I'm surprised slippery jacks are the choice fungi there. In the Rockies there are two other bolete fungi, Boletus edulis and Boletus rubriceps, that are my main targets. Slippery jacks are regarded as a somewhat inedible lookalike species to avoid. I probably pass by dozens of them looking for a Boletus.
Well champignon/cremini/portobellos are the most widely consumed fresh, while Suillius is basically the only one dry 99% argies will ever cosume. Argie cuisine is particularly ignorant of mushrooms in general. Growing up in a farm we only hunted one (1) type of wild edible mushroom that grows in autumn (which can be either Macrolepiota procera or Chlorophylum rhacodes), but it's an obscure family tradition, nobody in town consumed wild mushrooms.
In college I met a mycologist, I told them about the fungi we used to hunt and the ones we avoided and he literally told me
"I would have picked the black ones you avoid and stay the fuck away from the white ones you eat, cuz for your ignorant eye they are undistinguishable from a poisonous one https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chlorophyllum_molybdites , please tell me the gills wasn't green?"
-"Uh sometimes, but we always boil them anyways"
-"Good fucking lord you idiots, boiling them aint do shit to the toxins"
Literally
Lepiota, Macrolepiota and Chlorophyllum genus are fucking identical. I can't distinguish shit and I'm sure I've picked them one of each and threw them in the same boiling water for 15 minutes.
I just refuse to pick anything white/brown unless it's morphologically distinct. Amanita is the big toxic mushroom around here and some of them look exactly like puffballs at their most delicious.
Lol
The mycologist dude took the whole class to a field trip where we picked like 100 different fungi and the trip started with him saying "hey let's go check that oak, ah cool Amanita phalloides. This single little guy can kill us all here if we shared a smoothie with this guy in it"
You don't happen to have any clue about the black-gilled fungi my family avoids but the dude told me most likely were safe?
It's a parasol, black gills, smooth shinny grey surface, 99% grows on top of cow dung
Parasols I don't know unfortunately. They're too generic to risk foraging here.
Boletes are choice edibles but I have never seen them sold commercially. This makes me want to try growing them o_O
I live near a shop that sells them dry in bags of 3 kg,
You'll need a pine forest
That's awesome! Our yard was absolutely covered in suillus Somethings a few weeks ago but they started rotting before I had a chance to 100% ID them. Very cool to know they're a choice edible around you.
