Weirdly, it smelled strongly of cucumbers when it was fresh. Removed the pore surface, sliced into strips and sautéed it in butter. 10/10 texture, 3/10 taste. Crispy on the outside and meaty on the inside, tender but firmer than button mushrooms. Some pieces tasted fine like a normal mushroom but others had an unwelcome sort of aromatic wood/chemically flavor.
I cooked more than just the two in the picture - it could be that the larger (therefore older) ones had the strong taste, or possibly the type of tree that a few of them came from imparted a flavor.
Probably won't go out of my way for them in the future but if I was backpacking for a night or two and came across some I'd for sure cook em up.
Yeah the big ones are not as good, but I hear the tender edges are nice in a soup stock
I'd done an admittedly small amount of reading on them beyond the (easy in this case) identification legwork and the warnings away from the larger ones seemed principally due to them being too tough, makes sense they'd develop the bad taste over time too though so I'll keep this in mind in the future!
Noted! I was hoping the bigger ones would be okay since they seemed similarly tender, next time I come across them I'll try taking only smaller ones and see how it goes.
There was a point that they grossed me out too, then one day I tried them for the first time in a while and suddenly realized they were delicious haha. Keeping an eye out for them while walking in the woods is like a mini-quest and it's fun to come across something you can take home and eat that you can't buy in a store.
