How to Grow Chicken of the Woods (Laetiporus spp.)

Who doesn’t love chicken of the woods? I adore this mushroom. It fruits very prolifically spring to fall in the wild, a gorgeous bright orange mushroom that has the texture of, you guessed it, chicken. In this post we will explore a proven method on how to grow delicious chicken of the woods mushrooms in your own back yard.

When Megan was visiting us last year from Colorado in the fall, her, I and Billie went into the woods hiking looking for mushrooms, and we found a nice fresh specimen. We took it home and made chicken of the woods parmesan. It was delicious, and I was shocked that you could hardly tell the difference from real chicken, except for after eating, I didn’t get that heavy feeling in my belly like I do when I eat animal flesh. 

I would eat chicken of the woods mushroom
as substitute for chicken any day.

According to WebMd, 1 serving contains 10% protein, 75% carbohydrates, 3% fat, and 140 calories. It is a great source of Potassium, Vitamin A and C, antioxidants and flavonoids. 

Flavonoids are phytochemical compounds, and possess many medicinal benefits such as anti-inflammatory, anti-viral and anti-cancer properties. Food as preventative medicine, nothing better than that. 

Score!

Just a few weeks ago, Billie sent me a photo from the woods while walking her shiba inu Zen. A bright shining orange mushroom, like the sun before it sets on the horizon, chicken of the woods. She gave me the whole specimen to turn it into something. So I made chicken parmesan again. 

I cut the chicken up into two groups. The tender parts and the hard parts. The hard parts I cut those into smaller chucks, boiled them for about 20 minutes, drained them, and straight into the dehydrator. Once dehydrated completely, I powdered them, and now I can use that as seasonings, soups or sauces. You are probably wondering why am I boiling the mushrooms first. Why not just dehydrating? 

Reason number 1: Chicken of the woods contains a fair amount of oxalic acid, which can lead to gout, kidney stones and inflammation, if your build up too much of it in your system, so when you boil it, a lot of the oxalic acid will leach out. Also some people can have an allergic reaction for this reason, so best to boil it first, and throw the water you boiled it in away. 

Reason number 2: Mushrooms are made of chitin, and your body can’t break chitin down, but if you expose it to heat, those chitin walls will break down, and when you consume it, your body will be able to absorb the nutritious compounds that were sitting behind that chitin wall. 

A delicious way to cook chicken of the woods

The tender parts are also boiled for the same reasons I boiled the hard parts. These I boil in a bit of salty water. I set them aside and start putting together my deep frying ingredient station: Flour, egg wash and breadcrumbs. I season each one of these steps. Use whatever seasonings you enjoy, but I do salt, pepper, sage, garlic and onion powder, rosemary and thyme. Roll in flour, then egg wash, then breadcrumbs, then into your frying pan. I use olive oil, but some people swear that olive oil takes away from the true taste of mushroom, cause it is strong, but I prefer cooking in olive oil anyways. It’s the European in me. 

After this step, you will heat up your oven to 400F, place your chicken morsels on a baking sheet, smother in marinara sauce, and top with fresh mozzarella cheese. Bake until the cheese is melted nicely. Your kitchen is going to smell so good, and you might burn your face off from not being able to wait for it to cool down a bit, LOL. 

If you can’t find it, you can grow it

Now that I have gotten you excited about eating this amazing mushroom, let’s talk about cultivating it in your garden. (WARNING: this method will require a pressure cooker, and a flow hood for a guaranteed mushroom harvest, but I will talk later about some alternative methods which we are trying out currently at the farm 🙂

Up to a few years ago, growing chicken of the woods on logs intentionally was almost impossible. When we have inoculated fresh giant logs with chicken of the woods spawn, they never produced anything. In fact, in my own woods, I have large totems made of oak wood from 10+ years ago, they are still standing, but have never produced any edible mushrooms. 

But recently, we have done some experimentation with sterilizing small hardwood logs, then inoculating them, leaving them in the bag to colonize, then after a period of time, we set them out into the woods, and waited. Lo and behold, one day, the logs fruited. We were all shocked and pleasantly surprised. It actually worked. Then we tried a few more times, and we were able to reproduce our experiment.

Here is how we did it: 

Supplies 

• Sawdust spawn: https://shop.mushroommountain.com/collections/sawdust-spawn/products/chicken-of-the-woods-laetiporus-spp-sawdust-spawn-5lb
• Autoclavable bags with filter (large enough to fit your log): https://shop.mushroommountain.com/collections/mycogardening-supplies/products/autoclavable-biodegradeable-gusseted-bags-type-3t
• Soaking tank
• Smallish logs, we used 1-2ft (30-60cm) diameter and 2ft (60cm) long
• Pressure Cooker, large enough for log to fit in 
• Flow Hood
• Sawdust Spawn 

Directions 

• Find a small enough log that will fit into your autoclavable bag
• Soak log in soaking tank for 1 week, you might have to weigh it down with a rock, brick or
  similar heavy object 
• Replace water every couple of days 
• Place log into autoclavable bag 
• Autoclave for 4 hours at 15psi 
• Take out in front of your flow hood 
• Inoculate with sawdust spawn. Use about 2 lbs of spawn 
• Let colonize in dark room at 70F for 2-3 months 
• Set out your log outdoors in shade 
• Water log if it doesn’t rain for 2 or more weeks 
• Watch log for fruit. Depending on when you inoculated it can take anywhere from 6 months
  up to a year and a half for your mushrooms to show up

But I don’t have a pressure cooker and a flow hood!!!!!

For those that don’t have a pressure cooker and a flow hood, there is hope for you as well. 

What if you could submerge a log in cold water for a prolonged period of time to ferment it? Submerging it would kill all the aerobes and then drying it, all the anaerobes would cease to be. 

I read on permies.com that this works for sterilizing wood chips, but for logs it might be a bit harder and require more time, because logs are much bigger, and perhaps the water would not reach all the way to the center of the log. But I am thinking, if it is a pretty fresh log, then this would not matter. 

Leigh, our lab leader says that all this could work, but that the water needs to be changed out every day. And that sounds pretty wasteful, but if you had a creek, then it would work. We are going to try this method and report back here in the near future. 

After soaking it for a prolonged period of time (about 2 weeks), then continue these steps:

• Inoculate with sawdust spawn. Use about 2 lbs of spawn 
• Let colonize in dark room at 70F for 2-3 months 
• Set out your log outdoors in shade 
• Water log if it doesn’t rain for 2 or more weeks 
• Watch log for fruit. Depending on when you inoculated it can take anywhere from 6 months
  up to a year and a half for your mushrooms to show up 

Now you know how to grow your own chicken of the woods. Those days of being jealous of other peoples’ instagram posts of gorgeous and plentiful harvest are over. 

Growing other mushrooms with this same method

We have tried this same method with Maitake (Grifola frondosa), and we got mushrooms this year. We are suspecting that the same method will work with Cauliflower (Sparassis spp.), and Beefsteak (Fistulina hepatica). Stay tuned. 

Please leave us pictures and comments if you have tried this method, and let us know if it has worked for you. Thanks for reading!

Hugs, Olga