Today there are over 250,000 species of mushrooms on earth. Many are used in cooking and are quite affordable. However, there are those whose cost per gram is several thousand euros. These include black and white truffles, the most expensive mushrooms in the world.
Features and value of a truffle
Truffle is a genus of marsupial mushrooms with a fleshy fruiting body that grows underground and looks a bit like a potato tuber. Most of them are not edible and smell like rotten onions or garlic. But black and white truffles have a pleasant, pronounced aroma and taste of mushrooms. These types of truffles are considered real delicacies.
To preserve their unique taste and aroma, truffles are practically not cooked. They are added to dishes at the very end, and salt and olive oil are considered the best additional spices to them.
In addition to its very special aroma and taste, the value of a truffle lies in the fact that it is incredibly difficult to grow. In nature, these mushrooms grow between the roots of oak, beech, hazel and have the ability to reproduce only in one case - when they are fed by animals that find truffles due to their pronounced smell. These very capricious mushrooms also need a temperate climate and a special soil condition.
Every year the number of these delicious mushrooms decreases. If about a century ago, France, the main supplier of black truffles, annually sent 1000 tons of such mushrooms to the market, today it is only 50 tons. Perhaps the decrease in the number of truffles is due to their excessive collection, climate change or environmental conditions.
All this raises the price of truffles every year and today it reaches several thousand dollars per kilogram of small mushrooms. As a rule, real French or Italian black and white truffles are sold in grams in specialty stores or at food festivals, but especially large specimens are put up for auction and sold to real gourmets for fabulous money.
Truffle production
Since the mid-19th century, people have been trying to learn how to breed black and white truffles. However, today all production of these most expensive mushrooms in the world is reduced to providing them with maximum conditions for growth and reproduction. This is a very costly affair as growing a small number of truffles requires planting and growing many oak or beech trees. And this will not guarantee that truffles will grow next to them. This is why truffle farms in France are often owned by the same families and passed down from generation to generation.
Today the black truffle is grown in France, the white one in the north of Italy.
Since truffles grow underground, they are difficult to spot. To do this, producers use special dogs trained to search for the smell of these mushrooms. Truffles are harvested from October to December. Moreover, it is believed that the earlier the mushroom is discovered, the greater its value and, accordingly, the cost.
