This was a complete accident; a very serendipitous discovery.

Dryad’s Saddle is probably the most easily identifiable fungus in the United Kingdom, mostly because of its giant size. It’s also available in several other countries including the United States and mainland Europe. Between about April and June and even later these fungi spring out quickly from the bark of drying trees, producing great pads of dinner-plate sized alien protrusions.

They are soft and fleshy, although they are a little more woody around the stem and become leathery fairly quickly after erupting out of seemingly nothing.

When fresh they have a smell and flavour similar to watermelon or cucumber but become much more mushroom-like when cooked.

Most foragers stress catching them as young as possible before the texture becomes less palatable but I usually miss them most years and we are only left with the oversized, slightly tough pads.

My Foraging Accident

One day when I encountered a batch that had once again caught me by surprise (they’ve been growing on the same tree every year for about a decade). I decided to have a go at slow cooking one, so I pulled it off and took it into the kitchen.

I cut away the woody stem part of the pad.

I then chopped the pad into finger-sized chips.

Cooking the Mushroom

I added them to a large Pyrex bowl with a light spray of oil and put it in the slow cooking oven for a few hours.

After about two or three hours the liquid had started to pool in the bowl. You can use this for stock if you like, but I left the mushrooms in there for much longer.

Much, much longer it seems. I completely forgot about it until the next morning, so that was about 12 hours in total. I woke up to a mushroom smell filling the air and ran down expecting to find a blackened disaster.

Serendipity

The liquid had been reabsorbed or evaporated and the chips had shrunk into tiny little slivers of crunchy umami. Not only was it not a disaster, but upon trying one I realised it was actually nicely crunchy and really tasty – indeed somewhat addictive.

You could add salt to taste, or even garlic powder or other seasonings, but you don’t want to overpower the intense mushroom flavour because it’s quite special and unusual, made all the more satisfying to know that you foraged it yourself.

It went deliciously with a cold martini and is very much an affordable vegan snack.

Unfortunately my lack of a scientific approach means that I can’t recommend an ideal cooking time or temperature, but if I fine tune this process over the years I will edit the recipe.

Other Uses

As well as serving these as a snack to accompany your drink, you could also pulverise the end result and use it as a powder for making a hearty stock. This is definitely a good use of it. The powder will keep for months in a cool, dry place so you could use it to make satisfying soups in the winter.

Maybe next time I could even infuse it with gin or vodka and make a mushroom martini. Let’s see!

Otherwise, please take care if you’re foraging, especially when it comes to fungus. Never eat something you are not 100% sure about.

If in doubt, leave it out, but because of the size you’ll be hard pressed to mis-identify a grown Dryad’s Saddle mushroom!

Otherwise, if you have any hints, tips or similar experiences please share them in the comments below!