Hungary has a rich background for mushroom picking (in Hungarian we have a single verb for it: ‘gombászni’ coming from the noun ‘gomba’ for mushroom in Hungarian), and it is becoming more and more popular amongst hikers as well. If you decide to go hiking after a few rainy days, you will surely find at least a few of these interesting living beings. Some of them are edible, so they can be prepared as a delicious meal after a long day’s hike.
The history of mushroom foraging in Hungary
In the past, the knowledge of fungi was passed from generation to generation on the countryside, they knew which mushroom is edible around their village. Every region had its special nicknames for the mushrooms they know, but of course they didn’t know their official Hungarian or Latin names.
In the 20th century mushroom identification became a lot more organized and scientific. As hiking became a common outdoor activity in Hungary, these hikers from bigger cities started to forage mushrooms without the inherited knowledge of countrymen. Unfortunately all this resulted in many fungal poisoning and quite a few deaths annually, usually caused by death caps.
The government had to do something, so they founded a mushroom inspector network in Hungary, which still exists even today. If you want to be an official inspector, you have to take a mushroom identification course and pass the final exam. They also established certain places near popular markets, where anyone can take their foraged fungi, and the official expert will tell everything about these mushrooms (their name, if they are edible or poisonous, etc.). They have an enormous knowledge, there will be a long queue in front of their places on weekend days.
How my love for mushrooms started?
My mother is from the countryside, so my grandfather used to take me mushroom hunting often when we visited them. We had to wake up early (other foragers went from the village, we had to be the first ones), take our rubber boots because of the dawn dew, and went out to the fields to find fairy ring mushrooms, or ‘chicken mushrooms’ as they knew it in that village. We usually made a delicious mushroom omelette from them.
Later my parents had to take me mushroom picking in the Buda hills, they bought me books about mushrooms, it was an unusual hobby for a kid, but I loved it. There are a few stories from my childhood, which describe my enthusiasm for fungi.
Once the whole family was traveling by car to my grandparents in the countryside. My father was going at a speed of approximately 100 km/h, the road was passing through a forest. Suddenly I yelled, that we have to stop as I saw a mushroom in the woods. My parents didn’t believe me, we were too fast, it was impossible to recognize a mushroom at such a speed, they thought. I was stubborn and was constantly insisting them to go back. Finally we went back… and found the mushroom. They were astonished.
My parents sent me to scout camps for a couple of weeks during summer break every year. Of course I went mushroom hunting with other kids, and I was so confident in my knowledge about fungi, I ate some of them raw, just to show my fellow scouts that I am 100% sure about mushrooms. It was a bit insane, I wouldn’t do it now as a responsible adult.
On a weekend we went to forage mushrooms with my father. We were lucky, the forest was full of fungi, there were a lot of different types. Of course we took all of them to the mushroom inspector. He started to identify them, but when he reached the fungus, which I thought to be a puffball mushroom, he cut it in two, and it turned out to be a death cap egg. All the mushrooms had to be thrown out, as it is such a deadly mushroom, if even a small part gets into our meal accidentally, we would likely be dead. That was a lesson for me for a lifetime about smaller puffballs and death caps.
My favourite mushrooms
I think the number one is always going to be the parasol mushroom for me. Even in my childhood it was such an experience to spot these big fungi from a greater distance.
Actually they are quite common in Hungary, and for me they are the most delicious ones. You can deep fry their big caps in breadcrumb crust, the taste is going to be awesome, they won’t shrink, the őzláb always provides a hearty meal. Little known fact that the capes still grow after you picked them if you leave them on the stem, so maybe your ‘drumsticks’ will open up till you arrive home. Their ring is edible raw, it tastes like walnut.
The king bolete cannot be left out of this list. It is considered as the most noble of all mushrooms by many fungi fans. I remember that we found one, when I was a child, but it is only a faint memory. So I was really happy to find a bolete in Transylvania, surprisingly in a birch forest.
But it was even a bigger experience to find a huge one in the Buda hills, where they are very rare, mushroom hunters overforaged them a bit.
The first mushroom on my bucket list was the giant puffball. It seemed impossible that I will ever find one, so I was super excited and felt so lucky, when I found two on one of my hiking tours, the Fake Castle Hike.
2 months later we went to forage parasol mushrooms with my wife to our secret site in the Buda hills, and our jaws were dropped when we saw this monster. Actually from the distance we thought it was a limestone boulder.
I sent the photo to the biggest Hungarian hikers magazine, they put it out on their website. One year later we went back around the same time of the year, and we found one again, so it seems we have a site for giant puffballs as well.
Other interesting mushrooms
Of course I found many other mushrooms, sometimes very interesting ones.
