The best way to test mushrooms for poison is through positive identification. Learn to identify the distinctive characteristics of poisonous mushrooms. Any time you collect and eat wild mushrooms, you take a risk. Even the best mushroom collectors can make a mistake, so never eat anything that you are uncertain about, and do not attempt to collect and eat mushrooms without professional training. Short of extensive chemical testing in a lab setting, there are very few ways to test wild mushrooms for poison without placing yourself at risk. Instead, consider identification the safest way to "test" your mushrooms and avoid poisoning yourself or someone else.
Instructions
1. Make sure you are not dealing with an amanita--the most deadly mushroom. This variety may be bright orange or pure silken white. However, there are many variations. With your dull knife, dig up the mushroom below the surface. Where the mushroom meets the soil, there will be a noticeable ball shaped swelling.
2. Break open the stem. Any mushroom that has a hollow stem should be considered deadly poisonous. If the stem looks like a hollow straw inside, it most likely contains lethal toxins.
3. If a mushroom is small and brown, leave it in the ground. Little brown mushrooms are all considered poisonous--and should be avoided.
4. Look for stem rings, and avoid all mushrooms with these rings. The rings of mushroom tissue are about three quarters up the stem, and should be easy to spot.
5. Keep an eye out for false morels. Morel mushrooms are popular edibles that look like tall conical caps that are very wrinkly. If you find a morel after the first of summer, it is a false morel and should not be eaten. Morels only blossom in the spring, but false morels--which look like the edible kind--blossom during the summer or fall.
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