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Broiled Puffballs
Slice 1/2 inch thick, sprinkle lightly with flour, salt and pepper, and broil just as you would a slice of steak. Eat it piping hot with plenty of melted butter.
Beefsteak tomatoes are fine to broil in the same way and eat with real steak and/or puffball steaks.
A camp-cooking note rather than a formal recipe: it assumes you have a giant puffball in hand and a fire with a grill over it. Two things decide whether it works — what you cut into, and how much fat you give it.
- Identify before you sliceThe dish means the giant puffball, Calvatia gigantea and its relatives. Cut every specimen top to bottom before cooking: the flesh must be uniformly white and firm like a marshmallow, with no trace of a cap, stem or gill outline inside. A cross-section showing the silhouette of a mushroom-to-be is an immature Amanita, not a puffball, and some of those are deadly.
- Reject the old onesYellow, olive or brown flesh means the puffball has begun turning to spore dust. It will taste bitter and can upset the stomach. Only pure white interiors are worth cooking.
- Don't wash itPeel off the tough outer skin and wipe the flesh with a dry cloth. Puffball is a sponge; water soaked in now comes out in the pan and steams the slice instead of searing it.
- Fat, not flour, does the workA light dusting of flour helps the surface set, but a dry broiling grate will leave the slice pale and squeaky. Brush both faces with butter or oil before the heat and again as it cooks.
- TimingOver glowing coals or under a hot broiler, three to five minutes a side is enough — cook until the surface is golden and the slice has firmed and shrunk slightly. It does not need long cooking, and overdone puffball goes leathery.
- ThicknessHalf an inch is right for a slice you want to handle with a spatula. Thinner slices tear; thicker ones stay spongy in the middle.
- Tomatoes alongsideThe recipe treats beefsteak tomatoes the same way as the puffball: sliced half an inch thick, floured and seasoned, broiled for roughly the same time. Slices any thinner will fall apart on the grate.
- YieldA single large puffball yields a surprising number of steak-sized slices, enough for several people. Cook it the day you pick it; it keeps poorly.
Puffballs have long been a forager's steak substitute because of their sheer bulk: a mature giant puffball can weigh several pounds and cuts into clean white slabs with no stem, gills or trimming waste. The comparison to steak here is doing double duty — it tells the cook the method (dry heat, brief, plenty of butter) and it flatters the ingredient, which is bland on its own and depends largely on fat, salt and browning for flavor.