Chanterelle, Black Chanterelle and Lobster Mushrooms

Hunting mushrooms with our son, Andrew, then cooking them, is one of our favorite activities. See this prior post about finding and cooking hawks wing and king bolete mushrooms in Colorado. 

We arranged an August meeting with Andrew (who lives in New York City) in Bangor, Maine, then drove up through New Brunswick doing various activities. One of our most fun days occurred impromptu as we were driving through Fredericton, New Brunswick toward the Maine border. We wanted to find a place to look for mushrooms. Using his i-phone, Andrew located a hike along the Maliseet Trail to Hays Falls, just outside of Woodstock. At 65 feet, Hays Falls is one of the tallest falls in New Brunswick, and is at the end of a 1.2 mile trail. Andrew figured it would be a good place to find mushrooms. 

On arrival, we plodded along and along-side the trail, looking for mushrooms. We found lots and lots of mushrooms, but I'll only address the three types that we found and collected. 

I've eaten chanterelle mushrooms on several occasions, but always purchased from a source such as Whole Foods. It was a thrill for me to actually find and collect chanterelles on my own.

Chanterelle mushrooms

Andrew found a spot, not too far from the waterfall, with lots of black chanterelle mushrooms. I found some of those on my own. I've eaten black chanterelles at least once before, at Au Cinquieme Peche in Montreal, one of my favorite meals ever. One dish was ravioli stuffed with suckling pig, accompanied by black trumpet mushrooms, another name for black chanterelles. 

Black chanterelle mushroom.

You can see why they would be called "black trumpets."

I love this photo looking down at the top. 

My favorite find was lobster mushrooms which I also had a Au Cinquieme Peche, with guinea fowl. Lobster mushrooms are big, bright orange, and very meaty. I found several lobster mushrooms, at least one of which was barely sticking out of the ground. 

A lobster mushroom just poking out of the ground. 

This lobster mushroom had much more above ground. 

Hays Falls was beautiful. We spent about 30 minutes there, or so, then hiked back the way we came in, a little less serious about our mushroom collecting. 

Hays Falls

Andrew in front of Hays Falls.

We got such a great haul of mushrooms we decided we needed to cook them. So we went to a local Wal-Mart and purchased a Hibachi grill and some pie tins, found some picnic tables, put together the Hibachi and watched Andrew clean up the mushrooms and cut them into slices. He put them in pie tins with butter. 

Our assorted mushrooms on the picnic table. 

Lobster mushrooms in a pie tin with butter on the Hibachi. 

The results were fabulous. We had two tins full of lobster mushrooms, a tin of chanterelle and black chanterelle mushrooms, and a tin of chanterelle mushrooms. The lobster mushrooms were by far thicker and meatier than the other mushrooms. The black chanterelles were quite wispy and quickly cooked down. The chanterelles were a little more sturdy. 

Cooked lobster mushrooms. Andrew also holds some uncooked lobster mushrooms in his hands. 

Cooked chanterelle and black chanterelle mushrooms. 

None of them beat the hawks wing and king bolete mushrooms in Colorado, or the incredible mushroom soup we had there. But it was very fun finding and trying these new mushrooms.