The seasonings and cooking methods that work with some mushrooms flop with others. The French prize some mushroom species that the Chinese disdain, and vice versa. The former shine sautéed in olive oil with onions and garlic, the latter taste best stir-fried or simmered in soups and seasoned with soy sauce, ginger, dark sesame oil, or other Chinese flavorings. Applying the wrong cooking traditions to such mushrooms won’t kill you, but it may taste so bad, you’ll wish you were dead. So learn which cuisine's use and don’t use the species you’re going to prepare, and apply procedures akin to the ones that have been developed over the centuries.

Marination followed by baking, broiling, or grilling is another method of tenderizing and flavoring wild mushrooms. Some nonpoisonous wild mushrooms are too woody and bitter to eat no matter how you prepare them unless you’re a termite. But other "unworthy" species such as very young Berkeley's polypore and very young dryad's saddle mushrooms (or choice species such as chicken mushrooms, past their prime but not yet maggot-ridden or rotten) become transformed into choice delicacies after such preparation. Better yet, their meaty texture, along with marinade flavorings associated with meat, create meat substitutes better than any you can buy. Refer to the information accompanying descriptions of individual mushrooms’ culinary characteristics to bring out the best of the mushroom species you’ve collected.