Fried Wild Oyster Mushrooms (gluten free)

So you’ve just harvested a bunch of oyster mushrooms…YAY! Time to chow. Wait, wait, don’t forget to clean those lil buggy guys. Bugs love them as much as we do. If you’d like to see how we choose to clean them check out this blog post.

Now that they are clean and you’re positive they are, in fact, oysters let’s get rolling.

I’m a southern gal and as a result I love fried foods. We don’t fry often but something about fried mushrooms (and okra) gets me going. BUT we are gluten free, which is a different beast when it comes to all things within the kitchen until you get used to it. Over the years I have experimented with all kinds of gluten free flour blends to get to what I like here. For oyster mushrooms this is what we love in our home.

Nutritionally chickpea flour (besan) is is amazing for a flour. Per one cup of this flour you get 20.6g protein, 402mcg natural folate (which is a big deal for me as a homogeneous MTHFR gene carrier), 9.9g fiber, and lots of other good for the body stuff. I love the nutritional content of garbanzo bean flour and the crispiness of potato starch together. The chickpeas really add a nice light earthy flavor that goes well with the spices. You could easily substitute the chickpea flour and potato starch for say rice flour, but this combo is a fav in our home for the reasons stated above. Give a try, come back and let me know how you liked it! You can grind your own chickpea flour or buy it online (or at a local health food store)...Bob Mills Brand is pretty good.

I'm of the mindset that spices and seasoning should be to taste so what I give you here is simply suggestions. I don't measure, I just know what we like and taste as we go. Try it...it makes cooking fun.

Ingredients
2 lbs clean oyster mushrooms, stems removed
butter, oil, lard, etc...whatever you fry with
fresh garlic (4-10 cloves...go crazy here folks)

Mix together items below
Equal portions garbanzo bean flour and potato starch
Garlic powder (2 TBSP)
Salt (1 TBSP- Pink Himalayan sea salt is what we use)
parsley (few sprigs chopped finely)
tarragon (tsp maybe?)
black pepper (to taste- we like a lot)
spring onions (4ish greens, chopped finely)

Batter your shrooms: unlike most southern frying you really don't need to egg or milk dip these before battering. If you just cleaned your mushrooms (as you should) then they will probably already be moist. The deep gills here are your friend too. Take each mushroom and press it into the four mixture firmly, make sure you get a decent amount in the gills.

Put your butter on to melt. Take that as an opportunity to chop or slice your garlic. Once your butter is hot and beginning to sizzle toss in your garlic. This won't take long to begin to brown, give a stir and add the battered mushrooms on top of the seared garlic. Cover with a lid and let cook for a minute. Flip and do the same again. Each batch will likely take 3-5 minutes if you pan is hot enough.

Remove from pan and eat it up!

It makes a great side dish, appetizer, snack, or entree. This night we had it with bacon wrapped/cheese stuffed jalapeno's, fresh sliced tomato, and roasted okra (late summer garden feast right there!)