Truffles: The Most Expensive Food in the world

European white truffles may sell for around $3, 600 the pound, making them as well as their fellow fungi probably the most expensive food on the planet. One two-pound truffle lately sold for a lot more than $300, 000. Which has brought organized crime to the truffle trade, creating a dark market and resulting in theft of both truffles along with the highly valued truffle-sniffing canines. Add to how the influx of the actual inferior Chinese truffles -- masquerading because their European cousins -- and you have trouble with truffles. Lesley Stahl reviews.
The following is really a script of "The Priciest Food in the actual World" which broadcast on Jan. 8, 2012. Lesley Stahl may be the correspondent. Ira Rosen, maker.

Just a handful of shavings of dark truffles from France - referred to as black diamonds -- can cost countless dollars in the restaurant in London. White truffles through Italy can cost a lot more than three times just as much.

Truffles are the fancy, delicious treat - some state an aphrodisiac -- and, ounce with regard to ounce, the most expensive food on the planet. If you visit France and Italia, as we do, you learn rapidly that truffles tend to be under siege simply because they're becoming rare. They're being trafficked such as drugs, stolen through thugs and endangered by inferior imports through China.

Reporter's discover: Truffles on polenta
Scared to test cooking with truffles? Here is a wonderfully simple formula our correspondent present in the field

Lesley Stahl: He or she found one currently? Where, where, exactly where? He found 1? Oh my lord. Oh, smell which.

In the stunning Italian province associated with Perugia, truffle hunters wander the frosty hills using their trained dogs, that sniff out these types of lumpy mushrooms whenever they're ripe, individually, as they have for hundreds of years.

Stahl: Wow!

Truffles develop wild, underground, usually in the base of a good oak tree. They accustomed to use pigs, however they ate the truffles.

Olga Urbani: Very rich United states people they just see truffles up for grabs of a really elegant restaurant. They do not see this. Now you realize why they are costly, right?

Olga Urbani could be the only person on the planet who goes truffle hunting inside a full-length fur coat along with a Caribbean tan, however in the truffle company, she can virtually do what your woman wants. Her organization, Urbani, controls 70 percent from the world's truffle industry.

Urbani: When you discover the truffles, it's like to possess a miracle.

Stahl: A different one!

Other countries, such as the U. S. possess tried cultivating truffles, along with only limited achievement. It's the mixture of European red dirt and rainy summers that produce a particularly rich, earthy taste. The price these types of truffles command makes hunters become they're mining with regard to gold.

Stahl: Which means this is $1, 000? Perfect there is $1, 000...

And it's the reason why the hunters worth their dogs more than anything!

Urbani (along with farmers): He or she said, "I love my wife, however the dog... "

These truffles goes right to the actual Urbani factory, exactly where they're washed, categorized and either freezing or canned -- or flown clean to fancy dining places like New York's DB Dining area Moderne, home from the $150 hamburger suffocated with truffles. Several shavings on pasta may run you much more. In 2010 from an auction within Macau, this two-pound whitened truffle sold with regard to $330, 000, an archive amount.

Stahl: It isn't like agriculture. People don't place a seed within the ground. And they are a fungus.

Urbani: Indeed, they're underground fungi, yes.