I was in Ocala, FL yesterday and found what I’m sure is a

sulphur polypore. I am brand new to finding wild mushrooms

so I’m very cautious about eating anything I find. Could I

attach a picture of this probably too mature chicken of

the woods for a conformation of what it is?

Hi John, and welcome to the blog. It’s always great to hear that people far from our Northeastern home are finding useful information, but mushrooms differ so much from place to place we don’t offer opinions about mushrooms collected outside of our local area.

Bill

I’ve always suspected that when someone started looking close enough that they’d find more than one species.

I’ve always wondered if the A. casearea (sp?) is a unique and different species from the widely eaten European one.

1. Culinary answer: Since they are best when in the young ‘cream cheese’ stage, get yourself back there pronto. You won’t be disappointed.

2. Mycological answer: The mushrooms which erupt from the fields and forest floors following a rain are comprised of a single type of cell structure, one which inflates quickly under water pressure. This is called a ‘monomitic’ structure; the cells are usually referred to as ‘generative’. Mushrooms of this type come up quickly, and also decay quickly.

Polypores have two (dimitic) or three (trimitic) kinds of cells; the rapidly expanding inflatable generative cells, along with two kinds of reinforcing cells, referred to as ‘binding’ and ‘skeletal’. The hard woody conks you see on trees are almost certainly trimitic. This is why they resist decay.

The genus Laetiporus has a dimitic structure, the quickly expanding (and tender) generative hyphae, and the more rigid, slower growing binding hyphae. When you collect it in the soft ‘cream cheese’ stage you are getting the fruits of the generative tissue. As the mushroom matures a higher and higher percentage of the cells will be of the tougher binding type. These cells give the fruiting body strength and rigidity and can even hold it together after the softer generative tissue dries out and collapses.

The speed at which this process occurs is partially a function of environmental factors such as temperature and humidity.

As a practical matter, when collecting for the table, if you miss the very young stage the advice is to collect only the tender -still expanding- tips of the shelves. I find the useable ‘shelf-life’ of these chickens to be about a week in length. But since new growths often appear in tandem, the tree may continue to produce edible mushrooms for another week or so, and may (rarely) fruit more than once a season.

I hope this helps.

Maybe someone – please weigh in, folks! – will have a special technique for drying sulfur shelf and/or a recipe that uses them well that way, but as far as I know they’re not good candidates for drying. Too thick. If you slice them thinly they lose their character and if you don’t they turn to wood that does not reconstitute pleasantly. The firm, meaty but tender texture is one of sulfur shelf’s nicest aspects, so preserving that is part of preserving them.

We do the usual saute in butter and freeze, but that’s partly because I never met a pickled mushroom I wanted to take a second bite of. Plenty of other people like pickled mushrooms just fine, though, so if you’re looking for off-the-grid methods you might want to try it. Otherwise, the way to use solar power on these mushrooms is to make electricity out of it, and that should be right down your alley.