22/05/2026
🐔 Chicken of the Woods, Laetiporus sulphureus 🐔
There are not many more cheerful sights for a forager than the bright, sulphurous yellow of Chicken of the Woods. Its scientific name translates as laetus, meaning bright, pleasing, or happy in Latin, and the Greek poros, meaning pore. I’m sure you can guess what sulphureus translates to!
Dario cooked this up quickly two ways:
🐔 Grilled with salt, pepper and a splash of gin.
🐔 Simmered in cream, wild garlic salt and nutmeg.
Chicken of the Woods can be cooked any way that chicken can! It has a mildly lemony flavour.
Here are some cool facts I found about Chicken of the Woods:
💚 The orange pigments, known as laetiporic acids, possess a carbon skeleton not found in any other known orange pigment from any organism. Truly one of a kind in the fungal kingdom.
🌼 This fungus is a forest pathogen that causes brown cubical heart rot, growing both as a parasite on standing tree trunks and as a saprobe, decomposing the fallen tree it has killed.
💚 Laetiporus sulphureus has a long-standing presence in Indigenous and folk knowledge, particularly among Native American groups in the eastern United States, admired as both food and medicine, with oral histories referencing its use in healing rituals and as a meat substitute during lean hunting seasons.
🌼 The fruit bodies are a rich source of glucans and polysaccharides, which activate immune-modulating mediators and provoke a hypoglycaemic effect.
💚 Extracts have shown strong inhibition of Gram-positive bacteria and high anticandidal activity against Candida albicans, suggesting potential as antimicrobial and antioxidative agents.
🌼 Strains have demonstrated antimicrobial activity against a wide spectrum of bacteria, including methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and glycopeptide-resistant strains.
