Here's Why Truffles Are So Expensive

Truffles are undoubtedly a sign of luxury and a delicious flavor that people can't get enough of. You can find all kinds of truffle products — from truffle potato chips at the grocery store to truffle pasta and truffle french fries at restaurants. But you might wonder how some of those items can be relatively low-priced when truffles can be so expensive. According to Business Insider, the world's largest white truffle sold for $61,000. They can even cost more than $300,000. Black truffles can sell for as much as $3,000 per pound, according to USA Today's 10Best. And with prices like that, you really might not understand how these little mushroom relatives could be so expensive.

It's because the treasured ingredient is so difficult to grow and even harder to harvest. So though many people are getting the robust flavor of truffles thanks to an artificially flavored chemical that's ruining their taste for real truffles, there are still plenty of people on the hunt for the real thing. But before you go hunting for real truffles, you should know the conditions that make them so hard and pricey to find and buy.

The first reason truffles are so expensive is because they are so difficult to find. Truffles grow underground and only grow on the roots of a select few kinds of trees, according to 10Best. New truffles that grow on tree roots can also take as long as 20 years to sprout before they're ready for harvesting. The truffles are found with the help of highly trained dogs or pigs, they must be removed from the ground with caution. But that isn't the end of the difficulty of truffles.

Once truffles are safely above ground, they cannot be preserved or kept for very long. In fact, they only stay fresh for a mere five days once harvested. That doesn't give anyone a very long time to buy and enjoy the expensive ingredient at its best. So, truffles are a lot of work, and these challenging conditions are why real truffles often come with such an expensive price tag.