It is time for some purple on a #mushroommonday
Look at these somewhat rare and strange purple gilled mushrooms.
These are laccaria ochropurpurea and it is somewhat of a rare mushroom that usually only grows by itself.
But this time I found quite a few. Thankfully I found some smaller ones too to be sure they weren't purple corts which are the poisonous lookalike.
The deadly lookalike has webbing under its gills when young and has a stem ring. Thankfully these had neither.
The laccaria ochropurpurea also has wider spaced gills than the poisonous cortinarius lookalikes.
But you have to be careful and do the final step to be safe. Take a spore print of each one.
The laccaria ochropurpurea has a white spore print while the cortinarius have rusty brown spores.
Each one I harvested checked out with nice white spore prints. If you wanted to you could also look at their spores under a microscope. The Laccaria has round spiky spores while the cortinarius has elongated non-spiky spores. The color is enough to determine the true identity though.
Most people don't bother harvesting laccaria ochropurpurea because of its tough stem and the fact that they often don't grow in great numbers. But this time around I found plenty for a small meal.
I prep them for cooking by cutting the tough stem out of the middle then soaking them in salt water for a while. After than you just pan fry them in butter with a bit of salt to get their nice rich mushroomy taste. It's a bit of a hassle to harvest compared to easier ones like chanterelles that have a more unique taste. These ones have a standard mushroom taste just a bit more potent than that of a portabella. The uniqueness is in their texture which is much more firm. Definitely not a beginner mushroom as there is potential to get the poisonous cortinarius lookalike that causes kidney failure. I did a huge deep dive into this mushroom before cooking and eating it a few years ago so I know what to look for.
More mushrooms soon, thanks for looking :-)
