Mushroom Monday - Wood Ear Jerky Recipe

Here is a weird mushroom jerky recipe experiment for #mushroommonday

This last weekend I found some wood ear mushrooms.

I also found some amber jelly roll (exidia recisa).

I even found a spot of witch's butter and got a pretty decent haul of slimy mushrooms.

Next I washed them a couple times and picked all the bark off of them. These mushrooms tend to lift off pieces of bark and wood from the trees and branches they grow on.

Next I threw them all in a pot with some salt, a bit of soy sauce, a dried pepper, lemon juice and some spices. I let it cook around 30 minutes to let all the spices absorb into the mushrooms. These species of mushrooms are bland and tasteless but they do absorb spices really well.

Here is the ancho pepper I threw into the mix. I used just one as that provides enough flavor. In the future I may take out all the seeds before throwing it into the mix as they spill around everywhere. Though I've seen plenty of jerky with these seeds dried onto it so no biggie.

Here is the soy sauce I used. Use it sparingly because it is easy to make the jerky very salty if too much is put into the pot while it boils. I just gave it around a couple table spoons.

These are the additional spices I added. I suspect the majority of the flavor came from the tandoori powder.

Once it is done cooking just drain the excess fluids.

Then plop the mess onto a dehydrator sheet. Try and spread it out fairly equally in height as the exidia recisa tends to dry very thin.

I left it in the dehydrator for about 4 hours.

Here's what it flattened out to fully dehydrated. It ended up being almost the exact same texture and taste as a beef jerky without the annoying cartilage and sinue. As for storability this needs no crazy monosodium glutamate or nitrites like dried meat does. These mushrooms dry out like this naturally then rehydrate when it rains. Plus with all the spices in there it should store for a good long time so long as it remains dry.

Another interesting feature of this jerky is that it is medicinal. The wood ear has anticancer properties in it and is rich in vitamin B to keep cholesterol levels in check. It is also a powerful antioxidant and it boosts the immune system as it contains β-glucan exopolysaccharides. This tastes just like a beef jerky but has lots of health benefits. The other exidia recisa fungi has no medicinal properties or nutrition and acts like a good binding material for the wood ear, I call it nature's emulsifier lol, way better than GMO soy emulsifier used in most products.

Next time I make this I'll try and blend up the mushrooms into an even mash to try and shape them into a mold inside the dehydrator to make it look more like regular jerky strips.