Herkkutatti: The Finnish Porcini I Learned to Recognize

This has been the most generous year in the forest since I started foraging for mushrooms in Finland. Lots of rain, lots of mushrooms, and among them, one in particular that still excites me every time I find it.

A Mushroom I Knew Since Childhood

I grew up with Italian roots. My father was Italian, from Veneto, in northern Italy, and he was one of those good Italians who also cooked well. One of the dishes most etched into my memory, almost in my DNA, is his risotto ai funghi porcini. And porcini mushroom was bought dried, in small bags, and used carefully, because it's expensive and every gram counts.

I knew that flavor from a very young age, long before I knew that one day I'd live in a country where the same mushroom grows wild, under the pines, free for anyone who knows how to look.

So when I started learning about mushroom foraging here, one question felt inevitable: does porcini exist in Finnish forests?

The answer was yes. And it came with a name that struck me, right away, as a small gift.

Herkkutatti: A Name That Already Says It All

Probably Finns never think twice about the name herkkutatti, it's just what it's called. But when learning Finnish, I did what I do with every new word: I try to find a meaning. Herkku, tatti, treat, mushroom. A treat!! Super super herkku se on! (it's a real, real treat!) built right into the name. The name already contains the verdict, and it matched exactly with the taste!

A Bun Hiding in the Grass

Learning to identify it was just the beginning. What came next was the slow part: learning to actually find it. And it's hard. On a good day, if I'm lucky, I find one, two, three, because they grow fast and spoil just as fast. It's not only us who love them: the worms do too, so finding one in good enough shape to eat is no easy task.

It also blends into the ground almost perfectly. Many times I think it looks like a bread roll coming out of the oven, because of that matte brown color, like bread that, once you learn to recognize it, doesn't slip past you as easily anymore.

The First Basket, and a Lesson I Didn't Expect

This season, for the first time, a full basket of herkkutatti arrived. And with it came a discovery I wasn't expecting.

When I find one in perfect condition, what I love most is simply roasting it in butter, it has a flavor that recalls a bit of bacon, something smoky and deep that's surprising coming from a mushroom. The rest I dry, because I discovered, almost by accident, that the risotto flavor I remembered from childhood doesn't come from the fresh mushroom, but from the dried one.

The first time I made risotto ai funghi with freshly picked herkkutatti, I was in for a surprise: it tasted like nothing. It was unsettling, because in my memory that flavor was intense, unmistakable. I later understood that drying isn't just a way to preserve the mushroom, it's what concentrates and transforms its flavor into what we recognize as porcini. The process doesn't take anything away, it gives it what it was missing.

I keep learning from the forest every season. But few things have given me as much curiosity as this mushroom I grew up eating, on another continent, and now search for myself, crouched down, in the grass of Finnish forests. I have real love for this mushroom.

Giuliana, The founder of Tarinapala