Fistulina Hepatica or Beefsteak Fungus - my 100th post on Hive 🎊

Friday, 17th of November 2023 [100]

What is it with me and walking past the edible mushrooms, hey?

Hello #FungiFriday community!

Another beautiful Friday afternoon here. I’ve already went for my weekly run, had a healthy, protein rich breakfast and I’m enjoying my 3rd cup of green tea on this wonderful sunny, Friday in Lincolnshire.

A part of me always wishes there would be rain and wind and snow on Friday morning, so I can have an excuse not to run or at least say what a sacrifice I’m making by going out for that run. But no, 3 Friday in a row, I get up in the morning and the weather is glorious - just perfect for that morning run 😂

Yes! I’m visiting my friend up North again. So for this #FungiFriday I’ve prepared a mixture of Beefsteak Fungus and some grass fungi that I found here, in Crystal’s garden last time I visited in September.

Ok, it’s a little about grass fungi and much more about Bonie, cause dogs and mushrooms combo is just utterly adorable. Yes, I was excited to see a few mushrooms in between the grass, but I made sure Bonie is also participates in this little photo session. I know @ewkaw will love it 😁

It was quite disturbing for Bonie that I was paying so much attention to something in between the grass rather than her! She was sniffing away to find that exciting thing that I was photographing 😂

Ok, ok, let’s get back to the Beefsteak Fungus or otherwise known as Ox-tongue Fungus or scieniticly as Fistulina Hepatica. Wild food uk website also quoted a Polish name for it, which was a nice surprise to find, but also not such a huge surprise, because Polish community is known for their interest in mushroom foraging. Ozorek Dębowy is the Polish name for it if you’re curious.

At first I saw this red jelly-like creature by the side of the footpath I was walking on. It’s the first time I saw a creature like this, so of course I had to stop and take some poctures of it. ‘Red jelly like fungi’ was also what I typed in google just before writing this post. My description turned out quite accurate, cause in no time I found a few pictures that looked just like the fungi I found in my nearby forest.

From my last google searches I remembered that Wild food uk was pretty good, because apart from a good description, plenty of pictures at various growth stages and many names the particular fungi goes by, they also add a little video at the bottom, where a guy talks more in depth about it, shows it’s growing habitat as well as talks about each feature by which to recognise it and how to distinguish it from most common look-alikes.

I find those videos extremely useful for identifying the various mushrooms I’m finding and by the name of the website involving Food you can see that yet again unbeknowlingly to me I have found an edible mushroom!

Truth be told, I’m not so mad at myself for not picking it. Firstly because this is the only time I’ve ever seen this mushroom in my local forest. Clearly there aren’t so many around, so I happily left it there to hopefully multiply after I took a few captures of it.

Whoever walked past this mushroom and noticed it before me did the same as well as they made my job easy by slicing a piece of it, showing the amazing flesh inside it, which at this stage of maturity does indeed look like a beefsteak.

Had I walked past one of those again in the future I would also slice a bit of the smallest specimen. In the video on Wild Food UK the guy did this with a younger one and inside it the looked more like a tuna steak rather than a beef steak. That was very interesting to see.

The other thing he mentioned was that while this fungi is indeed edible and you can even eat a small slice of it raw, the taste isn’t excatly as good as some other edible mushrooms. His favourite was of preparing them would be in a creamy sauce.

Now that I’m armed in all the necessary knowledge about this fascinating looking fungi I would probably slice of a few bits of it whenever I see it again. I mean tastes differ and I might actually like it. Even if I don’t I would at least be richer of one more experience - earing Beef Steak Fungus that apparently doesn’t taste anything like beef steak 😂

Before I go… have you noticed that I just published my 100th article on this account on Hive today? It’s been roughly just over a year since I posted my first article here, so more or less 1 post every 3 days. Not really all that bad, is it? To celebrate this little milestone of mine, I’d like to give away 3 HSBI Units to the first 3 people who comment with code 100. A little different than the usual code blue 😉💙