Bicolor boletes (Baorangia bicolor) and other species of edible boletes offer rich, umami flavors and a meat-like texture. These features make them perfect for a mushroom pâté recipe. Find out how in this article!
It’s been a great summer mushroom season here in Upstate South Carolina. Frequent rains and warm temperatures mean our forests are filled with gourmet fungi.
With family visiting us from out of state, we decided to go on some foraging hikes and dream up new mushroom recipes. Thankfully, our favorite foraging spots cooperated. We were able to come home with bags of chanterelles and bicolor boletes!
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In case you’ve never heard of them before or aren’t 100% certain how to identify them, we highly encourage you to read our article How to find, identify, and eat bicolor boletes.
Bicolor bolete mushroom pâté
Bicolor boletes have a meaty texture and delightful umami flavor. This makes them a perfect meat substitute in cooked dishes or allows them to be served with flavorful red meats without being overpowered.
Given these flavor and texture characteristics, we decided to make a bicolor bolete mushroom pâté with our latest harvest of bicolor boletes.
Pâté is a French dish and the word translates to “paste.” Traditionally, pâté is made from a combination of animal meat and fats plus herbs and other assorted flavorings, which are blended to achieve a paste-like consistency.
Pâté is usually chilled for anywhere between a few hours to a few days after it’s made, then served cold or at room temperature. It can be eaten as a spread on crackers or toasted breads. (All of these generalizations apply to our bicolor bolete mushroom pâté as well.)
We wondered: would bicolor bolete mushrooms make a rich, savory pâté on par with a meat-based pâté? Answer: yes! Our mushroom pâté was a big hit with our guests — and our toddler also munched some down after sipping on an elderberry syrup apéritif.
Mmm… Bicolor bolete mushroom pâté on a cracker. Perfect served for an appetizer or as a side dish!
Recipe notes and process photos
Here are some additional tips and process photos to help you make this bicolor bolete mushroom pâté recipe:
1. Other mushrooms welcome!
You don’t have to have bicolor boletes to make this recipe. You can easily substitute other rich, savory mushrooms or mushroom blends and get a great mushroom pâté.
In fact, when making the batch of pâté for this article, we also included a few Boletus pseudosensibilis we found.
2. Add toasted nuts.
We use toasted walnuts in this recipe to help add fat, depth, and richness. You could also use pine nuts or perhaps even pecans if you’d prefer.
To toast your nuts, simply put them in a single layer in a pan on your stovetop over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Stir every 30 seconds or so to ensure even toasting and to make sure the nuts don’t burn.
Once they’ve just started to take on a golden-brown color on each side, they’re done. Remove them from the stovetop and let them cool to room temperature.
3. Chop and cook your bicolor boletes (or other mushrooms)
With very rare exceptions (such as beefsteak mushrooms/Fistulina hepatica), you want to make sure you thoroughly cook your mushrooms before eating them. Cooking helps break down the chitin in mushrooms’ cell walls, allowing the release of nutrients inside. Cooking also breaks down any potential anti-nutrients and kills pathogens.
Even though all of your ingredients are going to eventually go into a blender, you still want to chop your mushrooms before cooking them to help speed up the cooking process and infuse them with the flavor from the other ingredients (white wine, thyme, butter, and salt).
Just like fruits and veggies, mushrooms are mostly comprised of water. We started with 4 cups of chopped boletes, which cooked down to 1 cup after about 15-20 minutes.
You want to cook all the water out of the mushrooms for a good consistency in your final pâté. Once the water cooks out, the butter (or extra virgin olive oil if you prefer) will help keep the mushrooms from burning/sticking. You want them just slightly browned before removing them from the stove and cooling them.
Bicolor bolete mushroom pâté in a blender – a closer look at the final consistency of your pâté. You want to cook all the water out of your mushrooms so you get a thick pâté that’s comparable in texture to a meat pâté.
4. About your pâté presentation…
Ok, let’s be perfectly blunt here: pâté is not beautiful. It’s basically a brownish-colored paste, which can look like something rather undesirable.
If you’re making this pâté for yourself, who cares. If you’re planning to serve it to other people or post it to your social media accounts to make people envious of all the joy and wonder in your life, then you’ll want to dress up your pâté a bit.
The Tyrant pointed out that this probably isn’t the best presentation of our bicolor bolete mushroom pâté. Her presentation proved much more attractive.
Recommendations: put it into small serving dishes garnished with something color: diced purple onions, chives, or parsley. Surround the dish with your favorite crackers or even consider serving your mushrooms pâté as part of a charcuterie plate.
The Tyrant’s mushroom pâté presentation. Much better. (She wins again.)
Now you’re ready to jump into the recipe!
Recipe: Bicolor bolete mushroom pâté
Bicolor bolete mushroom pâté (or other savory mushrooms)
A rich, savory mushroom pâté made from bicolor boletes or other savory mushrooms.
Ingredients
- 4 cups chopped bicolor boletes (cooks down to 1 cup)
- 1/2 cup walnuts, toasted
- 1/2 cup fresh-grated parmesan cheese
- 1/4 cup white wine + splash more to deglaze plan
- 2.5 tbsp organic grass-fed butter (or extra virgin olive oil)
- 1/2 tbsp fresh thyme leaves and/or thyme flowers
- 2 garlic cloves, diced
- 1/4 tsp pink Himalayan sea salt (or to taste)
- (optional) dash of fresh cracked peppercorns or white pepper
Instructions
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Toast walnuts in pan on stovetop over medium heat for about 10 minutes, stirring and turning regularly to prevent burning. Once slightly browned, remove from heat and let cool until slightly warm or room temperature.
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While nuts are toasting, cook chopped mushrooms in a separate pan over medium heat. Add butter, wine, salt, and thyme at same time as mushrooms. Cook for about 15-20 minutes until all water has cooked out, then stir with spatula until mushrooms have just started to brown. Add diced garlic at the end (use a bit more butter/oil if needed) and cook until slightly browned. Remove ingredients from pan and place in bowl to cool. Deglaze pan with a splash of white wine - pour into bowl with other ingredients.
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Once mushrooms and nuts have cooled to just slightly warm or room temperature, place them in a blender with grated parmesan cheese. Optional, but add cracked pepper or white pepper here if you'd like. (*We recommend a blender with multiple blades like a Ninja.) Blend until smooth and creamy consistency. If your mixture is too heavy to blend for some reason, add a bit of white wine or olive oil (or both).
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Once blended, place in covered bowl in the fridge for at least 2-3 hours before serving. Serve chilled or at room temperature.
We hope you enjoy this forest-to-table bicolor bolete mushroom pâté recipe as much as we do!
KIGI,
Keep scratching your mushroom itch with these other articles:
- How to find, ID, and eat bicolor boletes
- How to find, ID, an eat chanterelle mushrooms
- How to find, ID, and eat beefsteak mushrooms (Fistulina hepatica)
- All about Corrugated milk cap & Bradley milk cap mushrooms
- Black trumpet mushroom pasta and black trumpet mushroom & smoked gouda souffle
- How to find, ID, and use reishi mushrooms
- Chicken of the woods mushroom + “chicken” finger recipe
- Corn smut (huitlacoche) + recipe
- How to grow, forage, and eat lion’s mane + lion’s mane crabcake recipe
- Cauliflower mushroom – how to find, ID, and eat w/ quiche recipe
- How to find, ID, and eat hedgehog mushrooms
… and more foraging and mushroom articles from Tyrant Farms!
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4 Comments
Susanne the forager
August 23, 2021 at 8:01 amIncredible pate. I used half boletes and half hedgehogs. It was a real hit!
Aaron von Frank
August 23, 2021 at 1:47 pmOoh, glad to hear the recipe turned out well with a bolete-hedgehog mix!
Lisa Durette
August 4, 2021 at 11:46 pmI was one of the lucky out-of-Towner taste testers. And, I love pâté. Aaron’s recipe gets 8 stars out of 5. It was so umami and rich. If there hadn’t been other amazing mushroomy dishes that night I would have eaten it all!!
Aaron von Frank
August 14, 2021 at 1:05 pmSo glad you were able to be here for the maiden voyage of this bicolor bolete mushroom pâté recipe, Lisa! And you guys even got to harvest the ingredients on our hike. Pretty neat.