Foraging

The mushrooms I actually forage in Wisconsin

June 30, 2026

Five mushrooms make up basically all of my foraging: oyster, honey, aspen, pheasant back, and reishi. Everything else I walk right past.

The rule I don't break: if I'm not 100% on what something is, I don't eat it. Not 90%, not "pretty sure." There's no mushroom worth a hospital trip, and some of the good ones have a look-alike that'll ruin your week.

This isn't an ID guide. Get a real field guide, or better, go out a few times with somebody who already knows what they're doing. A blog post is not how you learn which mushrooms are safe.

I pick in two places mostly: up around my camp near Crivitz, and in the wooded parks around Milwaukee. You'd be surprised what's coming up in a city park once you start actually looking down.

Oyster

Oysters are the one I'd point a beginner at. They grow in shelves off dead and dying hardwood, they're tough to confuse with anything that'll hurt you, and they keep fruiting into cold weather after everything else has quit.

Cluster of oyster mushrooms growing on a mossy log
Oysters coming off a log. Cream-colored, shelved, growing right out of the wood.

Aspen

Orange cap, dark flecks down the stem, growing under aspens like the name tells you. Once you've seen a few they're easy to spot from a distance — that orange pops against the leaf litter. Cook them all the way through.

Aspen mushroom with an orange cap growing in the forest floor
An aspen mushroom right where it grew.

Honey

Honey mushrooms come up in big clusters around stumps and roots in the fall, so when you find them you usually find a lot. Good eating. But they upset some people's stomachs even cooked, so cook them hard, and the first time you try them, eat a small amount and see how you do.

Tray of cleaned honey mushrooms
A haul of honeys, cleaned up.

Pheasant back

You can smell this one before you're even sure of it — sharp, like a cut watermelon rind. Only worth taking young and tender. Let it get big and it turns to cork you can't chew.

Pheasant back mushroom on a cutting board
Pheasant back on the board. Young enough to be worth it.

Reishi

Reishi's not an eating mushroom — it's woody, you're not putting it in a pan. I dry it and use it for tea. It's the one on this list I go after for something other than dinner.

Reishi shelf fungus growing on mossy ground
Reishi. Headed for the dehydrator, not the skillet.

What we do with them

A good day ends up looking like this — a couple kinds sorted out on the table.

A day's foraged mushroom haul sorted on a tray and plate

We cook a big batch the same night we bring them in, because fresh is the whole point and they don't keep long.

Skillet full of mixed foraged mushrooms cooking
Dinner the day we picked them.

The rest go in the dehydrator and get dried all the way down. Those go into soups through the winter, right alongside the dried ramps, kale, and spicy peppers from the garden. Pick mushrooms in October, eat mushroom soup in February.

Foraged mushrooms drying on a dehydrator tray
Drying the rest for winter.