Tonight my friend Floretta posted a picture of her puffball. This sparked an idea to share more about the Puffball. She allowed me to use her picture.
When locating a puffball in the bush, open field or even on your lawn, you first want to ensure the area that you found it has not been sprayed with pesticides. Then you want to make sure your puff ball is the edible kind. That is easy to determine by slicing it. A fresh puff ball is going to be white with a pure white spongy flesh as seen in Floretta's picture below. No gills, no spikes or no pores should appear as you may have the deadly Amanitas instead. The poisonous Amanitas is like a white sack that appears to have a mushroom growing inside, and that is why you cut them open to reveal the type you have, edible or poisonous. An edible Puffball's flesh inside starts to yellow as the it matures, and then is no longer edible.
A perfect puffball!
Preparing puffballs to eat
Remember, ensure a nice white colour, for freshness, Check first for worms, little tunnels and cut that part & any discoloured part away, DO NOT soak or rinse in water. Peel away the outer skin, as this can cause digestive upset. Puffballs can be sautéed, broiled, or the classic way is breaded and fried with a flour/egg/breadcrumb method. The flour can be gluten-free or cornmeal flour as well, and can be seasoned with sea salt & pepper. Ensure a nice caramelized or golden brown colour.
You can also freeze it, grill and freeze, or dehydrate to make a puffball flour that will be great in many dishes, soups and bread. Simply slice thin and place on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper, oven on lowest setting and dry overnight or place in a dehyrdrator!
The coolest way is to make a puff ball pizza, simply use your grilled, breaded slices in place of the pizza dough. There are many other great ways to serve puffballs! With a little google search, you will find many recipes.
Here is a link to a PDF explaining the many uses of Puffballs by Indigenous North American peoples.
https://ethnobiology.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/JoE/3-1/Burk1983.pdf