Identification:
Make sure that all mushrooms you target for the table are identified correctly and safe to eat. See

Poisonous Mushrooms and Look-alikes
Edibles and Poisonous Look-alikes
Images of edibles and poisonous look-alikes

Collection:
Collect your edible mushrooms clean, i.e., cut them off from the base (leaving the base in the ground or on the tree), and put each kind into a separate wax or paper bag or into a clean basket. Do not collect mushrooms growing near a highway or in an area where herbicides might have been used, such as a golf course. Lactarius volemus and hygrophoroides: do not bruise or cut them; these species will taste much better if taken home, washed intact, and cut just before sautéing.

Cleaning:
Cut off dirt and any soft or worm-infested rotten pieces. If a mushroom, such as an oyster mushroom, has beetles, soak it in the sink, in a bowl of salted water: the beetles will abscond.

Washing? Some people say: Never! and use a soft brush to get rid of some sand. After grinding my teeth on sandy food, and picking a slug out of my salad and a morel, and pine needles out of my cooked chanterelles in Munich, I say: wash everything, from meat and potatoes to asparagus and mussels and mushrooms -- thoroughly! Put the cleaned and washed mushroom into a strainer lined with paper towel, cover them with paper towel, and refrigerate for an hour or so, to dry them sufficiently for drying or freezing or sautéing.

Drying -- this works well for boletes and morels and black trumpets but not for most other edibles:
1. You can use an electric food dryer.
2. You can do it the old-fashioned way: use a needle and heavy-duty thread to string up the sliced mushrooms and hang them in a cool airy place to dry until they are bone-dry.
3. You can use an electric plate warmer, put a cookie grid on top (so there is a space between the heated surface and the top of the cookie grid), put paper towel on the grid and the mushrooms on top of the paper towel. I can dry halved morels and sliced boletes overnight with this setup.
4. Store the dried mushrooms in clean jars, sealed tightly, and keep them in a dark cool place. They will keep for years provided you redry them once a year or so.

Reconstituting dried mushrooms: I like to reconstitute them in half water and half good dry white wine rather than just water. If they are sandy, I move them around in the liquid and wait for the sand to settle on the bottom. Then I fish out the mushrooms and save most of the liquid, discarding the last with the sand in it.

Freezing -- never uncooked:
Sauté in butter, or half butter, half oil. OR "Parboil" the mushrooms: Simmer (never boil) a small quantity of cleaned and washed mushrooms in lightly salted water for about 15 minutes, cool, put into a plastic container or bag, add some of the cooking liquid, label, date (they will keep for a few months), and freeze. This works well for boletes, chanterelles, chicken mushrooms, even sliced giant puffballs.

Pickling:
Simmer clean perfect mushrooms in a mixture of distilled white vinegar, water, salt, white pepper corns, mustard seed; taste the liquid. Store in glass jars in the refrigerator, with the liquid covering the mushrooms. They will keep for a few months.  See recipe from Elinoar Shavit for pickling mushrooms

Cooking -- there are as many attitudes as there are cooks:
1. Remember to cook all mushrooms slowly and thoroughly.
2. I believe in preparing fresh edibles that have delicate flavor for the pure appreciation of their taste and odor, without other ingredients: e.g., fresh Boletus edulis or scaber, chanterelles, truffles, Lactarius volemus or hygrophoroides: sauté the thinly sliced or finely chopped fresh mushrooms  in a heavy skillet with half extra-virgin olive oil and half butter on very low heat for about 20 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste, and a few drops of lemon juice to enhance the flavor. A bit of chopped parsley would not hurt. For chanterelles, one could add one dried apricot, finely chopped, to enhance the chanterelles' apricot odor. Serve with eggs, on pasta, on toast, or on the side, or with any fish, poultry, venison or veal dish that is delicate enough not to overpower the mushrooms.
3. Remove the pileus of slimy boletes, and the pores of very mature ones.
4. Dried boletes have too strong a flavor to serve as a side dish. Reconstitute and wash them in half water and half dry white wine, simmer until the wine evaporates, and add them to the sauce of your meat or poultry.
5. Morels: see recipe
6. Many people believe in using wild mushrooms, period. And, yes, most wild mushroom simply serve as an exotic and perhaps expensive and thus impressive ingredient, supplying texture to the palate, without adding much else -- so they can be prepared with onion, garlic, sour cream, herbs, etc. all of which will add taste to the finished dish. At the extreme end, you can prepare bitter mushrooms, such as some Lactarius, with enough onions, garlic, and hot peppers to mask the bitter taste. Some people lack the taste buds for bitterness and thus can feast on Tylopilus felleus, avoided by worms and fellow collectors and therefore perfect and plentiful.
7. Forget about Cortinarius, Strobilomyces and some other genera of the fleshy mushrooms: I know of no method to make these palatable (believe me, I tried).

Here are some mushroom pictures and ideas for preparation, from John Plischke III:
Note: We added AG and a page number, so you can easily verify description and edibility as well as references to dangerous look-alikes in the Audubon Guide.

Aborted Entoloma or abortivus -- see Entoloma abortivum

Agaricus AG 500 - 509

Armillariella mellea (Honey mushroom) AG 736: use clean young caps only, simmer briefly in water, discard the water, then finish by sautéing or whatever till thoroughly cooked; season to taste. (These mushrooms tend to be slimy; discarding the water gets rid of the slime. Use the same process for Pholiota squarrosa and squarrosoides AG 716 - 717)

Black trumpets -- see Chanterelles

Boletes AG 562 - 595

Chanterelles, Craterellus, Hydnums, Dentinums AG 387 - 398, 428 - 431

Chicken mushroom -- see Laetiporus sulphureus

Coprinus (Inky Cap) AG 596 - 602

Dryad's Saddle -- see Polyporus squamosus

Entoloma abortivum AG 641

Grifola frondosa AG 463

Hen of the woods -- see Grifola frondosa

Honey mushroom -- see Armillariella mellea

Horse mushroom -- see Agaricus arvensis

Hypomyces lactifluorum (Lobster mushroom) AG 573

Inky Caps -- see Coprinus

Lactarius corrugis, hygrophoroides, volemus AG 682,  685, 696

Laetiporus sulphureus (Chicken or sulphur mushroom) AG 468

Lepiota procera (Parasol mushroom) AG 520

Lepista nuda (Blewit) AG 750

Lobster mushroom -- see Hypomyces lactifluorum

Marasmius oreades (Fairy Ring Mushroom) AG 772

Morels AG 326

Oyster mushroom -- see Pleurotus ostreatus

Parasol mushroom -- see Lepiota procera

Pleurotus ostreatus (Oyster Mushroom) AG 793

Polyporus squamosus (Dryad's Saddle) AG 481

Puffballs AG 822 - 826

Shaggy Mane -- see Coprinus

Sparassis crispa AG 411

Some of Ursula's favorite recipe ideas -- please e-mail more --
also see the online mushroom cookbook by Louise Freedman, Wild About Mushrooms, as well as a selection of recipes on the same site.

• Aspic created with whole small young perfect mushrooms of many varieties and colors (from Ursula Hoffmann): Spend a whole season pickling select small specimens and store them in small jars in the refrigerator. At the end of the season, make an aspic with powdered gelatin, water, distilled white vinegar, salt to taste; no color so that the mushrooms will seem to float in water. In a colorless glass bowl, put a little aspic and a few mushrooms, refrigerate till set, add more aspic and more mushrooms, etc. etc.
• Giant Puffballs (from Ursula Hoffmann): If not pure white inside, discard the puffball.  Otherwise peel and slice into 1/3" slices. Dip each slice into beaten egg and flour. Fry in butter on both sides. Serve with black butter and capers. This also works well for thawed slices that were "parboiled" and kept in the freezer.
• Polyporus squamosus (from Ursula Hoffmann): The soft young parts are great when sautéed in butter. The tough and old parts make an excellent clear broth: Clean and wash tough parts and stems thoroughly, simmer them in water for an hour or two, cool, squeeze the mushroom pieces into the pot and then discard them, strain the liquid till clear and freeze it. This broth needs no seasoning except perhaps for a bit of salt; it is delicious as is.
• Morels - recipe and pictures
  

Recipes from Clay Martin, from the NEMF Foray 2003

Elinoar's Corner
 
Recipes from Chris Snyder, the 2005 NEMF Iron Chef