Morel Salt

I have a love hate relationship with the morel mushroom. I will not argue that they are tasty because they are, and I enjoy eating them as much as the next guy. My problem is that I am not very good at finding them, and not for a lack of trying either. I have found a few over the years and have spent countless hours walking around the woods trying to find some. I always manage to find a few but I can never seem to find a large cache of them. One of the many problems with social media is that I see on Facebook all these people with table tops lined up with morels or some guy in Tennessee with the bed of a pick up full of them. I always feel like everybody but me is having success. The most I have ever found in one day was 14. When you don't find many you have to start being thrifty as to how you prepare them.

I have never been fortunate enough to find a large enough haul to just fry up a basket of them and eat them. I always find just enough to add to a dish or to make a nice risotto. Just once I'd like to be the guy with a five gallon bucket full of morels and running out of ways to cook them. This year I have been out on five separate occasions and on three of those occasions came up empty handed. On one of my successful outings I found four perfect little morels each about 3 inches tall. When you only have four morels there isn't much you can do with them. I thought about frying them and just eating them and calling it a season but I like to extended things as much as possible. instead of eating them I packed them in salt and let them sit for a few days then pulsed them in my food processor. this worked really well for infusing the salt with great morel flavor. I spread the sanding looking salt on a cookie sheet and popped it in the oven at 180 degrees for about 30 minutes to dry it out a bit.

The salt is exactly what I had hoped it would turn out to be. It is a perfect seasoning salt for eggs and meats and great on grilled fish. I ended up with about 1 1/2 cups of salt and will now be able to enjoy that magnificent morel flavor long after the season is over. To make this salt just cut the morels in half and clean them out really well. then pack the halves in a cup and a half of salt and let sit for 3-4 days. Then pulse in a food processor and spread out on a cookie sheet. Bake for 30 minutes at 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Store in an airtight container and enjoy through out the summer.