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The Complete Mushroom Hunter, Revised: Illustrated Guide to Foraging, Harvesting, and Enjoying Wild Mushrooms - Including new sections on growing your own incredible edibles and off-season collecting
Do you know your mushrooms?
This is the only mushrooming book that will introduce you safely and with confidence to the not-so underground hobby of mushroom hunting and gathering. Gathering edible wild food is a lovely way to forge a connection to the earth. Mushrooms are the ultimate local food source; they grow literally everywhere, from mountains and woodlands to urban and suburban parks to your own backyard.
The Complete Mushroom Hunter, Revised is a new edition of Quarry's successful Complete Mushroom Hunter. It will enrich your understanding of the natural world and build an appreciation for an ancient, critically relevant, and useful body of knowledge. Amateur mycologists and mushroom enthusiasts will find this is a guidebook for their passion. Mushroom guru Gary Lincoff escorts you from the mushroom's earliest culinary awakening, through getting equipped for mushroom forays, to preparing and serving the fruits of the foray, wherever you live. Inside you'll find: A brief, but colorful history of mushroom hunting worldwide; how to get equipped for a mushroom foray; a completely illustrated guide to the common wild edible mushrooms and their poisonous look-alikes -- where to find them, how to identify them, and more; how to prepare and serve the fruits of your foray, plus more than 30 delicious recipes; plus, dozens of colorful, priceless anecdotes from living the mushroom lifestyle.
This is the only mushrooming book that will introduce you safely and with confidence to the not-so underground hobby of mushroom hunting and gathering. Gathering edible wild food is a lovely way to forge a connection to the earth. Mushrooms are the ultimate local food source; they grow literally everywhere, from mountains and woodlands to urban and suburban parks to your own backyard.
The Complete Mushroom Hunter, Revised is a new edition of Quarry's successful Complete Mushroom Hunter. It will enrich your understanding of the natural world and build an appreciation for an ancient, critically relevant, and useful body of knowledge. Amateur mycologists and mushroom enthusiasts will find this is a guidebook for their passion. Mushroom guru Gary Lincoff escorts you from the mushroom's earliest culinary awakening, through getting equipped for mushroom forays, to preparing and serving the fruits of the foray, wherever you live. Inside you'll find: A brief, but colorful history of mushroom hunting worldwide; how to get equipped for a mushroom foray; a completely illustrated guide to the common wild edible mushrooms and their poisonous look-alikes -- where to find them, how to identify them, and more; how to prepare and serve the fruits of your foray, plus more than 30 delicious recipes; plus, dozens of colorful, priceless anecdotes from living the mushroom lifestyle.
208 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2010
182 people are currently reading
1205 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews
February 7, 2021
A comprehensive love story about humanity and fungi. And just scary enough to make certain you aren't running out into your yard or park or the woods to scoop-up mushrooms to cook, but convincing enough of the joys and benefits of mushrooms that you *want* to go out and find some and learn more.
I could see this being a book to own and take with you on your walks.
I could see this being a book to own and take with you on your walks.
June 14, 2019
Now here is a nice book for folks who are interested in mushrooms and hunting them, but find themselves overwhelmed by other field guides or scientific fungal reads.
The book is generally geared towards the hunting of mushrooms for culinary use, but it is still a must-read for any beginning mycophile whether they are interested in actually eating the shrooms or just admiring their beauty as lifeforms (I fall into the latter category, but I might feel compelled to pick and cook a few that I feel confident about now after reading this book). The book starts with a brief and mild ethnobotanical look at some mushrooms at home and around the world, and various attitudes towards them. After a short introduction into the fungal kingdom and advice and procedures for a successful mushroom hunt, the species descriptions start.
The author has, I think wisely, presented just a few of the common edibles, focusing on the non-gilled mushrooms (which tend to be easier to identify) and has written interesting, non-field guide-like blurbs about each mushroom, often with some interesting informational tidbits about it, beyond just the morphological description. These are all really straightforward and readable to the layperson, and there are plenty of beautiful color pictures. This book, unlike many others, really feels as if a mushrooming coach is speaking with you and offering advice, complete with his enthusiastic anecdotes of past hunts.
After the learning the common edibles, we also learn about the common inedibles known for causing poisoning of various degrees. Brief sections on psychoactive and medicinal mushrooms finish up the main text, and there are two appendices with various mushroom-centered recipes and craft projects.
Overall, I think this is a really nice book for anyone with any interest in mushrooms. The book itself is attractive and bursting with color photos, and is a light hardcover that could be brought along to the field without weighing a person down too much. Granted, the writing style might not be the most eloquent I have ever read (often the personal anecdotes, which are still amusing, don't seem particularly funny and often feel like listening to a person who relates stories and laughs at himself then ends with 'I guess you had to be there' -- however I still appreciate these blurbs because they illustrate the social character mushrooms bring). Even so, it is far from being terrible, and it succeeds in being clear, which is most important in a book advising about mushroom identification.
The book is generally geared towards the hunting of mushrooms for culinary use, but it is still a must-read for any beginning mycophile whether they are interested in actually eating the shrooms or just admiring their beauty as lifeforms (I fall into the latter category, but I might feel compelled to pick and cook a few that I feel confident about now after reading this book). The book starts with a brief and mild ethnobotanical look at some mushrooms at home and around the world, and various attitudes towards them. After a short introduction into the fungal kingdom and advice and procedures for a successful mushroom hunt, the species descriptions start.
The author has, I think wisely, presented just a few of the common edibles, focusing on the non-gilled mushrooms (which tend to be easier to identify) and has written interesting, non-field guide-like blurbs about each mushroom, often with some interesting informational tidbits about it, beyond just the morphological description. These are all really straightforward and readable to the layperson, and there are plenty of beautiful color pictures. This book, unlike many others, really feels as if a mushrooming coach is speaking with you and offering advice, complete with his enthusiastic anecdotes of past hunts.
After the learning the common edibles, we also learn about the common inedibles known for causing poisoning of various degrees. Brief sections on psychoactive and medicinal mushrooms finish up the main text, and there are two appendices with various mushroom-centered recipes and craft projects.
Overall, I think this is a really nice book for anyone with any interest in mushrooms. The book itself is attractive and bursting with color photos, and is a light hardcover that could be brought along to the field without weighing a person down too much. Granted, the writing style might not be the most eloquent I have ever read (often the personal anecdotes, which are still amusing, don't seem particularly funny and often feel like listening to a person who relates stories and laughs at himself then ends with 'I guess you had to be there' -- however I still appreciate these blurbs because they illustrate the social character mushrooms bring). Even so, it is far from being terrible, and it succeeds in being clear, which is most important in a book advising about mushroom identification.
Want to read
December 25, 2015
(Tiananmen Square, China)
(Jinan, China)
(Nanjing, China)
I had been struck in the morning by the news about a Chinese city with a pink sky [yet I had already read about "purple" and "lavender", well, but then back in mid April we had "red" sky in Mongolia!*]....due to pollution.
But here, in Portugal, we had a quite unusual, warm temperature day.
Christmas day.
Where are those cold,winter days?
(yesterday)
(today)
(white and blue is so fine!!)
*
(Mongolia's city,red sky ...and mud)
January 26, 2021
Fancy and technical.
September 7, 2022
Garry Linncoff is the guy who wrote the Audobbon Field Guide, my first mushroom book, the one that got me hooked on mushroom books 14 years ago. So I was happy to find this at my library. If you are looking to learn about foraging for mushrooms for food this is a great book. I'd recomend it over any of the other mushrooms for food books I've got on my shelf. It describes loads of the greatest mushtooms to eat and how to find, identify and cook them. It's not exactly a field guide, because he goes much further into each species than just describing how to identify it. The book looks at culinary mushroom traditions around the world. It talks about goumet, magic and medicinal mushroms and is a super book for learning about medicinal properties.
The book repeats essencial lessons to really help you get started knowing about species. The book includes lots of anecdotes of Gary's experiences hunting mushrooms around the world, and hes not just some mushroom guy, he's GARY LINCOFF!
If you're not going mushroom hunting, but just looking for a good read, this isnt my recommendation. It's not beautifully written and only includes a few ideas that I havn't seen in a hundred other mushroom books.
The book repeats essencial lessons to really help you get started knowing about species. The book includes lots of anecdotes of Gary's experiences hunting mushrooms around the world, and hes not just some mushroom guy, he's GARY LINCOFF!
If you're not going mushroom hunting, but just looking for a good read, this isnt my recommendation. It's not beautifully written and only includes a few ideas that I havn't seen in a hundred other mushroom books.
December 26, 2020
While a helpful starting place for mushroom lovers, the beginning section about getting into mushroom identification and going on your first mushroom walk seemed out of order. The author kept mentioning gilled and non-gilled mushroom 20 pages before he defined those terms (There were similar things that made it feel like an experienced person was talking over my, a beginners, head). Once I got past that, the sections describing individual mushrooms were insightful and well laid out. I found the most information in the very end section of the book, with poisonous mushroom and psychedelics, which were given more space to describe their lookalikes. There was lots of information in the mushroom cultivation section and the section on choice edibles (best for eating but rarer to find), but it seemed to be an add on section with less thought to design/layout. This book certainly piqued my interest in harvesting wild mushrooms, but it’s likely not a guide book I’ll come back to frequently as a reference, instead I’ll look into get an Audubon guide or something similar as I could find none of the mushrooms described in this book on any of my walks.
April 28, 2025
This book is great for a beginner forager like myself. I really enjoyed the stories that accompanied most mushroom profiles. They made for a fun read (instead of strictly scientific) and also made each mushroom a bit more memorable.
Just missing one star for the following reasons:
- sometimes mushrooms are mentioned in the text but there is no picture to accompany them so I needed to look up photos online instead. would be nicer if each time a mushroom was mentioned there was also a picture (or information on which page has a photo).
- the index is difficult to navigate. I wish it was alphabetized by the name of the mushroom, rather than book section and then mushroom name. this would make the book much easier to reference quickly.
Just missing one star for the following reasons:
- sometimes mushrooms are mentioned in the text but there is no picture to accompany them so I needed to look up photos online instead. would be nicer if each time a mushroom was mentioned there was also a picture (or information on which page has a photo).
- the index is difficult to navigate. I wish it was alphabetized by the name of the mushroom, rather than book section and then mushroom name. this would make the book much easier to reference quickly.
June 9, 2019
I've a new appreciation for Gary Lincoff. His stories, which he scatters throughout the book, are fun and light-hearted, adding practical value to the value and identification sections. Looking into him a little more he gave a lot to the mushroom community he was involved in and lived a well-traveled life in pursuit of his passion. One story I enjoyed was how upon coming to a big mushroom convention he met a hippy in the parking lot. The hippy was taking off to go hunting mushrooms and Gary abandoned the meeting and went and hunted mushrooms with the guy and had a good time, never regretting skipping the meeting. Seems like an admirable perspective to me.
September 10, 2020
Solid introduction to foraging and identifying edible and poisonous mushrooms. Topics cover gilled, non-gilled and other mushrooms, using examples from across the globe. Learned quite a few new mushrooms that I've since successfully identified in the wild. The book concludes with some uninventive mushroom recipes and decent step-by-step cultivation techniques. Very little on mushroom biology and ecology, so you'll have to look elsewhere for that. Only a 4/5 due to some organization mistakes - insets often contain the same information as in the base text, and they're side by side in the final product. Photography is quite good, sometimes lower resolution, but enjoyable.
July 8, 2018
I'm a mushroom, plant, and insect forager. Follow me at instagram: @MNforager and facebook: @Ironwood Foraging Co.
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What a gift Gary's life was to us all. I had hoped to meet him for the first time this year at the NAMA annual gathering in Oregon. This book has zero fluff and is intensely enjoyable and entertaining to anyone who loves mycology whether it's the experienced mushroom hunter or the beginner. His stories and insights give a peek at the mind and life of an adventurous man who loved his craft.
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What a gift Gary's life was to us all. I had hoped to meet him for the first time this year at the NAMA annual gathering in Oregon. This book has zero fluff and is intensely enjoyable and entertaining to anyone who loves mycology whether it's the experienced mushroom hunter or the beginner. His stories and insights give a peek at the mind and life of an adventurous man who loved his craft.
October 29, 2018
At first glance, I was expecting this book to be another quick read, full of pictures and not a lot of useful information. It was roughly the same size and shape as the last beginning guide to mushroom hunting that had taken me all of thirty minutes to breeze through, after all. Not so. This guide by Gary Lincoff (who also wrote the National Audubon Society Field Guide to Mushrooms) is full of great information, and was a much deeper and longer read than I was expecting. If you are going to start mushroom hunting and identifying with one book, I would recommend it be this one.
November 3, 2021
This was an informative book with everything from identification guides to mushroom art to recipes and more. To help with identification, almost all varieties included pics, field descriptions, look-alike info, and cautions (if necessary). I found it interesting that in the Poisonous section, every right hand page had a footnote in all caps CALL YOUR LOCAL POISON CONTROL IN CASE OF EMERGENCY. Under the Recipe section rules for safely eating wild mushrooms, a number of these are great ideas - and ideas I have not seen anywhere else previously.
January 14, 2022
Wow, such an informative book! Not only does it include sections on edible mushrooms, but poisonous, psychoactive, and medicinal mushrooms as well! Even has appendixes about crafts with mushrooms, recipes for using different mushrooms, and growing your own mushrooms! The only thing I would have liked would be some side by side comparison photos of edible mushrooms and their lookalikes. And maybe a clearer organization system within the book, it doesn't go alphabetically so it can be hard to find what you're looking for quickly.
July 18, 2019
An absolute must-read for any beginning forager! Lincoff has a talent for inspiring passion in the subject and making information memorable. Be sure to get the revised edition with additional information on cultivation and off-season collecting!
April 2, 2021
The edition I have (2020, I think?) would not be a suitable field guide for carrying on hikes - it's big, heavy, and information isn't presented as easily as I'd like for identifying something I encountered in the woods. However, an excellent primer and useful reference overall. I learned a lot.
May 17, 2021
A great review of mushrooms and lots of pictures. I still feel that I would not be able to identify them and this book is not organized in the easiest way to locate pictures or cross reference look a likes.
A good review.
A good review.
November 7, 2021
What a wonderful book, so well written and extremely informative. Also, The pictures of the specimens are very clear which makes it easy to identify the mushrooms that we find. I loved the look alike descriptions given with all the mushrooms.
January 31, 2017
Very informative
A lot of information packed in this book. But it is not a guide book or identification book. A very good reference manual.
A lot of information packed in this book. But it is not a guide book or identification book. A very good reference manual.
September 21, 2018
Good info and details, color photos, talks about spore prints.
June 11, 2019
Not detailed enough to be a field guide but detailed in other areas like usage, history, etc. Paired with a field ID guide this is a great book.
June 30, 2019
Engaging and beautiful, not considered a reference, but the pics are so detailed I believe for initial and common edibles it is.
March 30, 2021
This is the most readable mushroom book I have found, and probably the most useful for finding mushrooms to eat and which to avoid. It is very clearly written and has great photos. The little side stories are especially interesting. But alas, Gary Lincoff has died.
April 5, 2021
Very informative book for any beginner.
May 27, 2022
Well illustrated and detailed guide to mushroom identification.
October 12, 2022
Approachable and thorough.
December 18, 2022
Nice educational book I needed on mushrooms.
April 14, 2024
4.5 stars
This is an excellent resourceful book if you are interested in the world of mushroom foraging, covers a variety of topics regarding wild mushrooms.
This is an excellent resourceful book if you are interested in the world of mushroom foraging, covers a variety of topics regarding wild mushrooms.
March 12, 2017
Middle bear in terms of info: not too much, not too little.
November 14, 2020
Loved it so much I bought a copy!
September 21, 2017
This could have been a really great book, but I think if a person really wants to hunt for mushrooms successfully (without getting sick or dying), it's probably better to go with a field guide that actually explains how to classify. Also, after reading about "psychedelic" mushrooms and the author explaining that if you drink your own urine AFTER ingesting such things you have double the experience, I really question the credibility/ethics of the information as well as the author's personal habits...
Displaying 1 - 30 of 36 reviews