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Heyo, I'm an amateur mycologist and it's really important to mention that chicken of the woods is only safe to eat when it's growing on deciduous trees. There have been reports of people eating laetiporus from yew trees and getting ill from the toxins in the tree itself. There's some debate among mycologists about how significant of a risk this is, but it's serious enough to be worth mentioning. Tree identification is also a big part of mushroom identification!

Some important *WARNINGS*! (1) It is *critical* that you can identify the type of wood that it grew on. If it sprouts on the wood of a poisonous tree (yew,laburnum, locust tree)the fruiting body might have accumulated some of the toxins! They also grow on oaks and accumulate polyphenols, making them bitter and indigestible. (2) This fungus contains a substantial amount of *oxalic acid* (like beets or rhubarb) and should be boiled in water for at least 10 min before continuing with any recipe, discard the cooking water. (3) There are indeed poisonous polypores such as Hapalopilus nidulans. Although it lacks the vibrant colour, its *deadly poisonous* and the inexperienced might still confuse them. Cooking it beforehand is also a good idea because this one will dissolve a purple dye into the water, hence it’s trivial name ‘purple dye polypore’. I wasn’t able to find a solid reference but I’ve been told that confusions with the sulphur polypore have happened.

One of my favourite content creators on the internet, Atomic Shrimp, made a whole lot of foraging videos and got me really into mushroom foraging. I'm so happy that Adam, who is also one of the all time greats, also fell down the fungus foraging rabbit hole!

Thank you for including the copperhead. People sometimes forget that there are other dangers to foraging beyond misidentified fungi.

Foraging done responsibly is a great family activity. Here in Eastern Europe picking mushrooms is a long tradition and there are entire guides and TV programs informing new foragers what to look out for. General rule is if you're not sure what it is then leave it be. It's better to miss out on some edible mushrooms than to bring something potentially deadly. You'd rather have a couple mushrooms for risoto but be certain they're all perfectly safe. Foraging is a learned skill. Now is probably the best time to pick it up bc we have a wealth of knowledge available at our fingertips in the internet. I've been out mushroom picking on my own recently and went back home with half a pound of chanterelles and made delicious vegan soup.

This is so interesting because i refer to domestic fowl as "fungus of the barn"

Chicken of the woods is the only thing I'd feel comfortable foraging. Well, that and blackberries. I went on a overrun trail not too long ago and found an absolute bounty of elderberries, and right as I was about to pop one in my mouth I though "maybe I shouldn't eat berries i'm only 80% sure about" and I think that sums up foraging pretty well. You have to be like 99% sure

1:05 - Maybe Cortinarius spp or Inocybe spp. 1:30 - Ganoderma spp. 2:44 - Fomitiporia spp. (possibly F. robusta) 2:55 - Possibly old Trichaptum abietinum or something similar 3:02 - Fistulina hepatica 3:20 - Laetiporus sulphureus The taste of Laetiporus sulphureus depends on the tree on which it grows. It's said to be bitter when growing on oak or beech trees. When it grows on poisonous trees like yew, it might be poisonous, too.

I have a great tip that doesn't require a guide: make a plan to **not** eat it, but take photos and bring a handful home to ID comparing pictures you see online and your own photos on the same screen. It can be super helpful, and over time you will learn to recognize different mushroom species. I grew up foraging for mushrooms and was amazed the other day that humans have a natural ability to differentiate between different plants or mushrooms even at a quick glance from afar (like how some car guys can spot a car's brand and model with estimated age range even from a bad angle), even if the difference to the untrained eye is a difference in visual texture and ever so slightly different color hue.

Regarding this being your "first foraging" experience - I can attest to how fun and rewarding it is to be with people who know what they're doing, and to be able to hunt down and find something yourself. It's a ton of fun, you learn a lot, and in this case, you get a tasty meal as a reward! I'm still very much a beginner but every time I'm on a hike and I see chicken of the woods, it puts a smile on my face.

when i was a kid i would go out foraging with my grandpa looking for morels. one day we found a massive chicken of the woods and he fried them like a steak. some of the finest mushrooms i've ever tasted

Don't know about other EU countries or the USA, but in my country (Hungary), there are experts assigned to every farmer's market, who will check your foraged mushrooms for you. In fact, you need to have them checked if you want to sell (that's why the experts are there, that's the law).

I'm lucky I grew up with a family who were dirt poor and foraged to survive back in the day. Finally bought my own property and I've already found lion's mane, hen-of-the-woods, chicken of the woods and many other things I can eat on my property. I've also got nettle, blackberries, walnuts and persimmons.

I got into foraging during COVID social distancing in 2020. The first chicken-of-the-woods that I brought home and cooked was a proud and memorable moment. It's an incredibly rewarding hobby, even though you spend 98% of your time spitting out spiderwebs and finding nothing. That just makes it all the more thrilling when you *do* find something cool.

Thank you for the adendum on "learned helplessness." Nothing wrong with hiring an expert, in fact, it may be the appropriate move in a lot of cases, but doing stuff for yourself is so gratifying and being able to help a friend (or stranger) with knowledge you've accrued is incredible.

I've foraged a little and love getting rosehips for rosehip jam and brambles and berries. I've grabbed Chicken of the Woods a couple of times when I've been out if I see it. The only thing I've been told to watch out for is the tree it's growing on. The fungi can absorb poisonous nutrients from certain trees, specifically yew trees which make Chicken of the Woods inedible as far as I'm aware.

My buddies and I found a 12.5 pound Chicken of the Woods this summer while foraging. Still not the biggest I’ve seen but shrooms of that size are always exciting to find.

“There is no Shortcut to Mushrooms” I appreciate the LoTR reference, and the cautionary advice. Thanks Adam

beefsteak fungus is delicious imo! if you fry thin slices in butter and dress it like you would a steak, you can actually make it taste like meat. Weirdly enough, the slight sourness kind of emulates the taste of the heme naturally present in red meat.

Chicken of the woods are oftentimes less digestible when harvested from oak trees. While "eating" the tree it grows on, the fungus takes in tannic acid from the oak which is hard to digest. But you can boil the fungi for 30 min. or so to alleviate that problem (consistency will stay the same but the colour will fade a bit). You can then press it dry with a towel and fry it. This only applies to oaks, no other tree is problematic...at least to my knowledge.

Talking about "you don't have to be a specialist", I recently tried to make my own baguettes. I can't believe how easy it is. I eyeball water, flour, salt and dry yeast in a bowl, mix it with a wooden spoon, then after some hours I chuck it in the oven in a thin log shape. No fancy techniques whatsoever, it just works, and the bread I get is great.

I've been foraging since kindergarten. Grandpa was the best teacher when it comes to identifying stuff but as time progressed, i kept on bringing more and more different mushrooms and his knowledge didnt keep up. Although he knew about the Chicken of the Woods, he didnt really cook it so, I gave it a try. He was picky about eating them but after one bite he took couple more :) Tough to find interesting recipes with this mushroom tho.

I was looking for induction cooker info, and you were so clear and thorough i was very impressed, so i then clicked on your dry cure beef video, and now I'm a fan of your work. Not everyone go the extra mile but both your videos were smart and full of interesting facts and had more depth than most creators on youtube bar a few, I'm talking about people like Veritasium and smarter every day. Thank you for your dedication.

One throw away line from a shrooms video and now I’m gonna have A Day In The Life stuck in my head for a week. Thanks Adam

Mushroom foraging is super common in my country, us Eastern Europeans are used to doing this on the weekends, it's a very common activity and the news reports in the summer often inform whether "they're growing". Always nice to see a video on this topic from a country where it isn't common. ❤

As someone who grew up foraging with with my family, my mum taught me to only eat things I'm 100% sure I can correctly identify. We used to forage for all sorts of things, wild blueberries, raspberries and elderberries, and mushrooms like trumpet mushroom and chanterelle in the autumn. Good times

from David Arora regarding Laetiporus edibility: “ Three things definitely matter: 1. Species. 2. Cooking. 3. Individual Sensitivity. 1. Species. We used to call them all Laetiporus sulphureus but recent research has shown five genetic clades within the genus Laetiporus in North America, and genes are the major determinant of toxicity of a mushroom. Two of the clades appear to produce a much higher incidence of GI poisonings. One of those clades grows on western conifers and on northeastern conifers. The second clade grows on hardwoods in the West and along the Gulf Coast. The other three clades grow on hardwoods in eastern North America and are not as likely to cause problems. In other words, all of our western chicken of the woods belong to the two problematic clades. 2. Cooking. Long and thorough cooking will reduce the chances of GI upset but not eliminate the possibility entirely (see #3). Ken Litchfield in SF did some experiments with small groups of people and found that the “puke factor” was eliminated by boiling the mushrooms first for 15 minutes, and that as he reduced the boil time nausea was more likely to occur. 3. Individual Sensitivity. There are many cases where groups of people dined on chicken of the woods and some but not all of them got sick. So obviously individual sensitivity plays a role, and it can work both ways. Some people can get away with cooking them very little, for instance, a five minute sauté (a woman from Alaska recommended that recently on this forum), but I wouldn’t do that for dinner guests. In the Litchfield experiment cited above, no one was made ill by the ones boiled for 15 minutes, but it was a small group of people so not necessarily representative of the general population. I do know cases of people who boiled them for a long time and still got sick, so for those few people it is flat-out poisonous. But prolonged cooking definitely makes it palatable for more people. ”

I found your whole video informative and interesting to watch! As a snake enthusiast, I got especially excited to see the footage of the copperhead slithering away, minding his own business and just being a snake. I'm a tad jealous to be honest, I've never observed one that wasn't behind the glass of a zoo's reptile exhibit.

Semi-experienced mushroom forager here! I've had some friends confuse Berkeley's Polypore for Chicken of the Woods, so any beginners starting out, please be wary of that. Berkeley's Polypore is a lot more tough, but it can look a lot like Chicken of the Woods to some from the top, and the bottom is white pores, which the bottom of some variants of Chicken of the Woods look like. The difference is that it's a tan color on the top instead of that traffic-cone orange that Chicken of the Woods is supposed to be. I don't think Berkeley's Polypore is poisonous to eat, but it's not digestible and can probably give you some stomach upset. Like I mentioned, there's also a variant of Chicken of the Woods, Laetiporus cincinnatus, that has a white pore surface instead of the bright yellow underside that Adam is showing here. That is also safe to eat and is yummy, but it confuses a lot of people, who are expecting that sulfuric yellow underside. Also, some other commenters mentioned not to eat Chicken of the Woods that is growing on conifers or eucalyptus trees--I would not eat those, though I'm unsure if that's real or a myth if it's really unsafe to eat. Lastly--GET A FORAGING BOOK (and get a reputable one!). Double-check a million times in the field that everything all checks out and note what it's growing on/under, take pictures, etc, before you take it home to eat. Don't rely on memory. There's no old and bold foragers, don't eat anything that you're not 100% sure about. Chicken of the Woods is a safe and easy mushroom to identify for beginners, it's bright, easy to identify, and there's no poisonous look-alikes that will kill you, as long as you remember what Adam said--it must have pores, not gills! And put it in a paper bag while you're hiking, then immediately put it into the fridge! You can get food-borne illnesses if you leave mushrooms out in the heat for too long without refrigerating it, just like store-bought mushrooms. ALSO, check for worms in any mushroom you forage, they can be hiding in there. It's fine to eat them if you don't look hard enough.. but it can be kinda nasty to find some worms in your food when you're eating.

@5:17 Interestingly, despite being poisonous Jack-o-lantern mushrooms are reportedly quite tasty. There have been cases where people have eaten them, thrown up everything but their boots and then done it another year, because they think "This is so tasty, it can't be the same as mushroom that poisoned me before!" Oh... and they glow green in the dark.

2:13 now we know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall

I honestly wish we would all get taught more stuff like this. You CAN learn some basic foraging for your local area and it doesn't have to be a big deal. Of course what is and is not edible in your area can vary an INSANE amount, I am positive I'll never see that shelf fungus where I am (southern Mississippi is by definition not temperate forest, we're sub-tropical by climate band afaik). But I also know that there are things like wild muscadine grapes, dewberries and blackberries and other such fruit. Pecans, naturally, IF you know what to look for, but those generally do better when given some cultivation and care (from what my mother-in-law always told me, that mostly means keeping the ground around the tree clear of shrubs, no idea why). In contrast, back when I lived in west Texas, the desert, I learned a LOT about what kinds of cactus you could and could not mess with. Yuccas are edible! In small amounts. (Also a valid source of water if you're in that kind of a bad spot.) And if I had been older when I lived in the Catskill Mountains I'm sure I would have learned about many different kinds of edible wild food there too. (Crabapples do not count, imo.) But that's just the thing. Local knowledge like that is SO vital, and there's such good reason for us to keep that knowledge alive and well and available to everyone.

A mushroom or toadstool is the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus, typically produced above ground, on soil, or on its food source. Thus, bracket fungus that you see ARE MUSHROOMS. Polypore is literally just the grouping of mushrooms/fungi that create fruiting bodies that release spores through pores rather than gills. Prime example the porcini (Boletus edulis) is a mushroom, it doesn't grow on trees, it is a poly pore. In short, mushrooms are mushrooms are mushrooms, fungi are mushrooms, yeast, mould etc.

Ooh! Danger noodle! For anyone this may put off of going in the woods, Copperheads are more afraid of you than you are of them, and will retreat or hide if given the chance (like that one did). Don’t bother them and they won’t bite you. If I’m grabbing stuff off the ground in copperhead habitat, I’ll poke about with a stick to give any sneks a chance to retreat (though they probably already felt my footsteps. Rattlesnakes and water moccasins (aka cotton mouths) are less likely to retreat, but also tend to make their presence very clear, and the same rule applies: don’t bother them and they won’t bite you. Venom requires valuable resources for a snake to produce, and the snake would rather spend that venom catching food than injecting it in you, unless it feels it has no other choice.

Awesome video! But to add for any foraging enthusiast, don't cut the whole thing! Leave about a 3th of the colony to make sure the ecosystem is not damaged and it can continue to grow.

Definitely get a mushroom atlas when foraging for mushrooms for the first time. In Poland these can be bought anywhere where books or magazines are sold, though I imagine this will change depending on where you live. Still a great tool to have.

Adam, on the topic of fungus, I had a health episode a year ago; it was an allergic reaction to shiitake mushrooms, where I ended up in hospital. Which was strange, because I had eaten them many times before. It turns out they contain a chemical called Lentinan. I've never felt so ill in my life, my glands swelled up like tennis balls (on neck and hips) and I looked like a 3rd degree burn victim from fully body/face rashes. It turns out only 2% of people are allergic to this chemical, but there's little research about it. Some studies say that the mushrooms need to be heated above 150ºC to denature the chemical, so boiling or making a soup/stew will not suffice (though I haven't found much evidence about it). It could make an interesting topic for a future video, and a good public service announcement for home cooks.

"taste of chicken with texture of crab" sounds wonderful.

I found my first bunch of Chicken of the Woods yesterday while harvesting Turkey Tail for tea. Hoarded between 15 and 20 lbs. Fresh and like you said, water was pouring out as I cut it. 55 degrees out, no bugs.

Wild copperheads may be adorable but DO NOT BOOP THE SNOOT!

Adam, I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your videos about food topics that are about the ingredients themselves (This, the tomatillo, acorn, and cake vs yeast donut video). I also love the recipe videos, but just want to applaud you on providing this incredible niche type content

Happy to see you're getting some great information from folks, and sharing it! On the topic at the end, people should feel free to pick mushrooms for identification, curiosity, and potential eating. It doesn't make sense to me to grab every last thing in the forest in the hopes of finding something edible, but take things back with you and get some help online (Facebook groups and reddit can be helpful)

I did a" chicken dry rub spice" brine and soak with my chicken of the woods and then beer battered it and deep fried it.. it turned out amazing! highly recommend!

I'm old. But when I was a kid I was fortunate to be in a family that had property to hunt and fish on. My grandparents that owned it would take us grandkids out to gather wild blueberries, strawberries and mushrooms. We also hunted large and small game as we always put out salt licks and bought pickup truckloads of apples, carrots and other things to spread around the property for the wild animals to eat. My grandma made a mushroom gravy and stuffing that was mind blowing good.

This is the first time I’ve heard of someone differentiating conks or bracket fungi from mushrooms. It makes sense but the way I’ve always heard it is that mushrooms are basically the “fruiting” body of various fungi. Regardless of their form, conks still fit this generalized definition of mushrooms

The best thing to do when it comes to foraging is to always have your goal in mind. Guided or not, only go out looking for one thing. Learn how to identify that thing, learn what all of the bad-bad-no-touchy look-alikes look like, get as good and comfortable foraging for that one thing. When you have focus, you can spend more time and energy making sure you've got the right one. Then, when you're comfortable with that, start working on another. Don't go out looking for janything edible, that's how people get in trouble. Getting good and confident identification is a process. Be focused. And if anyone says "Oh hey, look that's X" and you weren't out looking for X... stop, it's not the right time unless you're already very confident in your ability to identify that specific thing.

Was fortunate to have someone share this with me Labor Day weekend on Mackinac Island. What a tasty treat.

0:07 we're rich, mushroom!

I found a huge specimen of this growing on an giant oak stump in the parking lot of a physical rehab center that my wife was visiting three times a week. One day it wasn't there and a couple days later "BANG" there it was. When we got home I started researching it and when I found out what it was I went back and removed it. I cut it into strips (mine was much thicker than the one in this video) about 5/8" to 3/4" square and breaded and deep fried them like chicken tenders. They shared the texture and taste of tenders. I was pretty amazed. I froze a bunch without even blanching and they were quite firm when I thawed them later. Not real flavorful themselves, but carry the flavors of seasoning really well. Good fungus. I go back to the center a few times every year in late summer/ early spring to see if I can catch another growth of them.

It's also important to consider the legality of foraging before you go out picking mushrooms, especially in any significant volume and in the eastern US. As far as I know, non-commercial foraging is allowed in national forests with some restrictions, but legality in other natural or conservation areas varies based on jurisdiction. If a conservation officer catches you with bags full of mushrooms in the wrong place, you will likely face some trouble. Worth looking up the rules where you live

9:00 Mushrooms store energy in the form of trehalose, which is a sugar molecule that consists of two glucose molecules. This is also sometimes called mycose or tremalose, and also known as "mushroom sugar". In order for humans to properly digest this sugar, we need an enzyme to disassociate the glucose molecules. This enzyme is called trehalose. Some people don't have this enzyme, or produce very little of it. For those people, large amounts of mushrooms of *any* kind can cause digestive symptoms such as vomiting, abdominal pain, and diarrhoea. You may recognize that this mechanism - along with the symptoms - is basically exactly the same as with lactose intolerance. Lactose intolerance is caused by deficiency in the enzyme lactase which breaks up lactose, or milk sugar, into glucose and galactose molecules. However, while lactose intolerance affects most of the world's adult population (except for those of European descent where most people retain the ability to digest milk into adulthood), trehalase deficiency is fairly rare in most human populations. It could be a cause for some of these stomach issues that some people get even from perfectly edible mushrooms. Others may be caused by allergic reactions to something in the mushroom, and sometimes those reactions can be avoided by properly cooking or blanching the mushroom several times. Above all, as other commenters have said - you should only ever forage and eat mushrooms that you have identified with 100% certainty. Ideally, you should go foraging with an experienced mushroom picker, instead of only trusting on books or other sources. Personally, I feel happy just eating Boletus edulis (porcini mushroom) and Albatrellus ovinus (sheep polypore). There are several mushrooms I would feel safe eating, like certain other bolete mushrooms and some mushrooms in the Russula family, but I just don't feel like they're worth the trouble. Same applies to mushrooms in the Lactarius family, which generally need to be blanced several times to extract the bitterness (and possible toxins) out of them, they're just too much trouble for me to bother foraging and preparing them. I'll happily eat a mushroom salad made out of these mushrooms, but wouldn't want to deal with the hassle myself. Same applies to champion mushrooms and something like shiitake mushrooms - they're good eating but I'll rather buy them from store rather than risk mistaking something like a destroying angel as a champion mushroom.

9:51 It's not just mushrooms, actually. The same is absolutely true for plants. For example, poison hemlock is a dead ringer for wild carrot.

Such an honest, real, ethical, man of integrity!

Almost maitake season. Hoping you do a hen of the woods follow up. One of my favorite wild mushrooms for sure.

About 20 years ago, some Lao immigrants in California mistook Amanita mushrooms for an edible species that looks very similar from the old country. Several people were sickened to the point of needing dialysis or liver transplants.

My Gm at my restaurant is a hunter and he foraged this and brought them into for me to try. It was scary as hell trusting him on something he foraged himself…. But they were damn good. Very meaty, kinda chicken like in taste and texture. Grills great or sauté in butter, thyme and garlic. Didn’t expect Adam to make a video about this, that’s for sure 😂

Didn't expect eastern copperhead snake at the end. One of my fav North American snakes.

Adam I love you and I learned cooking from your channel. I learned foraging around the same time I learned cooking. The only thing I fear is that people will start actually picking the mushrooms near me… 😂 Keep it up Adam

I learned about fungus and learned multiple new words. 10/10 video

Instructions unclear. I foraged for mushrooms and now I'm having weird hallucinations after eating it and I feel great and at some point I think I literally became time which is an illusion...

I love this kind of content Adam! I like the podcasts too but these informative deep dives into food things are what you really do the best and so unlike anyone else out there.

There's sadly very little CoTW around me, as it happens; but bountiful pheasantback, another polypore found on decaying wood, and not easily confuse with others. It's a fairly ordinary mushroom, the distinctive quality being its odor, a kind of fresh, fruity, almost cucumber or watermelon-rind sort of aroma; if that's not your kind of thing, it mostly cooks out. A reminder to always gather responsibly! If you don't see much of something, consider leaving it be; if you see a lot, grab a little in the expectation that others may do the same. (If it's your own private land, you might take more.) Only do it on public land where gathering is permitted, or private land that you've obtained permission for. Wearing bright colors probably also a good idea, especially as hunting season approaches.

I prefer these types of Regusea videos with a voice over and a script.

Babe wake up, new Ragusea vid just dropped

There are some nearby woods where I've often been taking walks on days when the weather's decent. I'll have to watch out for chicken of the woods on my walks. I've had them a couple of times from the local farmer's market and liked them.

Thanks for talking about mushroom foraging! There is a lot of fear mongering and so-called "mycophobia" surrounding wild fungus. There are very few mushrooms that can outright kill you, and they do not look like mushrooms people typically forage anyways. My word of advice if you're scared of dying from mushrooms is to avoid any little brown mushroom and white, gilled mushrooms. I would also recommend hunting chanterelles (I believe those are chanterelle pins at 10:07 in the video), they fruit during the summer and fall and are the most delicious mushroom ever! They have such a unique, fruity taste. It's a bargain to hunt them because they cost something like $50/lb but grow everywhere, at least in wet years in temperate forests in North America. Unlike morels, they are incredibly easy to spot because they're bright orange. The only (non-lethally) poisonous lookalike, the jack-o-lantern, has some very distinguishable features. Learn Your Land has a very good video about identifying chanterelles.

When I went to New Hampshire, my Uncle showed us where this mushroom grows in his area, picked them, cleaned them off, and my ma wanted to try something unique by making an Alfredo Pasta with it and it tasted EXACTLY like chicken. You couldn't really tell the difference.

My dad one time at the park he does karate near, found a chicken of the woods mushroom on a tree. He wasn't entirely sure, he took some pictures and got the opinion of various people in a foraging group he's in, and confirmed and brought it home. I was nervous to eat it, he made scampi with it and it was absolutely delicious. I dream about that mushroom sometimes. This video came out at a good time, we just finished eating a lions mane mushroom we nabbed yesterday. A little old and chewy, but delicious as always.

Really like your point at the end of this video. Great outlook, and pretty bold.

atomic shrimp will love this video

I generally associate Chicken-Of-The-Woods with Atomic Shrimp, so I imagine my surprise when I heard Adam of all people talking

shelf fungi are mushrooms: the fruiting body of a fungus. Not all shelf mushrooms are polypores

I love how you gave a warning and even a comparison of similar looking fungi. Mycology and foraging is fun especially if you don't have to eat the subject, and it's once again a great advice to do research.

Ah yes the co- of the woods

I always enjoy watching your videos, I always learn something new and greatly appreciate the writing. The delivery and vocabulary especially.

Shrooms microdosing helped me overcome my life long addiction to cigarettes and alcohol, I just relocated and they're so hard to come by here, I really need to buy some

I’ve bought these at a store a couple times, battered and fried these like chicken. So delicious

chanterelle are amazing to start with, I dont believe i ever saw a shroom similar enough to risk confusion. And they taste amazing with eggs

Saw this video a week ago, and today was on a short forest walk with the family - found a ton of fresh ones! So excited!

Wow, thanks for another great video. Never fails to amaze me how entertaining yet educational your videos can get ^ ^)b

I love you walking the walk and not just hiding behind disclaimers and warnings. I for one promise not to sue you if I poison myself foraging.

Sorry, Adam. As much as i would like to, every forest near me, including the one that's less than five-hundred feet from me, is private property that belongs to some logging company. Thanks for the video, though :)

I'm currently re-reading fellowship of the ring and just finished the shortcut to mushrooms chapter lmao nice reference

I’ve always been terrified to try wild spores/Mushrooms. Not because of taste or anything, but ya eat the wrong one and you’re dead…I don’t trust myself.

"It reminds me of Blackburn, Lancashire." Good one, dude. 🤣

I have always wanted to know why this stuff isn't cultivated... it's an ideal meat substitute, probably about the best you can get.

Happy to see a content creator treating their audience like responsible adults capable of making their own choices.

All mushrooms are edible. Some only once...

Adam, I'd just like to congratulate you in making a video that was both worthy of praise and invited feedback/corrections/further info from experts

I understand why people are afraid of wild mushrooms, but identifying them is actually really easy. You can't identify a mushroom just off of it's general look. There's like 10 or so features that you need to check, but you can do it in like 2 minutes. If it isn't a perfect fit, don't risk it.

Watching this video eating home grown salad veges, chips made from home grown potatoes and foraged Tawekas (NZ native mushroom similar to oyster mushrooms). Ive always been taught the sentiment, if you are 150% sure that what you are eating is what you think it is and that it is safe, dont eat it. Done me in really good stead so far. I always would recommend looking for local foraging guides as there's so many natives that can be similar to overseas ones but toxic

This video is really unexpected because I'd have thought your lawyer would immediately nix the idea in spite of your persuasive arguments at the end. Could you do a more detailed podcast about how you have to research, verify, and think about this kind of stuff - recommendations and advice about doing things more adventurous than measuring flour - from a legal perspective? I think that would be really interesting.

I recently found out that my backyard grows fly agaric mushrooms, so that’s fun.

I love when an Adam video connects with a previous one.

Adam, in europe we have chicken of the woods too. We learn always that chicken of the woods needs to be plump and super young otherwise it can upsett your stomach if your sensetive. Ur picked mushroom seems too old i hope everything was good with all of you who ate it. I picked the same stadium and luckily didnt experience anything like that. Mushrooms are no joke nor to be afraid of. Always do ur research

Found it once on a tree last fall. Haven't seen any this year, but I found some porcini in my yard. Also saw maitake growing on some hardwood trees, but in the walkway of a city park, so didn't take any

Respect the bravery making this video. Love the info and understand the disclaimer 👊

Omg crazy you upload this the day i try it the first time... crazy... been studying mushrooms for 10 years and never got a chance to taste it... ITS AMAZING if i had to never eat meat and only that i wouldnt complain

Beefsteak fungus was one of the things I got when I went foraging for the first time, it's pretty delicious.