I grew up in the midwest, and morel mushroom hunting was an annual tradition. I have fond memories of my grandfather cooking these at his house and eating them until I was completely stuffed.

So, with at least 2 vendors selling them at the local Saturday farmer’s market, I decided to buy a few pounds and try out some recipes.

The first recipe I tried was this one:

Ingredients:
8 oz. fresh morels, sliced once lengthwise
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
2 cloves garlic, finely minced
3 tbsp good white wine (if you wouldn’t drink it out of a glass, don’t cook with it)

Directions:
In a large pan, saute morels, olive oil, butter, and garlic for five minutes. Add white wine. Continue sauteing for 5 more minutes. Mangia!
Note: Adding anything else to the morels, coating them in anything, or putting them in any sauce or soup is blasphemy, plain and simple. If you want to coat them in batter and drown them in grease, or otherwise hide the texture or flavor of these wonderful harbingers of Spring, send your morels to me, and I will send you some button mushrooms.

It was fantastic. They were light and delicious. I started scarfing them down as fast as I could cook them. My favorite!

 

Next up was to find a deep-fried sort of recipe like I remember from my childhood.

Fried Morel Mushrooms

This one was much more like I remembered, but I put the batter on too heavy during the first batch. The second batch was better – so the key is to keep it light. While more like I remembered as a kid for sure, I found them overly heavy with the breading – but that didn’t stop me from eating them all.  It was great to relive some memories of my younger years.