Mushrooms are showing up again, but beware of this dangerous specimen

For the Cooking with Cook program, we walk through the Alkmaarderhout with game picker and mushroom expert Peter Boek. “Mushroom season is much later this year than in previous years,” he explains. “First it was too wet, then it was too dry.”

We find tasty, edible mushrooms, but when we pick a few, we follow the rules. “Don’t pick where you’re not allowed,” says Peter. “Always take a little of what is there and know what you pick!”

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So know what you are picking, because the mushroom you see in the photo above is the deadly poisonous green tuber amanite. We also found them in the Hout, near the other mushrooms.

Easy to forget

But just like people, not all mushrooms are the same species. The photo below is also a green tuberous manite, but much paler than the first. “So it’s easy to make a mistake if you don’t really know what you’re doing,” says Peter.

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It’s actually just as much fun just enjoying mushrooms and collecting them with your camera. If you want to know what you found, you can look it up on various apps. By the way, they are not good enough to be 100 percent sure that you have a poisonous specimen in your hands, and therefore report that they are not suitable for looking for edible mushrooms.

Necessary nutrition

If you want to be sure of what you are picking, you really need to go with an expert. The question remains whether you really need to pick them. Mushrooms are essential food for many wild animals. They need them more than we do. In Thijsse’s Hof in Bloemendaal they have a lot of mushrooms with text and explanation.

The mushroom episode of Cooking with Cook will be broadcast on Saturday, November 11.