On Saturday my friend Danae called me all excited about these mushrooms she was given by her mushroom supplier that he found in the forest. We were told that they are red and when you cut them they change color to blue green. That was totally a photographic emergency so obviously I run to her house to see these mushrooms myself and take action pictures! Once we started chopping them it was a very fascinating experience. The mushrooms were changing color going from red to yellow to green to blue in front of our eyes in mere seconds!
I did think twice before eating them, but the person that collected them is an experienced mushroom hunter so we decided they were totally safe to eat. We did however cook them in some olive oil and sprinkled them with salt. They were really yummy and had a nice firm texture and we are both still alive to this day, so it’s all good. Wikipedia says so too. They are safe to eat. Their scientific name is Boletus erythropus and they are in the same family with porcini mushrooms (Boletus edulis ) -which are also pictured in the first photograph of this post. In Greece you might hear about them under the name “Witch Mushrooms” by mushroom lovers but I googled it in English and nothing really came up.
Did you know about this? What is your favorite mushroom?
Please always be cautious and never eat mushrooms that you have picked without having good knowledge of mushrooms, because they can be poisonous (and very dangerous) even if they look similar to edible ones. These mushrooms where picked by a mycologist and were recognized before consuming.
Whoa! Love the animation! This is so very unique!
These look absolutely gorgeous and delicious! Although the scientist in me needs to point out the convention for scientific names. The first word (genus) is always capitalized while the second (species) is always lowercase.
They were indeed delicious
Thank you, I will make sure to correct it!
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whaa! those are CRAZY mushrooms!
i lloove shitakes
whoa, i can’t even handle this post! that’s AMAZING!
Wild shroom! There are all sorts of boletes in the woods, and many change color like that — never seen it so fast though. Very cool. Was their texture similar to porcini? Any aroma or flavor differences?
Wow, I have never heard of such mushrooms! If you didn’t have those photos, I’d think you’d been trippin’.
I never use anything much more interesting than portobellos, though I love the color and taste of lobster mushrooms.
Wow, color changing mushrooms! So cool!
Very nice! Everybody in my family loves picking wild mushrooms and these are quite common in Slovakia. We call them “modraky” which means blueish, because they change color to blue.
And yes, porcini are the BEST, especially when you find them yourself in the woods.
Hello!
According to Answers.com these are known as ” Dotted Stem Bolete”. It also said not to eat them raw as this will cause gastric upset!
That is the coolest thing I’ve seen in a while!!
Nice shrooms and great pictures Nina! Sadly in Amsterdam we won’t find these in the wild, we do grow them a lot ourselves though! Checkout our website http://www.magic-mushrooms-shop.com for easy to use grow kits! And keep making those pictures! Cheers!
“When I first heard this website was discussing eating a mushroom that turned blue I became alarmed because I remembered the quote “No bolete with red or orange pores and flesh that bruises blue should be eaten” from a discussion of Boletus luridus (Lurid Bolete) in “The Mushroom Book, by Thomas Laessoe, Anna Del Conte, and Gary Lincoff, published by Dorling Kindersley Limited, London, 1996, page 204, right upper corner of the page.
Right next to it is a discussion of a second related mushroom, Boletus luridiformis (“Dotted-stem Bolete”) accompanied by a photo looking remarkably similar to the third illustration from the top in the “Veggie Wedgie” website. The book describes the red pore surface for both of these mushrooms and flesh that turns blue when damaged. The discussion states that “Boletus erythropus and Boletus subvelutipes are two nearly indistinguishable species reported from North America.” The important thing to me is that the mushrooms shown on the website do appear to be boletes with red pore surfaces and flesh that stains blue when cut. Thus the above caution about eating them should be observed.
My two other references on North American mushrooms agree. Some may read this and ignore these references which caution about eating blue staining boletes because of comments in the “Veggie Wedgie site. For those individuals I offer the following anecdote: I was scheduled to give a talk to the public about “Hazards in the Northern Michigan Woods”. In preparation I spoke with a mycologist at the University of Michigan, USA who urged me to include Helvella esculenta (commonly called “beefsteak morels”) which were harvested and eaten in large numbers in Michigan. The mycologist gave yearly talks to the public during the Northern Michigan Mushroom Festival. He always cautioned his listeners that this mushroom, Helvella esculenta, could be poisonous. He told me a couple who always attended his yearly talks failed to show up for the lecture one year. The following year the husband confessed that they always ignored his warning about this mushroom because they never had problems. They had missed the lecture because they were hospitalized for mushroom poisoning after consuming a meal of “beefsteak morel” (Helvella esculenta) mushrooms. The couple had decided to heed the warning in the future. There are a fair number of poisonous mushrooms which occasionally fail to make people ill but which should still be avoided.
The safe way to learn about edible mushrooms is to take a course from an adult education program offered by expert mycologists. One must not only learn which mushrooms are edible, but also what dangerous mushrooms can be mistaken for them, causing illness or even death.”
my computer wouldnt show the pics but it sounds pretty kewl!!!!….mushrooms are the best exspecially when fried…..but these arent grugs right??…i was doin a research on drug mushrooms to find the scientific name an this was what i got!! but what evs i’ll look on a different site!!!