Cooking With Truffles and Truffle Products

FOOD · GLOBAL

Cooking With Truffles and Truffle Products

Fresh truffle seasons, why oil tastes the way it does, storage and using them

Truffle is one of the most misrepresented ingredients in food retail, and understanding the difference between the fresh product and flavoured goods explains a great deal.

Fresh truffle is seasonal

White truffle from Italy appears in autumn and early winter and is the most expensive. Black winter truffle runs through winter. Summer truffle is milder and considerably cheaper.

Fresh truffle has a short life — around a week — and loses aroma daily from the moment it is lifted.

Most truffle oil contains no truffle

The characteristic aroma in the majority of truffle oil comes from a synthesised compound, usually 2,4-dithiapentane, in a neutral oil. It is not a fraud when labelled accurately and it is not truffle.

That is why truffle oil tastes intense and one-dimensional compared with the real thing. Check the ingredients for actual truffle content.

Heat destroys the aroma

The volatile compounds that make truffle worth eating are driven off by cooking. Fresh truffle is shaved raw over a finished dish at the table, not cooked into it.

Warm, fatty, mild dishes carry it best — eggs, pasta with butter, risotto, potato. Anything strongly flavoured buries it.

Storing fresh truffle

Wrapped in kitchen paper in a sealed container in the fridge, with the paper changed daily. Do not store it in rice, which draws out moisture and aroma.

Storing it with eggs in their shells transfers aroma into the eggs, which is a genuinely worthwhile trick.

Preserved products

Truffle butter, salt, honey and tapenade vary from good to almost entirely synthetic. Read the ingredients list and the percentage of truffle.

Serving fresh truffle

Clean it with a soft brush and a barely damp cloth immediately before use rather than in advance. Use a proper truffle slicer or the finest setting on a mandoline, and shave at the table.

A little goes further than people expect, and the aroma builds as it warms on the plate.

Buying

Fresh truffle is sold by weight and prices move weekly with the season. Buy from a supplier who can name the species and tell you the date it was lifted.

Truffle season by type

Buying in season is the only way to get fresh truffle at a reasonable price, and out of season what is sold is either preserved or a different species. Ask which.

Frozen truffle loses its texture and keeps some of the aroma, which suits cooking into a sauce rather than shaving raw over a dish.

Buying

Buy fresh truffle by weight from a supplier who can tell you the species and the date it was lifted.

WHERE TO BUY

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