Vegetarian hot & sour soup from scratch, made with 3 wild mushrooms and burdock. Gluten free, high protein, low sugar, low carb

Today's recipe is amazing. It's super healthy, tastes great, and is jam-packed with vitamin, iron and mineral-rich wild mushrooms. It's a better-for-you, scratch-made, vegetarian version of classic take-out Chinese: hot and sour soup. It's low in fat, low in carbs, high in protein, and gluten-free.

It's also much more time consuming than anything I usually make, clocking in at about an hour and 45 minutes (but it makes a TON and it's totally worth it), and you're probably going to need to hit up an Asian market for all the ingredients.

But if I haven't scared you off yet, let me just say again: totally worth it.

With three kinds of wild mushrooms it's got a ton of umami flavor, you won't miss the meat! It's spicy and sour and thick and richly textured. While we usually think of hot and sour as an appetizer, this is totally a complete and filling meal.

Wood ear mushrooms are a superfood, cholesterol-lowering, hypoglycemic, and tumor-reducing!

I've used 3 kinds of foraged mushrooms here, but you can also use store-bought. Just make sure to pick a good texture mix. So you need 1 kind of meaty mushroom (oysters, shiitake, or hen of the wood), and 1 kind of soft mushroom (I used honey mushrooms*, but you could use beech or enoki as well), and wood ear mushrooms. You absolutely have to have wood ears, they are the traditional black fungus that gives hot and sour soup it's unique texture. They can be purchased, dried, in Asian markets.

Balsamic soy wild mushroom pizza. Vegetarian foraged honey, oyster and velvet shank recipe.

When my husband and I lived in the Northeast, one of our favorite restaurants was The Continental. They have locations in Philadelphia, Atlantic City, and the surrounding areas. The food is great, the atmosphere is retro, and they do awesome things with mixing and fusion cuisine.

Winter oyster mushrooms

One seasonal dish they make is a balsamic soy flatbread pizza with wild mushrooms. I've seen a lot of balsamic soy mushroom recipes, but something about theirs always stood out. Maybe it's the wild mushrooms or the quality of the aged balsamic, but the dish was really superior. Since then we have played around with a ton of variations, and they've all been good (my favorite is with hen-of-the-wood mushrooms!). This one uses honey, velvet foot, and wild oyster mushrooms - all foraged. 

I hope you like this recipe, it's one you can make with store-bought mushrooms if you like - try cremini, shiitake, or store-bought oysters or hen-of-the-woods.

The rich flavors of wild mushrooms and aged balsamic mean you don't have to go crazy with the cheese to still have a decadent pizza, keeping it low in fat and as healthy as pizza can be. Which isn't very healthy, but still. . . sometimes you just have to have pizza!

Velvet shank or velvet foot mushrooms, another winter species that makes a great pizza topping

Quick mushroom fridge pickle recipe, with foraged ringless honey mushrooms. Vegan, gluten-free, paleo,

Sour. Salty. Spicy. Dilly, and garlicky.

Is your mouth watering yet?
These are some of my favorite flavors, and they are loaded into these fast and easy wild mushroom fridge pickles.

What are fridge pickles? Basically, they are a veggie or mushroom soaked in vinegar and spices, in your fridge, till the food soaks up all the flavor (over about 48 hours) and becomes an excellent snack or condiment. Fridge pickles must be refrigerated (they aren't shelf-stable), as they are neither canned nor fermented, nor are they salty enough to salt-cure, and they keep for about 2-3 weeks. Because there is no canning involved, they come together quickly.

I made these will ringless honey mushrooms, Armillaria tabescens, (learn how to ID them here) but you can use other wild mushrooms, or even store-bought. The smaller the mushroom the better, as they will soak up the flavor faster!

The ringless honey mushroom: Desarmillaria caespitosa (Formerly Armillaria tabescens)

Warning: this is NOT A BEGINNER's mushroom. 

This mushroom cannot be positively identified by observing features alone, a spore print must be done for positive identification. This mushroom has many lookalikes, some of which are deadly, others will make you very sick. Use the following tips as a guideline only, but confirm your identification with other reliable sources and a trusted local expert.   

As always, it's your responsibility to make sure you are 100% sure of any wild plant or mushroom you consume.  

Finally, even when properly ID-d, ringless honeys are notorious for giving some people ACUTE GI problems. Always try a very small amount, like a single cap, for the fist time, then a small portion (3-4), before you consume a whole meal's worth.

Identification difficulty level: Intermediate 

Armillaria tabescens, commonly known as the ringless honey mushroom, is one of the most prolific edible wild mushrooms of early fall, at least some years. When they fruit, I find I can't go anywhere without tripping over hundreds of patches, still other years I won't see a single one. 

2022 Update Note:

Originally believed to be a species within the genus Armillaria (the ringed honey mushrooms), recent (2017-2019) Korean DNA sequencing has proved that ringless honey mushrooms are actually different enough to be their own, related, genus. 

The new name for this genus is currently Desarmillaria.

Further sequencing in late 2021 revealed that the North American and European species are not exactly the same, meaning the name Desarmillaria tabescens belongs to the European species (which was discovered first) and the new name of Desarmillaria caespitosa has been created for the North American species. I have updated this 2016 post accordingly. NO ID FEATURES HAVE CHANGED, ONLY THE NAME. 

 

Please read carefully all content below. Each step, including location and substrate, is essential to identification of this fungus. Wherever possible, I have tried to illustrate every single feature with a photograph, or two.

I chose to write this article because a blog post can show many, many more pictures than a book can, allowing me to really illustrate more features.