Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you should know, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: and there's Charles w Chuck Bryant, and we're the Gastro Boys.
Speaker 1: This is stuff you should know. That's probably a podcast
Speaker 1: the Gastro Boys. Oh Man, Chuck, it's like we share
Speaker 1: our mind sometime. Yeah, that's exactly. Have you ever eaten truffles? Uh? Sure,
Speaker 1: I had some popcorn once with truffles and parmesan cheese.
Speaker 1: I'm sure it was real truffle. I was trying to
Speaker 1: think if I had, and I think, I mean I didn't.
Speaker 1: I'm a dummy because I didn't even know if you're like, yeah,
Speaker 1: i've had truffle oil. I know what it tastes like.
Speaker 1: Spoiler alert, that's not made from real truffles, right, it
Speaker 1: would be so expensive you could never do that. So
Speaker 1: I thought I had had truffle through that. But then
Speaker 1: I think I remember at a staple house here in Atlanta.
Speaker 1: I think one of the things on their tasting menu
Speaker 1: had truffle shaved truffle on it, but like it wasn't
Speaker 1: like an extra hundred dollars to cover your pizza. It
Speaker 1: was like a the tiniest little shaving on top of
Speaker 1: amuse boush type of thing, right, which is apparently the
Speaker 1: way that you're supposed to eat it, like you're supposed
Speaker 1: to eat it with a very yeah, very simple dish
Speaker 1: where the truffle is this star and just sit there
Speaker 1: and cry, maybe take your clothes off so you can
Speaker 1: get the full experience, okay and um, and not leave
Speaker 1: your house for three days afterward, at least according to
Speaker 1: all of the people who have ever been interviewed about truffles,
Speaker 1: meaning foodies who talk about this kind of stuff and
Speaker 1: use words like celestial and life changing and things like
Speaker 1: that when it comes to talking about truffles, So that is,
Speaker 1: you know, the truffles are one of the finer things
Speaker 1: in life. And another thing that I'd never had either
Speaker 1: here at my rip oled age was caviare until a
Speaker 1: listener recently who runs the California Caviare company sent some
Speaker 1: caviare and I had gone my whole life without trying it,
Speaker 1: and I didn't know what to expect. I had no
Speaker 1: idea what it would taste like. It was awesome. I
Speaker 1: get it now, It's really good. It's like I was.
Speaker 1: I was calling it ocean butter. That's kind of what
Speaker 1: it reminded me of. It's, you know, briny, but just buttery,
Speaker 1: and like it tastes like a rich person's food. And
Speaker 1: I totally got it. After I had someone was like,
Speaker 1: this is really good and I get it now. Um.
Speaker 1: I also want to shout out a couple of people,
Speaker 1: since you're talking about the finer things and people who've
Speaker 1: sent stuff in. Um uh, all one more time, we
Speaker 1: should shout out toad over it down East day Boats
Speaker 1: dot Com for the scallops, amazing scallops. Um our buddy
Speaker 1: Addison Rex, who's um Jurassic Wines. He likes to send
Speaker 1: those once in a while and they're amazing too. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he's here. I think I've talked about him before. He
Speaker 1: has the company Wine Spies, which is a really kind
Speaker 1: of a unique take on a wine club membership. And
Speaker 1: I am constantly buying wines and adding them to my
Speaker 1: little locker and then once you get twelve bottles in
Speaker 1: your locker, you get it shipped all at once. Yeah.
Speaker 1: He's just a cool dude all around too. He's awesome.
Speaker 1: And then, lastly, do you remember we talked about in
Speaker 1: the Groundhog Day episode. Um uh, pig whistle, No, whistle pig. Yes, yes,
Speaker 1: pig whistle. I'm so dumb. Um. Whistle pig makes rye.
Speaker 1: And they heard us talking about them, or somebody told
Speaker 1: them we talked about them, and they sent us like
Speaker 1: a whole bunch of rye, like really really good rye.
Speaker 1: And I'm here to tell you whistle pig is really
Speaker 1: good stuff. I have to say after now having experienced
Speaker 1: the firsthand, I haven't been in the office and forever
Speaker 1: is there whistle pig on my desk? Yes? Two bottles? Remember,
Speaker 1: I don't remember. It was a while ago. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: still it should be still there. If not, we got problems. Yeah, boy,
Speaker 1: we need to look at the security team. But we're
Speaker 1: talking truffles and we're not talking chocolate truffles. Uh. I
Speaker 1: didn't even look this up, but I assume their name
Speaker 1: so because they kind of look like truffles, right, That's
Speaker 1: what I gathered as well. They're kind of um that
Speaker 1: coded in like a cocoa dust like spores a little bit.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they're they're bumpy and just kind of ugly.
Speaker 1: They do kind of resemble black truffles in a lot
Speaker 1: of ways. Let me ask you this, Did you read
Speaker 1: the Atlantic article? Uh? No, I did not. Actually, well
Speaker 1: it's I skimmed it and I'm gonna read it in
Speaker 1: full later. There's this writer, his name is Ryan Jacobs,
Speaker 1: who wrote an article in the Atlantic. He was he
Speaker 1: was basically on a mushroom story about Porcini mushroom foragers
Speaker 1: in Germany and people that weren't you know, sort of
Speaker 1: an not an illegal trade, but they were foraging where
Speaker 1: they shouldn't be. One of them ran over a forestry
Speaker 1: guard with a car and they got away with it.
Speaker 1: He called his friend in the UK. It was like, hey,
Speaker 1: is there a story here? And he was like, not really,
Speaker 1: he said, but if you really want a crime story,
Speaker 1: look at truffles. So this guy looked at the truffle
Speaker 1: underground truffle market and wrote this article that turned into
Speaker 1: a book called The Truffle Underground Colon, a tale of mystery, mayhem,
Speaker 1: and manipulation and the shadowy market of the world's most
Speaker 1: expensive fungus. And I kind of quickly scanned it and
Speaker 1: it is um like anything else in the world, like
Speaker 1: fine art or rare wines, anything that's sort of scarce
Speaker 1: and rare. There will be crime surrounding it, whether it's
Speaker 1: poisoning truffle dogs or blowing up someone's car, or heisting
Speaker 1: and robbing people of their truffle take, or selling fraudulent
Speaker 1: fake stuff. Selling fraudulent fake stuff I saw. One thing
Speaker 1: they would do is try and cram dirt into crevices
Speaker 1: to make them heavier. Um, trying to sell diseased like
Speaker 1: wormed out truffles and stuff like that. So, just like
Speaker 1: anything else rare and expensive, there is a dark side
Speaker 1: to it, and truffles are no exception, no note, um,
Speaker 1: and truffles are really amazing little creatures. I had no idea. Um.
Speaker 1: I mean, I figured that they were, like I think
Speaker 1: just about everybody else who never really looked into truffles
Speaker 1: that much, that they were very much like mushrooms. Um,
Speaker 1: and they are related to mushrooms only in that they
Speaker 1: are both part of the same kingdom. Fun guy. So
Speaker 1: to say like, um, truffles are related to mushrooms is
Speaker 1: basically the same thing as saying that human beings are
Speaker 1: related to starfish, because we're both part of the kingdom.
Speaker 1: That's how distantly related mushrooms and truffles are. They they
Speaker 1: they diverged at the division level, which is right under kingdom.
Speaker 1: So they're they're only related in the most basic way
Speaker 1: that something can be related, not in any kind of
Speaker 1: complex or even loose way whatsoever. Yeah, I mean, one
Speaker 1: of the biggest differences between mushrooms and truffles are mushrooms
Speaker 1: grow above ground and truffles, as most people know, grow underground,
Speaker 1: which is why you need to hunt. And it's called hunting.
Speaker 1: It's not technically it's not called foraging or collecting. It's
Speaker 1: called truffle hunting that you used to do with pigs
Speaker 1: because pigs, you know, don't need to be trained. They
Speaker 1: know where to go to get those truffles. Now they
Speaker 1: use dogs for a few reasons. One is because dogs
Speaker 1: don't want to eat the truffles and pigs do. So
Speaker 1: a pig finds that truffle and you gotta then you
Speaker 1: gotta get it away from that big like really quick.
Speaker 1: Dogs I want to eat those things. Dog just want
Speaker 1: to make master happy. And so you can kind of
Speaker 1: train a dog to do this and turn it into
Speaker 1: a game. And then you know, the other reason listed
Speaker 1: here was like you truffle hunt three months out of
Speaker 1: the year and then you got a pig for the
Speaker 1: other nine months, which I say is great, but other
Speaker 1: people are like, these are hundreds of pounds and dogs
Speaker 1: are better pets and easier to care right exactly. Um,
Speaker 1: the reason people use pigs in the first place, which
Speaker 1: seems kind of weird on its face, but truffles produce
Speaker 1: a um, a kind of volatile organic compound called andrew
Speaker 1: steen all or in drosten all um, and that is
Speaker 1: actually the same thing as a sex hormone scent that
Speaker 1: male pigs put out. So if you go truffle hunting,
Speaker 1: you want to take a female pig because they're actually
Speaker 1: rooting out a sex scent. Um. I guess they think that, uh,
Speaker 1: a male pig and his junk are buried just you know,
Speaker 1: between two and fifteen inches underground, and so they start
Speaker 1: rooting through the ground and end up finding truffles and then,
Speaker 1: like you said, try to eat it, so you have
Speaker 1: to wrestle it away from them. Sweet pigs, they are sweet, um.
Speaker 1: But yeah, so dogs make a lot more sense. So
Speaker 1: it's pretty rare from what I understand, to see somebody
Speaker 1: hunting with a pig these days, unless they're just like
Speaker 1: some pipster purist who also like butcher's the pig after
Speaker 1: the truffle hunt to you know, um, just out of
Speaker 1: respect man. And then um, there's another thing you can do.
Speaker 1: If you're like, well, I can't afford a pig, or
Speaker 1: I can't afford a dog because I've never found a
Speaker 1: truffle and sold one. I'm saving up um. You can
Speaker 1: get yourself just a little a little um. There's a
Speaker 1: kind of truffle spade called a sapin you can dig
Speaker 1: them up with. And there's actually other natural signs that
Speaker 1: you can look for um when you look for truffle um.
Speaker 1: One is the su Wilia fly, which likes to plant
Speaker 1: um itself. It's burrows just above truffles, so you see
Speaker 1: this specific kind of fly. If you learn to identify
Speaker 1: that fly, you can remind yep. And then also there's
Speaker 1: something called the brew ley like cranbrew lay, but it
Speaker 1: means burned in French. And it's a dark patch of
Speaker 1: earth um around the base of the tree where the
Speaker 1: truffles growing. And we'll talk about why they grow there
Speaker 1: in a second, but this dark patch of earth is
Speaker 1: actually basically antibiotics that um the truffle itself or the
Speaker 1: fun guy that the truffle grows from puts out two
Speaker 1: poison the ground above it, because it doesn't do very
Speaker 1: well if there's a lot of vegetation growing around it.
Speaker 1: It does really well growing around among the roots of trees.
Speaker 1: It doesn't like a very clear or it doesn't like
Speaker 1: a very thick under underbrush. It likes it to be
Speaker 1: nice and clear and airy. So it kills off any
Speaker 1: potential seeds or or um weeds or grass or anything
Speaker 1: that might be growing right above it. And then amazing,
Speaker 1: So the truffle says, I shall scorch the earth above me. Exactly, yes, exactly,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. So you see those signs, you probably have
Speaker 1: a truffle down there. So you don't need a dog
Speaker 1: or a pig. You just need to be good at that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: true hipster, the kind of the pointy chin beard. They
Speaker 1: just look for truffles by hunting for brulet. All right, well,
Speaker 1: let's take a break. That's a good setup. Our hipster
Speaker 1: is still a thing. I don't know. I haven't been
Speaker 1: out of my house in a year or so, so
Speaker 1: I can't tell if they're still around or not. Maybe
Speaker 1: they all went away during the pandemic. They were they
Speaker 1: rethought their lives, and they're gonna come out as sincere,
Speaker 1: non ironic humans. All right, which is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: We're gonna take a break and come back as that
Speaker 1: right after this. All right. So, truffles are these underground
Speaker 1: things that you eat. I don't even think we said that.
Speaker 1: We did. We talked about eating truffles at the beginning.
Speaker 1: I guess now I'm all paranoid that we're not explaining
Speaker 1: things soon enough. Why because the foodies are listening. Well,
Speaker 1: because people are like, you've waited fifteen minutes before you
Speaker 1: even said what X was. I think those people are joking.
Speaker 1: They're making fun of our paranoia. Yeah, that's how I've
Speaker 1: been taking it and thirteen years and it really doesn't matter, right, No,
Speaker 1: not at all, as long as people are still listening,
Speaker 1: we're doing okay. Truffles are these things that are very rare,
Speaker 1: They're hard to find, they're hard to get, they're very expensive,
Speaker 1: which we'll get to. Uh. And there are many different kinds.
Speaker 1: There are thousands of varieties of truffle. But if you're
Speaker 1: talking on a macro level, sort of the basics of
Speaker 1: truffles that you would hunt and eat you've got black
Speaker 1: truffles and white truffles and burgundy truffles and then some
Speaker 1: other you know, lesser known truffles. But you really want
Speaker 1: to talk about black and white truffles as the two
Speaker 1: leading truffles that you're gonna find on a plate if
Speaker 1: you have a lot of money, right, and if if
Speaker 1: they're um, you're actually specifically talking about the black French
Speaker 1: truffle um, the tuber milani sporum um from Paragore, France,
Speaker 1: southwest France. Um. And then that's so that's like the
Speaker 1: prized black truffle. The prized white truffle, which is actually
Speaker 1: even rarer and even more expensive than the Paregord truffle
Speaker 1: um is the tuber magnantum pico, the albo truffle from
Speaker 1: the Piedmont area of Italy. And then, like you said,
Speaker 1: the burgundy one, right, the black ones. If you if
Speaker 1: you look at it, it's sort of like a lumpy um.
Speaker 1: It sort of looks like has the texture of like
Speaker 1: a leechy, but it's not colorful. It's black and it's
Speaker 1: sort of lumpy, and it looks like a clump of dirt.
Speaker 1: Maybe some people say it looks like poop um. If
Speaker 1: you if you slice it open, it looks like it's
Speaker 1: very has that dense marbl ing like a really nice
Speaker 1: cut of beef might have, Yeah, like wye goo beef. Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is just amazing to see. If have you ever
Speaker 1: seen that stuff? For all the beef, for the truffle
Speaker 1: the beef. I've seen both, yes, okay, yeah, so why
Speaker 1: do you even ask? I don't know, but they do
Speaker 1: look alike that that really really dense veiny marbling. The
Speaker 1: white truffle, on the other hand, it looks sort of
Speaker 1: like a little you know, you know, the little round
Speaker 1: white potatoes. It looks like those, not like a baker potato,
Speaker 1: but it looks sort of like a white potato. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like Yukon gold, but white. Sure. I like the Yukon gold.
Speaker 1: Those are good. They're both pungent in the in The
Speaker 1: odor apparently, is really hard to describe. I've seen so
Speaker 1: many different creative, kind of fun and goofy ways to
Speaker 1: describe the aroma of a truffle um. I've heard a
Speaker 1: lot of people say they're stinky. Some people say like
Speaker 1: locker room like funky earthy, Yeah, funky and earthy. It's
Speaker 1: almost as much fun as describing what a theorem in
Speaker 1: sounds like exactly. I think burgundy truffles are a little
Speaker 1: more aromatic. But you know there, it's a very unique smell,
Speaker 1: and I think they're they're kind of stinky, supposedly. Yeah.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons they're stinky is because um truffles.
Speaker 1: So the truffle you're eating is the fruiting body, just
Speaker 1: like when you eat a mushroom, like a button mushroom.
Speaker 1: That's not the fun guy. That's the fruit that grows
Speaker 1: off of the fun guy, and it has the spores
Speaker 1: and the spores spread everywhere. Um, and and truffles have
Speaker 1: have spores as well, but they're sequestered inside of it.
Speaker 1: They're not on the outside all hanging out, letting its
Speaker 1: junk hang around like some common mushroom. Um. They keep
Speaker 1: theirs inside and until marriage, and by marriage, I mean
Speaker 1: until an animal roots them up and eats them and
Speaker 1: then poops it out somewhere else. UM. So in that sense,
Speaker 1: they're they're different from mushrooms as well, but they have
Speaker 1: that funky smell because on the outside, when they're in
Speaker 1: the dirt, they're actually colonized by all sorts of bacteria.
Speaker 1: And yeast and all sorts of weird little things that
Speaker 1: helped create the symbiotic relationship that the fun guy uh
Speaker 1: has with the tree roots that it grows within. So yeah,
Speaker 1: you mentioned trees. Uh, this is really interesting. Like I
Speaker 1: never I didn't know much about truffles at all, and
Speaker 1: my whole thought was like, why are these things so rare?
Speaker 1: Like why can't people just plant truffles like any other
Speaker 1: vegetable you might grow? And the reason why is is
Speaker 1: you can't. Really there is a process, but it's not
Speaker 1: like planting any other plant, I think, And they've been
Speaker 1: doing it for thirty five years in the United States
Speaker 1: at failure rate. So it's really hard to uh to grow.
Speaker 1: And I don't even know if that's the right word. Yeah,
Speaker 1: just kind of um yeah, because they're they're like there're
Speaker 1: a miracle of nature in a certain way. They're they're
Speaker 1: a micro riz a, which means that they're a fun
Speaker 1: guy that has a symbiotic relationship with the tree that
Speaker 1: they grow at. Right, and usually in Europe usually find
Speaker 1: them growing around the roots of um oak trees or
Speaker 1: hazel trees. Um in the US they grow at the
Speaker 1: base of pecan trees and then oak trees here to
Speaker 1: um in Oregon, they grow at the base of Douglas
Speaker 1: fir trees. So like certain species of um of truffles
Speaker 1: row like at certain the basis of certain trees, because
Speaker 1: they have these relationships where the truffle or the micro riza,
Speaker 1: the fung the fungus that gives rise to the truffle
Speaker 1: that we eat um, it has its own symbiotic relationship
Speaker 1: with a bunch of bacteria and yeast. Like I said
Speaker 1: that it colonized it and those things take nutrients from
Speaker 1: the soil, like nitrates and phosphates and convert them into
Speaker 1: nitrogen and phosphorus, which is usable for the tree. So
Speaker 1: the trees growing around all these different forms of nitrogen
Speaker 1: and fosters, but it can't do anything with it. This
Speaker 1: micro riz a, this fung gui converts it into usable
Speaker 1: form for the tree and pumps it into the tree's roots,
Speaker 1: feeds the tree nutrients and in exchange, the tree says,
Speaker 1: here has some carbohydrates, I'll trade you, and the microiza
Speaker 1: the fungi says, thank you very much. Yeah. So if
Speaker 1: you're gonna try and uh cultivate, I guess that's the
Speaker 1: word I'm looking for a truffle, is you inject a
Speaker 1: special uh these special fungi spores into this oak or
Speaker 1: this hazel nut tree when they're just little seedlings, and
Speaker 1: then you plant that tree and then cross your fingers
Speaker 1: basically that that tree is going to grow up and
Speaker 1: be healthy, because that's the first step. You gotta have
Speaker 1: a tree that works, and then that those truffles are
Speaker 1: gonna attach to those tree roots underground. And you can't
Speaker 1: you know, I imagine it's frustrating in that you can't
Speaker 1: look at your harvest and just see it growing on
Speaker 1: top of the ground. You just have to have a
Speaker 1: lot of patients because I think it takes uh like
Speaker 1: four years on average for this to work out to
Speaker 1: where you're yielding a truffle two percent of the time.
Speaker 1: In the United States, Um, we're trying here. It's just
Speaker 1: you know, apparently we have the right climate like on
Speaker 1: the West coast where you were talking about some mid
Speaker 1: Atlantic states Carolina's, Virginia's, southern Kentucky, northern Alabama, and I
Speaker 1: think New Mexico and Arizona are only where it's possible
Speaker 1: to get failure rate right. And we should say this
Speaker 1: is where they're trying to grow like paragore truffles or
Speaker 1: alba truffles, like the really highly prized one. The United
Speaker 1: States has its own indigenous truffles. There's something like four
Speaker 1: thousand or five thousand species of truffles. It was just right,
Speaker 1: their garbage truffles. It's just that there's like three species
Speaker 1: that are genuinely prized and that can go for like
Speaker 1: a thousand dollars a pound, depending on how bad or
Speaker 1: good the harvest was that year. UM. But the United
Speaker 1: States has indigenous ones, like there's the Oregon truffle, which
Speaker 1: grows to the base of Douglas first. There's Pecan truffles,
Speaker 1: which grow basically everywhere from Florida up to Nova Scotia
Speaker 1: UM west of the Rocky or east of the Rockies
Speaker 1: uh in North America. UM. And there's a couple of
Speaker 1: other kinds to from what I saw. James Beard, the
Speaker 1: revered UM chef and food guy, UH, he said that
Speaker 1: you could substitute um a Oregon truffle for a white
Speaker 1: alba truffle and it would do. Yeah, if he signed
Speaker 1: off on it. That means it's definitely okay. Well, they're
Speaker 1: not cheap either, I mean, I think these American varieties
Speaker 1: can go for like a hundred bucks a pound, which
Speaker 1: is a lot of money for a pound of something. Um,
Speaker 1: but it's not like you know, we'll get to the
Speaker 1: crazy prices at these auctions later on. But it's nothing
Speaker 1: like European mushroom around European truffles, uh, namely Italian and French.
Speaker 1: Like you said, I think Spain is the largest producer
Speaker 1: of truffles. Then you have UK, Australia, Chile, South Africa, Sweden,
Speaker 1: New Zealand, and then China apparently is uh really involved
Speaker 1: in the truffle market and kind of undercutting price wise. Right. Yes, um,
Speaker 1: I actually saw that Australia is killing it in the
Speaker 1: truffle cultivating game. Yeah, they started in and that was
Speaker 1: when they first inoculated their saplings. I also saw another
Speaker 1: way to do it, chuck, is even easier. You just
Speaker 1: take a bunch of truffle puade up, dip the oak
Speaker 1: sapling roots into this puree and just grow those injections.
Speaker 1: No injection necessary. I'm sure the oak prefers that way too.
Speaker 1: It's just a little baby, um. But they the Australia's
Speaker 1: got their first harvest and they are growing paragore truffles,
Speaker 1: which paragore truffles are less rare, maybe because of Australia
Speaker 1: than the white alba truffles from the Piedmont of Italy
Speaker 1: and Croatia. Um and the alba truffles are far more expensive.
Speaker 1: But a lot of people prefer the paragore black truffle
Speaker 1: from France. Just taste um in general that a lot
Speaker 1: of people prefer the black truffle. So that's the one
Speaker 1: that the Australians are growing, and they now rival in
Speaker 1: the harvest by weight what France every year and they're good, Yes, there,
Speaker 1: it's the same thing. It's that truffle and they're supposedly amazing. Well,
Speaker 1: I'm sure there are some people that the French would
Speaker 1: probably say, no, no, no, the tera war is not
Speaker 1: the same, of course, you know, that's exactly what they
Speaker 1: would say. In the Australians would say, forget that mate.
Speaker 1: How is that Australia truffle season is short? Depending on
Speaker 1: the truffle, I mean, they're all short seasons. But you're
Speaker 1: gonna get your white and burgundies from September to December
Speaker 1: and then winter blacks from December to March. Being kit
Speaker 1: these in February and March, and then summer black and
Speaker 1: white truffles from May to August. And the reason why
Speaker 1: we are mentioning just when truffle season comes around is
Speaker 1: because truffles, they do freeze them and they do can them,
Speaker 1: but it's not the same. You want to eat a
Speaker 1: truffle within four to six days after you take it
Speaker 1: out of the ground. Yeah. This this the truffle market
Speaker 1: is one of those rare ones where there is a
Speaker 1: lot of hype and there's a lot of like Fraser
Speaker 1: and Niles Crane types running around buying this stuff up
Speaker 1: and caring about it and talking about it to their
Speaker 1: friends and all that. But it's not in it's not
Speaker 1: a bloated market in that respect, like it is genuinely
Speaker 1: scarce in supply, and in the United States it's even
Speaker 1: scarcer because, like you said, we've got a failure rate
Speaker 1: and growing them here ourselves, and they have such a
Speaker 1: short shelf life ten days tops if you're doing everything
Speaker 1: right and storing them, um that to get them here
Speaker 1: in the US in any kind of quick way from
Speaker 1: a place where they're already scarce, where they're growing over
Speaker 1: like in say Europe, Uh, you can understand. It actually
Speaker 1: makes sense why they're so ridiculously expensive. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: I went online today because I was like, can you
Speaker 1: even buy truffles online? Not right now? I mean, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just all out of stock right. Well, No, I
Speaker 1: found some that were in a jar. Uh, and it's
Speaker 1: it's not like the whole ruffle, it's just a piece
Speaker 1: of a truffle. And the price I found for the
Speaker 1: black French one was uh on this one website was
Speaker 1: a hundred bucks for point eight ounces. Okay, so less
Speaker 1: than announced was a hundred bucks. So I saw some
Speaker 1: some they were all out of stock, but some like
Speaker 1: gourmet sites, um said they can get them and they're
Speaker 1: more like, um, like forty eight dollars announce for for
Speaker 1: like the small size, medium sized. And I looked, I
Speaker 1: was like, is that is that right? And that seemed
Speaker 1: kind of in line with it. But you also see
Speaker 1: like crazy prices all over the place, like all these
Speaker 1: things are, you know, two thousand dollars a pound, or
Speaker 1: four thousand dollars a pound, or seven thousand dollars a pound.
Speaker 1: Those typically are the white Alba truffles and the black
Speaker 1: paragorre truffles are maybe a quarter of that, but it
Speaker 1: all depends on how the harvest was that year. And
Speaker 1: apparently the harvest has been going down, which is another
Speaker 1: reason that so expensive has been going down Italy for
Speaker 1: the last century or so. Well. Climate change, that's a
Speaker 1: big one apparently. Do you remember when I said that
Speaker 1: truffles like to grow in um light airy regions. Even
Speaker 1: though they grow underground, they like the above ground to
Speaker 1: be a certain way. They're real high maintenance in that
Speaker 1: sense and controlling. Um that there's so many people have
Speaker 1: moved from the Paraguay region or the Pibon of Italy
Speaker 1: into the cities. And since like the eighteen eighties eighteen
Speaker 1: nineties when they really started harvesting these for the international market.
Speaker 1: Um that these areas have become kind of unkempt and
Speaker 1: grown over, and that, in addition to climate change is
Speaker 1: affecting the yields like dramatically. I think there was something. Um,
Speaker 1: do you have the statistics for the yields between the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century and today? Chuck, get ready for your socks
Speaker 1: to be knocked off? Are they on right now? They're on?
Speaker 1: I just put on so you could knock them off.
Speaker 1: So in eighteen ninety a total harvest and I'm not
Speaker 1: quite sure maybe this was all commercial truffles, but there
Speaker 1: was a total of tons that were harvested in eighteen
Speaker 1: nine around the world. That's still pretty scarce if you
Speaker 1: think about it. For an annual harvest globally in it
Speaker 1: was down to three hundred tons from undred tons. These
Speaker 1: days it can be anywhere from twenty five tons to
Speaker 1: a hundred and fifty tons a year. That is scarce,
Speaker 1: and that's why they cost this kind of money. It's
Speaker 1: um and like you said, it's not an artificial market. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's there's one that sold at auction, a four point
Speaker 1: one six pound white truffle for sixty dollars. Yeah. It
Speaker 1: doesn't make sense to me because it's like, well, it's
Speaker 1: just a big giant truffle that seems way more than
Speaker 1: it would be if you bought that same amount, just
Speaker 1: the same weight, but in multiple truffles. It just seemed
Speaker 1: really I don't know if somebody's like, I don't want
Speaker 1: the world's biggest truffle kind of I think it like
Speaker 1: where they bidding using like a giant foam number one hand?
Speaker 1: Is that kind of guy? Maybe he paid he paid
Speaker 1: a million dollars for that foam, the largest foam rubber
Speaker 1: number one. It's right use. One of the things I
Speaker 1: was seeing also about climate change affecting truffles is that
Speaker 1: so truffles like it we they like it somewhat cool,
Speaker 1: and they like it kempt, and like I said, the
Speaker 1: regions that they normally grow are getting unkempt, and they're
Speaker 1: getting hotter, and they're getting drier, like climate change is
Speaker 1: bringing more extreme weather like droughts kind of thing, and
Speaker 1: they're also bringing hotter weather weather two regions like the
Speaker 1: southwest of France or the Piedmont of Spain or Italy.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, um that where where it didn't used to
Speaker 1: be that hot back in like say, when you're getting
Speaker 1: like tons annually. So all of these combined on top
Speaker 1: of the idea that even under the best of circumstances,
Speaker 1: the normal life cycle for a particular micro riz, a
Speaker 1: that produces truffles that you you want, like an alba
Speaker 1: or paragore, maybe produces truffles for fifteen to thirty years
Speaker 1: in the wild, and then after that it says good
Speaker 1: night forever. And the French and the Spanish and a
Speaker 1: lot of the traditionalists in Europe say, well, then that's
Speaker 1: that we just need to move on and find another tree. Well,
Speaker 1: they're finding that they're they're not growing under other trees,
Speaker 1: and so there's kind of this pushed to start inoculating
Speaker 1: trees there in Spain and in the southwest of France,
Speaker 1: and Europe has long been pushing back on the idea
Speaker 1: of kind of introducing man's hand to this human kind's hand,
Speaker 1: I should say, and I think they're starting to kind
Speaker 1: of rethink that kind of thing these days. Should we
Speaker 1: take another break? Sure? All right, we'll take another break
Speaker 1: and we'll talk a little bit more about the flavor
Speaker 1: in the trade and what these things are even used for.
Speaker 1: Right after this. Alright, so the truffle trade, like we said,
Speaker 1: check out that Atlantic article. I'm gonna read it closer
Speaker 1: after this because it's just really interesting. Uh, there is
Speaker 1: a dark side of course to this trade. Um. They're
Speaker 1: people poison each other's dogs. It's awful. Um. The guy
Speaker 1: who wrote that article said that he, you know, anecdotally,
Speaker 1: talked to different veterinarians, said that they've got two or
Speaker 1: three a week dogs being poisoned, and there were a
Speaker 1: lot of vets in the area that we're saying the
Speaker 1: same thing. So that's horrific on its surface. Um slashing
Speaker 1: tires of course, robberies, heists. Uh. Fake truffle while not fake,
Speaker 1: but just inflated truffles with the weight like we were
Speaker 1: talking about. And you might like hear all this and
Speaker 1: just be like why, Like, I know they're rare, but
Speaker 1: is this caviare to chuck? Is it this thing that
Speaker 1: is so delicious that you must have it? And you know,
Speaker 1: I don't know because I've never had it. I do
Speaker 1: like the taste of truffle oil, and this this fake truffle.
Speaker 1: I think in the seventies, uh, an Italian chemist isolated
Speaker 1: one of the flavor producing compounds and recreated it, so
Speaker 1: we do have the asynthetic truffley taste. But apparently that's
Speaker 1: like they isolated one of these compounds that is not
Speaker 1: what a real truffle tastes like. Is what people say
Speaker 1: that have had real trouffles. No, it's like so complicated
Speaker 1: and complex because again some at least some of the
Speaker 1: smells and tastes that are coming off of the truffle
Speaker 1: you're eating are coming from the colonizing bacteria and yeasts
Speaker 1: that are growing all over it too, and as they're
Speaker 1: exposed to air, they start to kind of eye off
Speaker 1: and that's where the smell in the odor goes, at
Speaker 1: least in part. So, to to just kind of nail
Speaker 1: one particular flavor compound and say that's truffle flavor. I
Speaker 1: think it's two four die thiah pentane. Yeah. Um, just
Speaker 1: to say that that's thank you, Just to say that
Speaker 1: that's truffle flavor not only misses all of the nuance
Speaker 1: of truffles, apparently I'm speaking from just somebody who's only
Speaker 1: been exposed to two for die thiah pentane pretty much. Um.
Speaker 1: But then also if you eat enough of that, if
Speaker 1: you eat too much truffle popcorn with parmesan shavings at
Speaker 1: the nice movie theater in town, um, you are going
Speaker 1: to kind of, um desensitize yourself to actual truffles. So
Speaker 1: if you actually say I'm gonna get some truffles this
Speaker 1: season and try it, uh, it might be lost on
Speaker 1: you because you're just used to that kind of the
Speaker 1: clunkiest version of the truffle flavor. I'm taking that risk,
Speaker 1: I guess. I mean it is good like truffle. Truffle
Speaker 1: will flavor at anything is pretty great. I like it it. Um.
Speaker 1: It is even hard to describe with just that one compound.
Speaker 1: It's hard to kind of you know, it's sort of
Speaker 1: a new mommy richness. Uh it is earthy. I like
Speaker 1: the flavor, and I'm not going to be, you know,
Speaker 1: eating many real truffles in my life if any. So,
Speaker 1: I'm not really worried about ruining my my trouble ballot.
Speaker 1: Uh So, I'm happy to have that stuff. It's fine,
Speaker 1: sure for this guy. It's truffles for the rest of us,
Speaker 1: that's right. So if you do come upon some truffles
Speaker 1: that you want to um that, if you just say, Okay,
Speaker 1: I've got a hundred bucks, I'm gonna spend on truffles,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna do it. Um. Uncle Joe Biden sent
Speaker 1: me a check and I'm gonna use a hundred dollars
Speaker 1: of it on truffles. I'm gonna healthy, I'm gonna stimulate
Speaker 1: the economy and trickle down. Um. So what would you do, Chuck,
Speaker 1: What's what's your first move? Well, you want them within
Speaker 1: five to six days after they've been harvested. You want
Speaker 1: to keep them in a closed container, wrapped in a
Speaker 1: paper towel, because you really want to keep them dry.
Speaker 1: Wet truffle is no good, despite the fact that they
Speaker 1: love wetness to grow. You want to keep that thing
Speaker 1: dry if you want to get a little more bang
Speaker 1: for your buck and not actually use any of the truffle,
Speaker 1: but in part that flavor. You want to douse it
Speaker 1: in two four, store it in a in a clothes
Speaker 1: like glass tupperware. It's not tupperware if it's glass, but
Speaker 1: you know what I mean, glass dish with some cheese,
Speaker 1: open cheese, or even eggs that have not you know,
Speaker 1: just eggs in their shell, and it will actually somehow
Speaker 1: by way of magic. The cheese makes sense, but it
Speaker 1: will actually penetrate that egg and flavor that egg somehow
Speaker 1: in that nuts that is nuts. That's how potent those
Speaker 1: things smell. That they actually make it through eggs shells
Speaker 1: inside and then just um inculcates them. But like you said,
Speaker 1: you want to keep it simple. I mean, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I'd go so far as to say bland,
Speaker 1: but they say like shaving truffle on a very simple
Speaker 1: risotto dish or just plain parmesan scrambled eggs, plain parmesan
Speaker 1: Pasta pizza is a big one, like a you know,
Speaker 1: just sort of a cheese pizza, like a really nice one.
Speaker 1: Would fire pizza with shaved truffle on top is supposed
Speaker 1: to be great. Yeah, that's the thing. You don't have
Speaker 1: to do anything with it. You just shave it raw.
Speaker 1: You don't have to cook it. It's not like some
Speaker 1: hard thing to to use. You just you shave it
Speaker 1: onto something and let it shine. Apparently the ancient Romans
Speaker 1: used to cook it and eat it with honey, but
Speaker 1: they also thought that truffles were created when lightning struck
Speaker 1: damp earth, So don't put a lot of stock into
Speaker 1: their thoughts, Like, just use it, you know, shaved fresh
Speaker 1: truffles onto a very nice dish. Yeah, and you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to go to a nice steakhouse and
Speaker 1: get truffle butter on your steak, it's not gonna be
Speaker 1: real truffle. But who cares? I no, no, I could
Speaker 1: see Kevin Rath when using real truffle. Do you think?
Speaker 1: How about this? If you are getting that steak and
Speaker 1: it's outside of truffle season, it's not real truffle. But
Speaker 1: if you know when truffle season is right. So say
Speaker 1: you're going between um November and the end of March
Speaker 1: to a really nice steakhouse, it's possible that they are
Speaker 1: using real truffles that night. Yeah, and it's shaved super
Speaker 1: super thin, like when you see it on a on
Speaker 1: a food item. It's you know they have these razor
Speaker 1: sharp well I guess they're razors. And it always reminds
Speaker 1: me of of Good Fellas. I cannot think of of
Speaker 1: shaving something with a razor blade and not think of
Speaker 1: the scene and Good Fellas in prison where Polly had
Speaker 1: his technique where he would shave it so thin it
Speaker 1: would it would what would you say? It would liquefy
Speaker 1: in the fan. It's so great, man. I love that
Speaker 1: part when they were in prison and just like living
Speaker 1: high on the hog yep um have Do you ever
Speaker 1: eat roasted garlic like on toast? Not on toast, but
Speaker 1: a roast gar like plenty? Sure, but yeah, just like
Speaker 1: spread it on toast? About that? Just take a whole bulb,
Speaker 1: spread it on some toast and thank me later. It's
Speaker 1: really good for your guts. You know what I've been
Speaker 1: doing lately is the I don't know why I didn't
Speaker 1: know it existed. Everything bagel is my favorite bagel, and
Speaker 1: they make everything bagel shakers Trader Joe's. Uh no, but
Speaker 1: I'm sure that's good too, but just at a regular store.
Speaker 1: And uh so I just keep that. I put that
Speaker 1: on a lot of stuff, like, uh, just avocado toast
Speaker 1: with that that stuff. My buddy Eddie trened me onto
Speaker 1: that was shaking that stuff on some avocado toast. Mm hmm.
Speaker 1: I know. Yeah. You can put it on just chunks
Speaker 1: of avocado and it sounds it tastes very good too.
Speaker 1: You can put it on anything. Let's be honest. Do
Speaker 1: you can put it on an old shoe? What else
Speaker 1: you got? I got nothing else. That's it I want
Speaker 1: to eat. I want to eat a real truffle. Uh.
Speaker 1: If you eat a real truffle, it'll probably taste so
Speaker 1: good it'll make you do a truffle shuffle. All right,
Speaker 1: very nice? Uh Well, since I said truffle shuffle, everybody,
Speaker 1: I think it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call
Speaker 1: this Titanic role play. Did you see this one? No?
Speaker 1: This is really neat and this is not kicky. No, No,
Speaker 1: I mean it didn't even cross my mind. Just the
Speaker 1: just on its face, it's hilarious. Okay, hey guys, my
Speaker 1: name is Anica and I've been listening since about really
Speaker 1: love learning from you guys and listening to your episodes. Uh.
Speaker 1: Last year, during beginning of quarantine, many of my family members,
Speaker 1: including myself. We're quarantining at my mom's house and is
Speaker 1: you and everyone else knows, we hit a point in
Speaker 1: our house where everyone got a little loopy. I'm not
Speaker 1: really sure how it got started, but we decided to
Speaker 1: have a Titanic party on the anniversary of the ship sinking.
Speaker 1: Everyone was assigned a real passenger crew member on the
Speaker 1: Titanic and had to act out the part for the evening,
Speaker 1: including dressing up. Even dogs got parts two. By the way,
Speaker 1: send in pictures of them dressed up with their animals
Speaker 1: dressed up, and it was pretty great. We had a
Speaker 1: meal based off one of the menus recovered from the ship,
Speaker 1: and we had to eat in certain areas according to
Speaker 1: our class. Wow, this is so great. After dinner, we
Speaker 1: read a short memorial and with my friends, uh, my
Speaker 1: friend playing Nearer my God to Thee on the cello,
Speaker 1: took a and this was all in video. It's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Took a five minute plunge in the freezing pool to
Speaker 1: commemorate the sinking. Uh. Then to finish out the night,
Speaker 1: we round we found out if our passenger crew member
Speaker 1: had lived or died, and then watched the movie from
Speaker 1: I want to go to this party? Man? Yeah, how
Speaker 1: much fun is that? It's pretty cool? Your episode was
Speaker 1: more than perfect because we decided to make this an
Speaker 1: annual party. Oh, there you go, and they held it
Speaker 1: a few weekends ago. Well, Anka, send me the invite.
Speaker 1: I don't know where you live, but your family looks
Speaker 1: awesome and I want to go to that thing. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: I can't find that listener mail anywhere. I want to
Speaker 1: see these pictures, but right I'll try and find it.
Speaker 1: Incent it to you. Her name was Anica. Maybe you
Speaker 1: could search that way, Anica. That was an amazing listener
Speaker 1: mail and we appreciate it. Um, that does sound like
Speaker 1: a lot of fun. We need to go on the
Speaker 1: cowboy weekend with the black cowboy who wrote in and
Speaker 1: then go to the Titanic role play party, and then
Speaker 1: in between we'll like maybe cross the country and marry
Speaker 1: a few couples officiate at some weddings. That sounds great.
Speaker 1: I just found the email and sent it to you,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking at picture. That dog dressed up gets
Speaker 1: me every time. It's going to be the summer of
Speaker 1: stuff you should not chuck it. I still don't have
Speaker 1: a chuck. I don't know what's going on. Oh there
Speaker 1: it is. Uh. Do you have anything else to talk
Speaker 1: about while I look at these? No, let's just sign off. Okay, Um, well,
Speaker 1: since we're signing off, everybody, if you want to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us, you can send us an email
Speaker 1: like Anka did, Wrap it up, spank it on the bottom,
Speaker 1: and send it off to stuff pot cast at I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio doc Stuff you Should Know is a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows. H