You can find edible and tasty mushrooms almost any time of the year in the UK if you know what to look for, and my favourite time is around mid-July when my favourite mushrooms of all-time, chanterelles, make an appearance. But in terms of variety and abundance, the prime mushroom season really begins around late August and runs well into the autumn months.
Growing up on the family farm, I have fond memories of walking through the fields in the autumn months, stumbling upon field mushrooms, horse mushrooms and the occasional giant puffball (these huge football-sized fungi are amazing to behold!). Even before working as a chef and learning about many more kinds of wild mushrooms, I had read a lot about the two most well known kinds: chanterelles (a.ka. girolles) and ceps (a.k.a porcini, and to me, the king of mushrooms). According to Roger Phillips' Mushrooms – the indispensable fungi reference book – both of these are described as "edible, delicious" and "common", although they weren't that common in Northumberland it seemed, as I spent most of the autumn months in my teenage years scouring the nearby woodland for them, to no avail.
My quest to find chanterelles yielded results before too long. They were found in a stretch of woodland along the north edge of the farm, the Greenlane Wood, composed mostly of birch trees. From late August onwards the woodland floor was becoming more and more littered with the striking yellow leaves as they fell to the ground. They were exactly the same colour as the chanterelles! To my untrained eye, it was easy to miss the little golden fungi amongst the fallen leaves, but after a while I was able to easily spot the roundish yellow mushrooms among the more angular shapes of the leaves. Care was required so as not to tread on any of the yellow treasures as I strolled along. They reappear in this woodland reliably every year, and it remains to this day one of my most lucrative mushrooming spots.
Foraging for chanterelles in birch woodland. It can be hard to spot the mushrooms among the yellow leaves on the ground.
Finding ceps (or even a single one!) was to take some years longer, and I ended up stumbling upon some on a camping trip in the Scottish Borders. It was August, and it had been a fairly wet summer. They were found along the edge of a commercial pine wood, where it met another area of beech and birch trees. It seemed this was a good habitat for the ceps, as I returned several times in the following years and found many more of them – until the commercial woodland was eventually felled for timber, after which I never saw a cep in the area again. Sadly, I'm yet to find a reliable foraging spot for ceps, but this means it's all the more special when I do find them.
There are other mushrooms in the cep family – the boletes – that are more common and although not as good are definitely worth picking. The brown birch bolete, orange birch bolete and red cracking bolete are easy to find and, although they are a bit slimy when cooked, they make an excellent all purpose seasoning when dehydrated and ground to a powder. Amethyst deceivers are an exotic-looking purple mushroom that I sometimes find in beech/birch woodland too, which are quite firm when cooked and have a surprisingly meaty flavour.
A selection of lesser boletes (relatives of the cep), sliced up ready to be dehydrated and ground into powder to make a powerful all-purpose seasoning.
Moving from the woods into the fields, fairy ring champignons (a.ka. mousserons), so called because they tend to grow in ring formations, are a really underappreciated specimen that have an amazing flavour to rival any other mushroom. They also have a distinctive scent of sawdust! I've typically found them from late July onwards. Also in the fields, September/October is the prime season for field mushrooms (the wild version of the familiar supermarket button mushroom) and its stronger flavoured cousin, the horse mushroom. Later in the season, into November, you might be lucky enough to find some wood blewits. These are another really special mushroom with a great flavour and a distinctive purple hue to them. I like to serve them with fish.
And finally, I must mention the morel. It's a rare, highly prized mushroom revered by chefs the world over. I've not yet been lucky enough to find one in the wild. I know that any mushroom forager will be reluctant to give away their secret locations, but if you happen to find any morels, let me know as I'd love to cook with them!