Truffles and the doggies who find them for us

this video is sponsored by audible hey what even are truffles and why are people so obsessed with them and to be clear i'm talking about the edible fungus that's referred to as a truffle not the chocolate that's named after the fungus people are obsessed with these and i mean for reference i paid about 35 for each of these little burgundy truffles and this is not even a very highly prized species the burgundy truffles are just what's in season right now in the fall it's what i could get a true black truffle or paragord is probably the most popular species that's a winter truffle and it's got a lot stronger flavor for me to get a nice black paragord truffle about this size from the same place online it would cost about sixty dollars for just a little one like that to get a white truffle about this size would cost about 250 dollars and that's when you can even get them look i'm not here to convince you these little funguses are definitely worth it i'm just here to explain what the deal is why truffles are incredibly hard to cultivate and why people go mad for them also why you need adorable little doggies to find them for you find it schmuzzles the dog's q word to go find truffles is chuzzles truffles are from a genus of fungal species known as tuber that grow around the base of trees healthy living trees this is really different from other mushrooms we eat that grow through dead wood and leaves and such those are scavengers of the forest truffles don't eat dead trees instead they live with trees that's why you can't grow them in big blocks of sawdust or compost inside like you can with other mushrooms truffles are a unique type of fungus they're mycorrhizal fungi so they obtain sugars from the roots of the host tree but then they also collect nutrients from the soil and provide those to the host tree so it's a symbiotic relationship ella reeves and her colleague katie learn there are research assistants who help look after this truffle orchard it's run by north carolina state university it's an experimental farm where they're trying to figure out how to grow these things in the appalachian mountains of north america where they are not native at least not this particular species the aforementioned black truffle tuber melanosperm they are native to regions in europe like france where there is a heavy limestone in the soil so very high ph already think about the rock of gibraltar that's a giant hunk of limestone right here on this eu map showing soil ph warm colors are high ph spain southern france northern italy a little into the balkans this is where your classic black truffles grow wild and are farmed with relative ease they like to grow around hardwoods these are filbert hazelnut trees in the north carolina orchard and here's how you farm truffles on them trees are actually inoculated in the nursery with the tuber melanosporum which is the truffle producing fungus and once they're inoculated and there's a pretty heavy population inside the roots they're planted in an orchard formation like you can see around and they need a highly limed soil so a very high ph to grow so that they can out compete the native fungi once down there the white mycelium of the fungus fans out and effectively extends the root network of the trees it sucks up water and mineral nutrients and it passes those on to the roots in exchange for carbs carbs that the trees photosynthesize with their leaves eventually once tree and fungus are both big and strong enough the fungus will be ready to reproduce and it will send up a fruiting body this is the part of basically all edible funguses that we actually eat the fruiting body it's this temporary reproductive projection whose job is to grow up and then send out the spores cast off the spores so they will go far and wide and make new funguses elsewhere cut it open and you can see the so-called marbling of this truffle and you can see the payload of brown spores ready to pop out from the time you plant the inoculated tree to the time you get edible fruiting bodies is an agonizingly long weight those hazelnut trees are popular for this in part because they get you truffles relatively quickly and by quick i mean you can expect to get your first little crop of edible fruiting bodies about seven years after you have planted your hazelnut trees and that's assuming that everything went right in the meantime the lab techs here at the north carolina state mountain research station can help you make sure that it's going right you can bring a soil sample or some roots from your trees and ella reeves and colleagues will try to make sure you've got the right fungus growing in there this might include isolating some dna and having it sequenced that's a nucleotide sequence she's looking out there jeans in this case this wasn't even a tuber species this was a contaminant it was it's very osprella well that's bad news and truffle farmers get a lot of bad news here's a super sad story in 1999 a guy named tom michaels planted some inoculated hazelnut trees pretty close to where i live here in east tennessee michaels is a phd plant pathologist he did his dissertation research on truffles he's already had a long career growing button mushrooms and when he finally tried truffle farming he naturally did just about everything right the climate and the geology around here is pretty close to those traditional truffle growing regions in europe so michael's was definitely doing this in the right spot and after nearly a decade of waiting he suddenly started getting bumper crop after bumper crop of real black paragord truffles right here in east tennessee tom michaels was then and arguably still is the only person to ever produce true black truffles on anything close to a major commercial scale here in the americas the new york times wrote a big feature about him he was a celebrity among american celebrity chefs and then his trees got this thing called eastern filbert blight and he had to cut almost all of them down same thing happened here at the experimental orchard in north carolina eastern filbert blight they had to cut all of these down but they are growing back could there be black diamonds down there well that's what lois martin and her truffle dog manza are here to find out we found up to 40 some truffles in this orchard two years ago last year we only found two and so we don't know what will what will happen how stressed the trees were the second planting would that's much larger denser that we have not found anything in yet and it's it's due manza is a legato roman yolo a breed used in italy to sniff out truffles manza and her human lois are among the very few professional truffle hunting teams available for hire in this hemisphere a well-trained dog like this should be able to sniff out any truffles down there the truffles want to be found the pungent aroma for which we prize them has literal pheromones in it the whole point is to attract animals who will come and dig up the fruiting bodies and thus distribute the spores far and wide even the inferior human nose can detect a really ripe truffle from across the room but doggies are way better at it especially for an early season check like this is you train them to associate the odor with a treat with a reward for centuries in europe they used pigs to sniff out truffles problem was the pigs would eat the truffles whereas dogs if they're well trained they will not eat a truffle there are some romantic ideas that if you feed the dogs some truffle that they'll they'll fi they'll find the truffles but the problem is then they may start eating the ones that are restaurant quality grade that you would prefer selling intact but manza would never do anything like that no would you you're a good doggy monster and hey has she got something over there we have something it would be a really big deal if she's got something especially this early in the season it would mean this blighted orchard is back it would mean there's hope for all the wannabe truffle farmers around here who've sunk untold time and money into a dream that so far only one guy tom michaels has been able to realize only to have it snatched away from him a few years later it would be a big deal if there's a truffle on those roots uh no ma'am forget it i feel yamanza i mean these do kind of look like surely there are people in this hemisphere who've managed to farm truffles successfully in northern california and the pacific northwest yeah there are people doing it but it's on a pretty small scale and the reason american chefs want a local product is these are only super fragrant for a short while they are casting off their volatile organic compounds into the wind like confetti by the time you get them from europe they might be only really good for a couple more days and the smell is what it's all about these hardly taste like anything truffles are all about those very powerful but ephemeral aromas i've heard it described as animal musk before um it's it's really like a it's like a a woodsy earthy earthy i think that's the word yeah well whatever it is the most common way of getting real truffle into food is to shave it paper thin onto something hot and steamy that's too thick the slices i'm doing better over here on the risotto you shave the raw fungus on top there's just enough heat and moisture there to unlock some more of the aromas if you cook them much more than that you drive most of the aromas away probably the most common way of getting truffle flavor into food is not with truffles but with infusions truffle oil and most of the stuff that's on the market is fake not made with actual truffles though they have put in the bioidentical compounds in here to make it smell of truffle and i don't know people get snobby about this stuff but i think it's real good and you generally don't cook it you just use it as a raw finishing oil on food the traditional way they make truffle oil is to take any leftover crumbles or otherwise unsuitable fragments of truffle and you just throw them into some oil of course fats are tremendously good at absorbing and trapping and then carrying aromas that's actually what lois martin is doing in these little baggies of hers she's got a block of butter in there to grab the smells cast off by this little guy that manza found on a different hunt notice it's brown and smooth not rough and black that is not a paragord truffle so we're smelling what we the tuber leoni eye which is also known as the pecan truffle and it's a native truffle to the united states we find it frequently in orchards even if they're planted with the european varieties at least that's what she thinks it is they're still waiting on genetic test results but this lab full of truffle nerds is pretty jazzed to smell a native truffle one that actually wants to grow in the americas and i would describe it as an early summer evening breeze so the obvious question is why bother growing paragords here in the americas if we have these native ones here that smell so amazing why not just grow those and eat those well the local ones are not as highly prized why is that the case well maybe it's because they simply aren't the european delicacy that everybody already knows and loves maybe it's because they aren't as expensive as the european ones i'm hardly expert enough to give you an opinion on that but i will tell you this i have once in my life had shavings of a white truffle that's the ultra expensive king of all truffle species i'm pretty sure the specimen that i'd been served was good and fresh and well prepared and i thought it was a huge letdown to me it just tasted like a weaker black truffle and google it like i'm not the only person to have that opinion though lots of people find nicer ways of saying it they say oh the white truffle is very delicate well if you want less truffle flavor then just use less truffle don't buy a more expensive truffle so that you can use more of it that doesn't make any sense but anyways that's what i personally think the whole white truffle thing is about i think people like them because they are rare and expensive they are rare and expensive because they are rare and expensive and now i'm sure you can head down to the comments and read all about why i'm wrong about that but if you really want to read up on truffles and the crazy people who try to grow them you gotta check out this new book by the food writer rowan jacobson it's called truffle hound manza and her human lois martin are featured in this chapter if you don't have time to read an awesome general audience book about truffles well might i suggest listening to it on audible the sponsor of this video how does jacobson describe the scent of truffles it was hardly a food scent at all it was more like catching a glimpse of a satire prancing across the dining room floor while playing its flute and flashing its hindquarters at you well something that's much easier to understand is that audible is a phenomenal deal your membership gets you access to thousands of audio books one premium title a month which is generally the big new releases download one of those a month and keep it forever and you get unlimited access to the plus catalog which is everything else here older books audible original programs ad-free versions of podcasts the holidays are almost upon us and i don't know about you but pretty soon i'm going to be driving all around creation visiting family and such and i really look forward to listening to that truffle book as i'm driving for a limited time you can give yourself the holiday gift of audible for only 7.95 a month that's a savings of 46 percent on your first four months of audible go to audible.com adam regucia that link is in the description or text adam ragusia to 500 500 to get that deal thank you audible and thank you truffle doggies and the humans who train them you want to make a dog happy give them an important job to do go find the money manza find the money

Channel: Adam Ragusea

Views: 596,048

Keywords:

Id: qX9Jpg3b90M

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 15 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/HaverchuckBill]

I didn’t relate to the content much because I’ve never had truffles. I like truffle oil and butter though.

It was interesting that truffle oil usually just has the synthetic compounds and not actual truffles.

[u/The-Bigger-Fish]

Truffles are one of those things I keep trying at restaurants hoping that his time will be the one I finally like them but nope, I can't seem to be able to enjoy no matter how many times I try.