Through his expert eye, Patrice Lainé, secretary general of the mycological society of France, guided the journalists of 20 Minutes TV in the forest of Saint-Germain-en-Laye (in Yvelines), which is home to mushrooms of different varieties. During this picking, he took stock of which mushrooms are edible or not.
In order to know if a mushroom is good, “there is no secret,” says Patrice Lainé, “you have to get to know them.” To do this, we can use guides sold commercially, which describe edible mushrooms, but also those which are frequently confused with deadly mushrooms, because of their similarities. Otherwise, the expert recommends doing your picking “with people who already know about it.” “There is no shortcut that allows you to say ‘this mushroom is like that therefore it is necessarily edible or necessarily dangerous’. That doesn’t exist,” he warns.
In fact, there are more than 15,000 species of mushrooms in France, so you have to be particularly careful about what you put in your dish.