Mushroom Foraging Trip with Applejack Chefs

Applejack Chefs Gather for a Day of Mushroom Foraging.

Head of Culinary Patrick Friesen gathered a crew of Applejack Chefs to forage and learn more about mushrooms in The Southern Highlands.

The crew included Butler Head Chef Amber Doig, Botanist Head Chef Scott Mills, Forrester’s Head Chef Rohit Bohora, SoCal Head Chef Keith Dsouza, plus a number of other key kitchen team members.

Mushrooms are an incredible ingredient used in every Applejack kitchen. The team was excited to get out there and better understand the process of foraging for mushrooms.

How our day went:

The team arrived bright and early on Monday morning, making the trip 1.5hrs down south to Penrose State Forest in the Southern Highlands. We were introduced to our guide, Diego Bonetto; an Italian mushroom expert; who has foraged for mushrooms for a number of years.

We started the day with a quick forage, collecting anything that looked remotely like a mushroom. The team came back with a number of unique, colourful and weird looking mushrooms, which we sorted into either edible or poisonous mushrooms.

Once we knew what we were looking for, we set off on another two forages; heading deeper into the forest. The teams filled up their boxes with a number of Slippery Jacks & Saffron Milk Caps (pine mushrooms) which they could take home for some cooking.

Diego then cooked up some of the freshly picked mushrooms, surrounded by pine trees… it had to be one of the most scenic kitchen sites we’ve ever seen. The team enjoyed the delicious mushrooms together & chatted about how the forage went.

It was an awesome day trip, the team learnt so much about mushrooms, plus it was a great team bonding day for all the chefs. A special thank you to Patrick for organising the trip and to our guide Diego, who installed a new passion for mushrooms in all our chefs.

Check out how our day went at the reel below.

 

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Check out more pictures from the day out below.

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