Morel Mushrooms Delivery or Pickup

Instacart grocers offer several morel mushroom products so that you can choose the makes and varieties that you like. Use our site or the Instacart app to order morel mushrooms from the comfort of your home!

Morchella, or morel mushrooms, are distinctive-looking mushrooms with a spongy texture and an earthy flavor. They are known by many different colloquial names, such as "dryland fish" because their outline resembles the shape of a fish when they're sliced lengthwise, breaded, and fried. 

Since they only grow in the wild and are difficult to cultivate, these mushrooms are a gourmet delicacy and very expensive. Other factors, such as that they only grow in spring and are highly perishable, make it challenging to get them to the market and also contribute to their price. After Yartsa Gunbu, truffles, and Matsutake mushrooms, morel mushrooms are the most expensive mushrooms in the world.

Since morels cannot be farmed but have to be harvested from the woods, morel hunting is a popular springtime activity. Various festivals and competitions in the U.S. revolve around morel foragings, such as the century-old National Morel Mushroom Festival in Michigan and the Illinois State Morel Mushroom Hunting Championships. 

Morel mushrooms have perplexed and fascinated mycologists for centuries due to problems they've had in determining the number of species in the genus, with some recognizing as little as three species and others as many as thirty. Today, the debate continues, and the Morchella genus remains the focus of extensive studies.

Morel mushrooms can be distinguished by their cone-shaped caps that have a honeycomb-like appearance and a spongy texture. Their shapes range from oblong to bulbous, and their sizes vary from as small as a fingertip to as large as a hand. Even people who don't like mushrooms typically enjoy eating morels. These mushrooms have a nutty and earthy flavor and a meaty texture. 

There are quite a few different types of morels, such as the black morel, which are typically the first morels to sprout in early spring. They usually grow in hardwood forests where there has been a fire in the past year or so, as the ash from the burnt trees provides an alkaline soil, which they like. 

Yellow morels are easily distinguishable by their caps that look like sea sponges. They grow in just about any wooded area but they especially like ash, poplar, apple, and elm trees. Another popular type of morel is the half-free morel, which is characterized by the fact that the lower edge of its cap is not attached to the stem. They grow towards the end of the season.

Since morels are quite porous, they often contain trace amounts of soil that can be tricky to remove. You can soak them in salt water, but this will soften their texture, which some people don't like. Another and possibly the best way to clean these mushrooms is to quickly hold them under running cold water and then use a toothbrush to clean the pits. You can also slice the mushrooms before using them, which will make it far easier to remove any dirt.

However, it's best to store them as-is and wash them just before cooking, as wetting them before storage will cause them to perish faster. Storing them dry in the fridge in a paper bag will allow them to breathe and give you about a week before you must use them. The best way to prolong the lifespan of these mushrooms is to dry them in the sun, which will also get rid of any insect larvae. Once they're dried, you can store them in an airtight container for up to six months. You can easily reconstitute them by soaking them in water or milk for about 15 minutes.