Table of Contents – Domestic – You don’t want to die of mushroom poisoning, do you?

According to the weather forecast, the first day of the weekend promises to be a true Native American summer. It is a good time to visit the nearby forest as a family program and pick up a small basket not only for a walk, but also to fill it with mushrooms.

Ancient tradition

Mushroom picking is not a new and trendy entertainment program. It has a serious tradition, especially since there are more than four thousand species of mushrooms in Hungary.

– The reasons are mentioned by Lajos Benedek, associate professor at Szent István University, who is also a member of the council of the Mycological Society.

Of the thousands of species of mushrooms, the number of edible mushrooms can be in the hundreds, and there may still be many that are currently unknown to science. That is, it is not easy to recognize what we are stumbling into. Numerous mushroom knowledge courses help with this. More than a hundred varieties are taught in the basic course, while 303 species are introduced in the secondary inspection course, the Mycological Society board member said.

Well-prepared mushrooms are delicious and, although difficult to digest, they contain many useful nutrients. Its caloric content is low, only 150-500 per kilogram. It is rich in vitamin D and can also reach a water content of up to 90 percent. The remaining dry matter content is 35 to 60 percent protein, 20 percent carbohydrates, and minerals. The latter is found in the skin of the plant’s hat, which is mainly potassium and phosphorus.

Jenő Suha has had a permanent market place in the Fény Street market in Budapest for years. His clients wait for him and their mushrooms early in the morning.

I already had mushrooms in my mother’s belly

He responds with a laugh, asking how long he’s been walking through the woods. But this is still the case.

I can’t wait to get out into the woods, “he explains why he’s always looking forward to Wednesday.

It starts in the forests of Bükk or Mátra on Wednesdays and Thursdays and sells the fruit collected there on Fridays and Saturdays. Mushrooms travel more than 100 kilometers to reach customers.

His favorite hobby has been generating income for 15 years: he travels through the forests as a primary producer. As he says, the forest mushroom season is long in Bükk and Mátra. Lists without air intake when which fungus has a period.

• It can also peek under the snow in early March, in the middle of the catfish, until the end of April.
• If you are specifically looking for field carnations, it is worth heading into the woods from early spring to late fall, just after the rain.
• Then comes the period of litigation and tasty risk.
• While the king of Hungarian mushrooms, the most popular boletus, has a season until mid-December ”.

As the word changes to prices, it does not give away that it is the cheapest, but the quality that you have to pay for.

At the market on Fény Street, ten deca boletus cost 700-800 HUF. In other words, a family of four can prepare a healthy and hearty dinner for 1,600 guilders.

In turn, a piece of truffle, which has been talked about a lot in recent years, is worth between six and eight thousand florins, and its kilogram is between no less than 100 and 150 thousand. Due to its characteristic and saturated taste, chefs use only a few decades. However, your search is subject to a permit, which is carried out with a dog specially trained for this activity. A truffle processing plant in Szolnok was recently handed over.

Don’t be the last party

According to Lajos Benedek, it is due to the courses that, although fungal poisonings occur every year, their number is not significant. In all the important markets there are specialized inspectors whose work consists of two parts: on the one hand, they allow the mushrooms that are sold in the market, and on the other hand, anyone can take the fruits they have collected, they inspect them for free.

In Hungary, an average of 100-150 mushroom poisonings occur every year, according to the Nébih website, where there is a lot of useful information on the subject, such as a list of toxic and edible mushroom pairs with photos, which are easy to confuse. You can see the angry and edible couples on this website.

Milder poisonings can be treated with vomiting and diarrhea without the need for hospital care.

However, poisoning by killer agaric is almost always fatal. The effect of the delicious-tasting mushroom is well illustrated by the fact that even an entire family can die from a fruiting body – Benedek draws our attention.

Jenő Suha has no problem with the killer agaric. As a child he learned that the hat plant should be avoided from afar. By way of farewell, he even reveals that this year is a very good season, and if you’re serious, you can even earn a living.

He sees the lack of compensation as the only problem. While workers in other agricultural sectors may need assistance in case of drought or bad weather, this option does not apply to mushroom pickers.

(Cover Image: (MTI / EPA / Caroline Blumberg)