The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms

An excellent guide to one beginning the search into the wide variety of mushrooms available, although I skimmed through the first part, apart from the pictures, and went straight for the recipes. I was very impressed with the recipes, since I was not sure how long to cook mushroomds for and I wanted information on this point. I shsll be trying some of the recipes out.

Fungi is one of my favourite topics on the planet! From the mycelium and hypha to the stipe and spore prints to cultivating to recipes, this book has basic or refresher information for all things mushroom. Nothing fills me with greater joy than foraging in forests for mushrooms for hours on end, where time is of no consequence, extending beyond harvesting but especially photographing, dissecting, scrutinizing, spore printing and identifying. This book whisked me from being buried under deep November snow in Canada to my home and foraging heaven in Central Europe in less than a second. My library is well stocked with fungi books but there is definitely room for one more! I love, love, love this book.

To me all mushrooms are gorgeous in their own way, even the stinkhorn and red cage, and it's hard to believe that such innocent looking mushrooms such as the death cap or funeral bells can kill. One of my favourite things about this book is the stellar photography (cogwheel partial veil, hyphae, close ups of gills, corals...) including common poisoners as well as delectables. Another is what to expect and look for such as the colour of latex, cap texture, aroma and habitat. Gills alone could fill an encyclopedia! The preserving tables are such a great idea and very helpful.

If you have not yet tried wild mushroom risotto, mushrooms on the grill, mushroom pate and porcino crudo salad, you are in for a treat. The author highlights the immense versatility of mushrooms...talk about wonderful recipes. Lots of them, too. Waiting six months for foraging is a tough prospect, especially when salivating over the ideas and photos. Prioritize this book if you are at all interested in learning about mushrooms.

My sincere thank you to Quartro Publishing Group - Quarry and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC for this terrific book in exchange for an honest review. Much appreciated.

This book offers exactly what the title promises, good information for beginner mushroom foragers. The first half tells details about all of the different species, along with lots of color photos. The second half has a brief guide to growing your own and then another guide to cooking them with some nice general recipes and some more detailed ones. I appreciated that the section on growing them didn't tell you to buy a kit or expensive supplies, but told you how to do it on compost or straw and using scraps of wild mushrooms if you don't want a kit. I love that, as most mushroom growing books just tell you to buy kits that cost as much as buying the mushrooms in the first place. I also loved all the photos and the recipe section.

This is not a mushroom guide and you'll still need a really good guidebook for positive IDs. It also doesn't go enough into the tastes and edibility of various mushrooms. It's not really designed for foraging as it tells you about species all in a row and then doesn't just show photos of the best ones or (especially important) photos of the lookalikes right next to them. It also doesn't offer the tips that some books offer for how to find them. It's more an all-purpose educational guide, and a very good one.

I read a temporary digital ARC of this book for review.

I was very excited when I saw this available for review on Netgalley and decided to see if I could get a copy, much to my surprise, I did and I'm thrilled about that!

One thing to note is that it was very difficult to read the ebook on the Netgalley shelf because of the text size and it wouldn't allow me to change the size as in a kindle, but I persevered (:
That is the only down side to the book that I could note.

What I love:
The photography of each specimen (poisonous and edible alike) along with the info of spore collecting, which are toxic or not, how to differentiate, the textures, the caps and what shapes they can and do have (there are so many mushrooms I have never seen or heard of before), growing/cultivating your own,, how to clean and prepare for drying, preserving and cooking recipes included, etc. There is so much to like about this book!

I have learned quite a bit from this book and have so much more to learn from it. If you like mushrooms/fungi then I highly recommend this book for someone like me who is a beginner to intermediate in this subject and wishes to learn more or get a refresher on things.

Thank you to Quartro Publishing Group - Quarry and NetGalley for the eARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

Packed with tons of beautiful, full-color photographs of all kinds of mushrooms, this wonderful guide will demystify an often scary prospect—foraging for mushrooms. I’ve always reticent to harvest the copious mushrooms that sprout up in my area because of horror stories of misidentified poisonous mushrooms. This guide has made me more confident about safely identifying what I find.

This is a great and informative book about types of mushrooms and their properties. The photos are close-up and great for the important things to look for. It seems great for beginners who want to look for them, and also great for finding out what is around you.

Every time I saw mushrooms in nature, I whispered "Can I eat those? Are they poisonous?"
Thank God I found this book, I learned a lot about many kinds of mushrooms and how to identify them.
The photos are clear enough.
The author can't stress it enough that if you aren't sure, don't eat it. Because it is a dangerous thing. I think this book is more about introducing and identify wild mushrooms and know their characters.
I wish instead of based on their family, it might more interesting to me if it's categorized by edible or not. It's just a matter of personal choice.

Not just about the identification of mushrooms, this book contains how to innoculate and consume mushrooms.
Very informative book, the explanation is easy to understand.

The Beginner's Guide to Mushrooms is a tutorial and informational guide to mycology, cultivating, and foraging presented by Britt Bunyard & Tavis Lynch. Due out 22nd Dec 2020 from Quarto on their Quarry imprint, it's 160 pages and will be available in paperback format.
This is an appealingly colorful guide with good general information for beginners. The format is logical and accessible. The authors provide a good basic primer including safety, reliability, responsible foraging, and identification. A short introduction leads into the majority of the content in the forms of an herbal. ID sections are divided by morphology: agarics with pale spores, pink spores, brown spores, dark spores, stalked mushrooms, aspitates, shelf like, ball shaped, and so forth. Part 3 includes a good DIY tutorial for cultivating mushrooms. I liked that the authors didn't just essentially say "buy a kit" (which defeats a lot of the fun and challenge). They show growing on straw and other substrates. The final section includes some good general recipes and some tips for preservation.

This is not a one-size-fits-all manual. Readers -will- need more resources in the form of positive ID field guides or (even better) a mentor/guide who can positively identify finds safely and reliably. I also found the recipes quite generic. It is however a dandy guide for beginners and advanced beginners to whet the appetite and appreciation for foraging and culture (and use) of native mushrooms.

This would be a superlative addition to the smallholder's library, maker's groups, foraging groups, libraries and the like. Five stars.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher for review purposes.

A great first book for anyone curious about harvesting or growing their own mushrooms. The author includes etiquette for when you work with other foragers, safety tips to avoid upset stomachs, and many recipes. Some might find the safety part a bit thick, but I can see that it's all necessary especially when some mushrooms are poisonous enough to kill.
The recipes and pictures sound so good! They even include tips on which mushroom types work best with different cooking methods such as frying or drying so you can incorporate them into dishes you already love. As someone who gets nervous trying new foods, the author makes these dishes sound so good I would happily try them at least once.
I would recommend this book to anyone who loves to cook or eat mushrooms, as well as those who like to get their food straight from the ground instead of the supermarket.
(I read and reviewed this book for free through NetGalley)

This Book was so informative and engaging.
I am fascinated by mushrooms and love taking pictures whenever I see them. This book will help me identify them.
It gives detailed explanations and beautiful pictures too, all in which will help foragers and keen mushroom enthusiast identity edible and poisonous ones. As you may or may not know mushrooms can be extremely deadly if you don't know what you're doing.

At the end of the book was some useful recipes which I found added a special touch to this delightful book.

This book would make the perfect present and I highly recommend it