November 16, 2015
The Delicious Secrets of Truffle Oil
Truffles seem
like they’re all the rage in culinary circles these days. Restaurants and even
fast food joints across the country are advertising new dishes that come with
the fragrant, flavorful aroma of the truffle. But how much do you know about
this ingredient, and its resurgence in modern cuisine?
Different Ways to Eat a Truffle
Here’s one
thing that might surprise you. Most of the culinary dishes that claim to have
truffle flavoring aren’t made with full-fledged truffles, but rather with truffle
oil. That’s all well and good, right? Well, here’s the
surprising thing. While truffles themselves grow in the ground, most truffle oil is manufactured in a laboratory
setting. The reason for the substitution is simple: Real truffles are quite
rare, and using them in the kitchen is not always practical.
In fact,
what’s called truffle oil is often just olive oil with some synthetic, potentially
truffle-flavored additives.
We say potentially because, according to many
experts, these truffle oils don’t necessarily taste like real,
grown-in-the-earth truffles. They have a more one-dimensional flavor that has
shifted public perception of what truffles should taste like.
That’s not to
say that I won’t continue treating myself to my favorite truffle
fries, or that their
truffle flavoring isn’t legitimate; it’s just to say that the place of the
truffle in modern cuisine is a little bit complicated.
A Unique Ingredient
The fact that
most truffle flavoring is artificial is not, in itself, anything new. It’s been
this way for a long time. And in all fairness, most flavored cooking oils bear just passing resemblances to their titular
ingredients.
What’s
interesting is that a lot of chefs who insist
on using only “real” ingredients—organic produce, nothing that could ever
be construed as synthetic or lab-grown—still love truffle oil, despite knowing
that it doesn’t often contain actual truffles nor even taste like real truffles.
It could be
argued that part of the reasoning for this is that chefs and diners alike enjoy the taste of synthetic truffle
oil. It may not be “authentic” or actually truffle-like, but that doesn’t mean it
isn’t still delicious.
Also worth
noting: Actually capturing the taste of real truffles is a difficult feat. Most
cooking oils that have tried to use the real thing have come up short.
Developing a Taste for Truffles
There are some products out there that deliver
something like real truffle taste, including organic truffle oils that do
indeed use actual truffles as key ingredients. For those curious to see how
such items fare in their own kitchens, take it away!
For those who
simply want to relish the truffle resurgence, though, order some truffle fries
and just enjoy them for what they are. Artificial or not, they’re likely to be
quite tasty.
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