Chicken of the Woods Update

If you’ve been following this blog, you know that Chicken of the Woods is one of my favorite mushrooms, so it’s no surprise that I’m pretty excited about the fact that we’ve moved into the second phase of our testing to be able to bring them to the commercial mushroom scene.

We shipped out several grow bags of both Chicken of the Woods and Maitake (also known as hen of the woods) to our contract growers. They will try different methods on the bags and see if they can duplicate our success. If all goes well, you could be seeing Chicken of the Woods on our menu in the semi near future. 

As you can see in the pictures, the mycelium for Chicken of the Woods is a bright vibrant orange, instead of the normal white, or the brown of Shiitake. I do believe it would brighten up a counter-top nicely. 

We usually send out 20-30 bags to our contract growers at a time, but this last shipment was around 70, including the test bags of Chicken of the Woods and Maitake. We’re pretty happy at the progress.

What are your favorite recipes for Chicken of the Woods? Is there anything in particular you would make with it if/when we have grow bags available? If you post a link to a recipe you like, it could be featured in an upcoming blog.