A Grandmother's Morel Recipe
Equipment
- wide shallow bowl
- large cast iron skillet
- thick paper bag
Ingredients
- a batch of Morels halved, cleaned & soaked
- 2 cups cornmeal
- ¼ milk
- 1 country egg
- 1 cup bacon grease
- 1 tbsp black pepper
Instructions
Preparation
- One batch of Morels, halved, cleaned & soaked "a while" or overnight in salt water with a heavy plate weighing them down in the water, then rinsed well & drained at cooking time.
- In a wide shallow bowl: mix 1 Country Egg with 1/4 c. milk
- In a thick paper bag: add 2 c. cornmeal with 1 t. black pepper mixed in.
- In a deep well-seasoned cast-iron skillet, melt bacon grease 1" deep. Get it good and hot but not smoking.
- Now dip your mushrooms in the milk and egg mixture and let them soak a little while your grease is heating.
- Pick a handful out of the bowl and shake them a little to get off some of the liquid excess then drop them in the bag of cornmeal.
- Hold your hand on the bottom of the bag so it doesn't break, and gently shake.
- Add more mushrooms, shaking gently after each addition.
Cooking
- When they are all coated very well, start laying them in a single layer in the hot skillet.
- Try to only turn them once, that way your coating stays on better.
- Don't salt, bacon grease is salty.
- When golden, drain on paper and serve.
Notes
Being lazy, I gently dump the coated morels in a colander set in a larger bowl. This lets the loose stuff fall off and if you need to touch up any bare spots your coating is right there.
My husband's family uses cracker crumbs and they made a production line out of it for extra family fun. It truly doesn't get any better than this, and if there aren't Morels in Heaven, I'm not sure I want to go there!