F. Morels need rain, so drought conditions
are bad.
Keep in mind that this temperature range can be as early as
March for say, North Florida, and as late as August for the Yukon
– or at altitude.
One more tip: Morels grow slowly, so if you have them on private
land, wait until they are fully grown, which can take a week.
3
Location
This is the hardest part. Morel species always associate with a
particular tree or group of trees: elms in the East, apple trees and
cottonwoods in the Midwest, beech in some places, conifers in
the West.
The easiest way to find morels is to go west, from the Rockies to
the Sierra Nevada and Cascades, and look for a place that burned
down the previous year, or even two or three years ago. Morels
appear in huge abundances after Western burns.
The trade-off is that burn morels are a one, two or three-year
deal, for the most part. (Exceptions exist to that.) Eastern and
Midwestern morels will pop up every year in the same place. The
West has these “naturals” too, but they are less common.
Find the right trees at the right temperature and you are on
your way. Mark your spots well and come back to them.
4
Gathering and Cooking
Once you find morels, slice them off at the base. This keeps
your basket or bag clean. Use a basket or paper bag, never plastic,
as the morels will sweat and rot quickly. To keep morels fresh for
a week or more, lay them on paper towels in a large, lidded plastic
bin in the fridge. Change the paper towels if they get soaked. For
longer storage, dehydrate them. When fully dried, put them in a
jar with one of those silica packets to suck out excess moisture.
They’ll keep for years this way.
The best cooking methods are the aforementioned frying, sautéing,
stewing or braising. You need to cook them all the way
through. One pro tip: Add just a pinch of caraway seed to the
mushrooms as they are cooking – it brings out the morel flavor
even more.
Hank Shaw is a member of BHA and is the author of four wild
game cookbooks and the award-winning website Hunter Angler Gardener
Cook. He lives near Sacramento, California.
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