Turning Mushrooms into Medicine!
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Today I want to show you how we made medicine out of something that grows wild all over the forest. We love to forage! The idea of food growing wild that can be harvested and used right away is really interesting and exciting for our family. It seems like the more I learn about foraging, the more I think we as society are really missing the mark. Often, the most beneficial plants are very prolific, wide spread, and grow even in poor conditions. Because of that, most people call them weeds and try their best to kill them! Maybe they were designed to be resilient so that they would always be there to help us?
Since we’ve moved to Missouri, we have access to more than a few plants that we’ve heard of but never been able to use. One of those things is Turkey Tail mushrooms. These aren’t really edible. I mean, you could eat them but they are woody and from what I hear, don’t digest well. However, they have some amazing benefits that make them worth harvesting and using! They are very common in this area. They are great for immune system support and have been shown to help with a wide variety of health problems including diabetes, heart problems, inflammation, autoimmune disorders, digestion issues/leaky gut, bacterial infections such as HPV, cervical dysplasia, herpes, and shingles and cognitive issues. There are also some claims that they can be helpful to cancer patients as well but of course, there hasn’t been research done on that. They can be made into a tea, ground up and used as a powder in capsule form, or for most potency, a tincture can be made from them. That’s what I did.
Aren’t they gorgeous!
Now, before I go on, I’m going to give you the disclaimer. This is not meant to be medical advice. I am not a medical expert, or a trained herbalist. Always do your own research. We have learned from several sources including books, in person, and of course, the internet! Mary bought The Lost Book of Herbal Remedies for Christmas and I have been enjoying it quite a lot! You can look up specific plants, or specific ailments and it has pictures with a lot of information without being heavy reading. It’s a good resource for those wanting to utilize herbs to help their family stay healthy.
At the moment, the Turkey Tail mushrooms around here don’t look so great because of the cold weather, but we found quite a few of them shortly after we moved to Missouri. I made sure to get a positive ID on them before harvesting. That is always important with wild mushrooms! Luckily, Turkey Tail is fairly easy to identify and safe to use. I’m excited to hunt for more mushrooms as the weather warms up. It seems like there are a large number of edible and delicious mushrooms in this area! Once we found a good source for these beautiful mushrooms, we carefully harvested just enough for our family. We were careful not to over-harvest.
The interesting thing about mushroom and lichen is that they have some components that can only be extracted by alcohol, and some that can only be extracted by water. That means that this tincture is a little bit more involved than just soaking the herb in alcohol and then straining it off after several weeks. For these, you want to make something called a double extraction tincture. This was the first time I’ve ever done this but it was easy enough. I had purchased some 80 proof vodka just for this project so I took a glass mason jar, put all the turkey tail mushrooms in it and then covered them with the alcohol. Everclear alcohol can be used as well and may be better, but a generic Vodka is fine as well. It just needs to be 80 proof or higher. You may want to do some research and opt for higher quality vodka if you wish. It doesn’t take a lot of it to make a tincture. I put them in a dark place in the house and let them soak. They need to be disturbed a little bit occasionally. Some sources will say that it needs to be shaken every day, some just say once every now and then. I tried to shake it nearly every day but of course, there were times I went a few days without touching it. Some sources specify a length of time that they need to soak, other sources say “several weeks”. I made sure to write the date on the lid of the jar so that I could keep track of how long they were there. I let them sit for 6 weeks before taking the next step.
At this point, you strain out the solid bits just like you would do with a typical tincture or extract but don’t discard the mushrooms! Also, you’ll want to measure how much of the alcohol based tincture you end up with. I got lucky and ended up with a nice even number to work with! Write down this number and then you can put that in a jar or sealable glass container. Take the mushrooms that were strained out and add them to a small pot. Cover them with water and bring to a simmer. It is important that you end up with the right ratio of alcohol to water so that your tincture can be shelf stable. The book I’m using has a specific recipe for the amount of mushrooms, alcohol, and water to use. However, after looking at it and some other recipes, I realized that the important thing is the ratio. Because you simmer the water for some time, it is very difficult to control how much water you end up with so following the recipe exactly does not guarantee the right ratio. You need to kind of watch it and use your best judgement. The key is to have three parts alcohol to one part water. I ended up simmering it too much so I added a little bit more water before it was finished simmering. According the instructions in my book, that is acceptable. After that, I watched it carefully until I thought it was about right. I let it cool, then strained out the mushrooms again and measured the water that I had. It was slightly less than 1 part but that is fine. The beneficial compounds are still there, and there is enough alcohol that it is shelf stable. You just don’t want to end up with too much mater. If you have the right amount of water, then you can mix them together and store in a dark place. If you have too much water, you need to simmer it some more until some of the water has evaporated.
Whenever we purchase tinctures we keep the bottles and droppers so I took one that we had and filled it with the tincture. If you buy tincture bottles, make sure to get amber, dark blue, or even black glass to protect the compounds from light. You can get these easily on Amazon. I’ve been using this almost daily since then. It doesn’t taste great but most tinctures don’t! I’m also very interested in finding Reishi and Lion’s Mane mushrooms at some point to make a mixed tincture for immune and cognitive support.
Learning about herbs has been very fun for our family! We mostly just learn one thing at a time. Often it is sparked by finding a plant somewhere and then looking it up to identify it. It seems like most plants have some kind of beneficial use. Many plants have a wide variety of uses and it seems like there are multiple beneficial plants that grow in a wide variety of areas. It’s almost like God meant for us to be able to find medicine wherever we are! Nature is amazing! If you live in an area where you can find and safely identify Turkey Tail mushrooms then don’t miss out on this powerful medicine that nature provides!
