Thanksgiving Special: The Wild, Weird, and Sketchy World of Truffle Hunting

Rowan Jacobsen: My first time was in Italy. I'm with this guy and his two dogs, and we're in Barolo, so it's all like castles and vineyards up on the hills, and it's cold since November. They do it at night because they don't want anyone to see their secret spots. It's this really, you know, this dark, misty moonlit kind of scene.

We're trying to go through these forests and follow these dogs in this, this sort of cold drippy night and branches are just like whacking us in the face and stuff. But then, you know, the dogs will give a signal that they're digging and then we're just running through the woods, tripping, getting to the spot, trying to get to it.

Before the dogs do. You really start to like, become super aware of your senses because hearing becomes extra important. Your eyes are doing whatever they can do in that environment, and obviously then your nose is the, the final arbiter of the whole [00:01:00] thing. So it really feels like you're just this like hypersensitive.

Like bundle of nerve ends moving through the woods. Good boy.

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PADDYO VO:

That is Outside contributing editor Rowan Jacobsen describing an eery, unique, and extra hush hush adventure that happens in foggy, damp forests all over the world: truffle hunting. On the eve of Thanksgivong, we wanted to dip into the belly-focused archives for a food heavy story. And this one is a damn doozy. Rowan has investigated lost strains of chocolate in the Amazon, a new wave of imitation sea food, even foraged for invasive species in the Long Island Sound, but nothing could prepare him for the always weird and sometimes shady world of truffle hunting.

The rarity, the expense, the organized crime-like characters; the world behind the scenes of this odd wild edible is bonkers. [00:02:00] And it took Rowan on a journey from the old world forests of Europe to, oddly enough, the hills of Appalachia.. Sniffing and digging and having his mind blown the entire time. But if you're like me, you might know zilch about these funny fungi, so we need to start with the obvious.

Paddy: What is a truffle

Rowan Jacobsen: good place to start? So a truffle is kind of like a mushroom that never comes up above the surface and just stays on your ground for its whole life. So like a mushroom, it's a fungus that is full of spores. It's basically the fruiting body of the fungus. So truffles have this insane smell that drives all kinds of animals wild, including us.

And because of that. They've always been a very expensive culinary item, but they're super hard to find. What is

Paddy: a truffle hunt?

Rowan Jacobsen: So truffle hunt consists of a dude or a couple of dudes and their dogs sneaking around the woods, hoping no one sees where they're going. [00:03:00] And letting the dogs lead them to the truffles and tell them where to dig.

And then digging up these truffles and then selling them to like mafia type figures through this underground economy. It's drugs by any other name. The, um, the dynamics of the truffle business are identical to the dynamics of the drug business, and for kind of the same reasons. It's this really pricey thing that people really, really want, and it's either somewhat illegal or totally illegal.

So it's all, all the selling happens. Underground, unregulated. So the, uh, the

Paddy: tensions are identical. Rowan is not being sensational here. He knows what he's talking about. Last year, he published a book called Truffle Hounds that exposed some of the shady characters, obsessive chefs. And amazing dogs that power the underground truffle economy.

The vast majority of his reporting took place in Europe where truffle hunting has been a big deal for a long time because the things are worth such a ridiculous amount of money, and I mean, [00:04:00] ridiculous. If I'm out in the woods and I just like miraculously come across a bunch of these truffles, say like I fill a ball, cap up with them, how much money am I actually holding in my hands?

Rowan Jacobsen: It can be quite a bit. And actually the black truffles are often referred to as black diamonds, and those go for about a thousand bucks a pound. That is insane Money. Yeah. Yeah. Peak insanity just happened this last fall. Because the Italian white truffles, which are the most expensive truffles in the world, had a really poor season.

It was too dry in Italy. Mm-hmm. So not a lot of truffles got made. So the price went up to $6,000 a pound and Jesus, yeah, it was, it was literally 200 bucks for a plate of pasta at, uh, a good New York. Restaurant.

Paddy: The only explanation for this has to be the taste, right? It's why we're willing to pay that obscene upcharge to get truffle oil on our french fries.

But actually, no, I

Rowan Jacobsen: would [00:05:00] describe the taste of a truffle as basically zilch. Like it doesn't have much going on on the tongue at all. What are you getting in that truffle oil? You know, you're getting kind of a muskiness truffle oil actually doesn't have any real truffle in it. It's flavored with a synthetic chemical to make it smell kind of like a truffle.

Paddy: What?

Rowan Jacobsen: Yeah,

Paddy: so they're putting science, they're upcharging me science juice on my french fries is what you're telling me.

Rowan Jacobsen: Yes. It's science juice. It cost pennies to make. Damn it. Yeah. What? And they got an extra, you know, 10 bucks for an order of rise with it.

Paddy: Yeah. I'm so pissed right now. There are two reasons that real truffles cost so damn much.

First. They're incredibly difficult to find. They're typically the size of a thimble, and even the expert hunters who understand their symbiotic relationship with trees, what climate and soil pH level is best, and who train elite hunting dogs often get skunked. Second truffles smell like nothing else on this [00:06:00] planet.

Their aroma has been described as being as combustible. As gasoline and your first love. It's not like the classic,

Rowan Jacobsen: delicious type smell. It's not like a chocolate chip cookie kind of smell.

Paddy: Mm-hmm. Where like

Rowan Jacobsen: everybody likes it. It's this sort of intellectually challenging sensation where you're like, whoa, that's different.

Do I like it? I think maybe I do. And then you're like, I think maybe I like it a lot. It's just, it's really elusive. It's really hard to, to get a handle on what it is, why you like it, why you want more of it. But you do, you want to go back and smell it again. So it's, it's almost like not a conscious decision.

It's not because it's delicious, it's just because it's compelling you to go back and smell it again. And then you think about it later and you're like, Hmm, when can I get my next truffle hit? Somehow, like through scent, the Truffle has figured out how to like tickle our, like the part of our brain where memories and emotion lie.

So it becomes an [00:07:00] emotional response more than it like. Physical like, oh, I like that smell response. It's kind of like this little, you know, this come hither smell where it's beckons you and it's like, Hey, come check me out. But then it's gonna hide from you and you gotta find it.

Paddy: Well, I was pretty upset that your book wasn't a scratch and sniff book.

Humans aren't the only animals that get nose chasms every time we sniff. These wee woodland wonders, mice, vols, gopher, deer, bears, and dogs all lose their minds over truffles. Flying squirrels will take a near 90 degree in-flight turn if they catch a whiff, and famously pigs will forego sex to get to a truffle.

Rowan Jacobsen: One of the really, uh, clever things about the truffle is it actually produces. Pheromones that are also produced by male pigs when they're feeling horny. Yeah. Any female pig that smells a truffle, she, you know, goes into the, uh, the zone and, and like [00:08:00] races to find that truffle and dig it up. It has all these spores, which are like seeds.

And it needs to spread those spores around to make more truffle organisms. It makes itself smell so irresistible to animals that they will stop whatever they're doing, dig up the truffle, eat it, and then spread the spores around later on. The, the truffles have been working on these, these scents for millions of years to, to make that happen, and they've gotten really good at it.

Paddy: Rowan describes truffle hunting or truffling as the practice is called as a kind of perfect three-way collision of food, notary science and outdoor adventure. Which for him makes it irresistible. It's just

Rowan Jacobsen: that feeling of being locked in and focused. So in the outdoors. Mm. It's challenging, right? It, there's a whole lot of sort of strategy and, well, there's a whole lot of failure, which is always good, right?

Like it's, it's really a treasure hunt and 90 plus percent of the time you're coming up empty. So. There's that holy grail aspect to it, [00:09:00] which is always fun. And then the nerdery comes because. When it does work, what you're left with is this super stinky little like, bundle of fungus. Um, so, so it's like it takes over your mind.

It's like a Jedi mind trick where, um, you know, just like the pigs and the squirrels, you can't really resist if you're susceptible to it. And apparently I am

Paddy: Rowan spent more than two years researching for his book, getting to know a range of truffle hunters and convincing many of them. To bring him along on their secretive hunts.

His research took him to England, Italy, France, Spain, and the real hearts of Europe's booming truffle economy. Hungary, this is where competition over truffles has become the most ferocious and also. The most heavily managed truffle hunters and buyers and sellers are required to have government issued licenses.

Truffles have to keep meticulous records of their fines and frequently present them to officials. Meanwhile, investors [00:10:00] are buying up tracks of forest believed to contain these fungus diamonds. The result is that truffling in Hungary has become a rich person's business venture, so naturally a secret society that seems out of a Monty Python movie.

Has sprung up to protect the blue collar truffer, the Hungarian truffle Knights think medallions, shields, robes, masks, and the like. When news spread among this group that an American journalist would be hunting with one of the Richie rich truffles, the truffle knights were not happy. I got

Rowan Jacobsen: a call, a mysterious call at night, invited me to dinner at this like, like distant restaurant outside of Budapest, which was called like.

Cock diner, basically like, like, you know, like Rooster Diner. So I took the train and, and went out there and met these guys pretty late. There were these transylvanian truffle hunters who spoke like, you know, they were out of like, what we do in the shadows or something, and, and they, they, they, they like, you know, [00:11:00] were like.

We just want you to understand what's happening here in Hungary. You know, this is a crazy country and we're banned from truffle hunting. And the guy you're going with, he's kind of monopolizing it. And meanwhile, you know, they told, they told me to order like the most famous thing on the menu, which was the, the like caulking balls stew.

It was, uh, rooster testicles stew with a lot of, a lot of paprika, of course. And I sounds. Delicious. Yeah. I, I was like, I, I hesitated hard. I didn't wanna, you know, like displease my guests, so I was like, okay, fine. And then they all got the fish soup, all the other, all three of them. So I was like, wait a minute.

Paddy: Yeah. Am I getting gooned right now? Yeah,

Rowan Jacobsen: I, I think I got totally goon. So, yeah, so we have the dinner and, um, and I'm, you know, like slurping a lot of, lot of. But rooster testicles while trying to like convince them that I wasn't gonna be throwing the truffle nights under the bus,

Paddy: Rowan went ahead with his hunt with the great enemy of the Hungarian truffle nights and.

They scored big time.

Rowan Jacobsen: [00:12:00] So his name is Vo Boggy. He's probably the best travel hunter in Europe, and he's kind of a, you know, he's a, um, small built guy with a little like pointy beard. You know, he's got this sort of intense, thoughtful, slightly moody dark to him where he could either have achieved. Like super enlightenment or super villainy, and you can't quite tell, which

Paddy: during their hunt ish, V and his black lab mocha were digging up tons of impressive white truffles, which usually are around 50 to 60 grams a piece, but their fines were 70 to 80 grams.

In Europe, this is rare. Even more rare is finding what hunters call a joker, a truffle, weighing in at 100 grams.

Rowan Jacobsen: We'd been in the woods for a couple of hours, and then toward the end of the day, mocha hit a spot and I could tell Mocha seemed like a little extra excited. And Han looked at the, the, the le, the lay of the land, and he said, oh.[00:13:00]

This is gonna be a big one. The thing is, um, the way the pricing is for, for white truffles, chefs want to be able to go out in the dining room and, you know, do the whole little, uh, you know, the big dance, the, the, this, the, the full sturman drawing where they're gonna shave the truffle in front of the customer, and there's gonna be a lot of ceremony.

So the truffle has to be perfect. So the, the visual appeal of the truffle is. At least as important as the smell. So you can't nick that truffle. So you gotta make sure your dog doesn't nick it with a claw. And then as you're digging, you have to make sure you don't screw up the truffle. So you actually end up digging like a crater around the truffle that's a lot bigger than the truffle is.

And you eventually just leave this little pedestal of dirt that's holding up the truffle. So you've dug all the way around and this took us probably a good. 20 minutes for this truffle 'cause. Once Ishan saw how big it was, he realized that it was worth taking some time. By the time the CRA's there, I knew it was just gigantic compared to anything else that we had found that day or that I had [00:14:00] found anywhere else in Europe.

So then. The last bit is he wiggles this trow underneath the truffle between the truffle and the pedestal and pops it up. Uh, and he got it perfectly. And then we waited when we got back to the car and it was 394 grams. So it was like four jokers put together. And of course the smell was super intense. It was, uh, it was perfect.

Then you're just really worried. It's like you're carrying around like, you know, some. Priceless vase or something, you think you're gonna drop it

Paddy: and mess it up. The truffle was the size of a baseball. In fact, it was the biggest Hungarian truffle in 2019, and it was worth 1200 Euros or roughly $1,300 ish.

V immediately got a hold of a buyer. He

Rowan Jacobsen: instantly, you know, texted somebody in in Berlin and off it went that night by air mail to that. That person.

Paddy: But in addition to the humongous truffle, the German contact wanted additional high [00:15:00] quality fungi, which Tvo would need to source from a seller. So Rowan went with Tvo to score from a spiky haired guy wearing a black and red Tommy Hilfiger tracksuit with matching sneakers in a supermarket parking lot who weighed truffles in the back of his Porsche, SUV, and somehow.

This is not the weirdest thing that's happened to Rowan during his journey into the world of truffles. Once he headed back to the good old US of A, things got even stranger that's coming up after the break.

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Outside contributing editor, Rowan Jacobson finished his reporting on the wild world of European truffles, wondering if anything this strange was taking place in the United States. So he turned his [00:16:00] attention to Oregon, which is known as a rich hunting ground for truffles. Though the fungi there aren't given much love,

Rowan Jacobsen: I've been led to believe that they were gonna be disappointing, that their, their price was much lower and they're much less celebrated and they were.

A hundred percent competitive on smell with the European truffles. So I was just shocked. And then Curious,

Paddy: Rowan went into a feverish research mode and soon learned about a fervent, albeit small US truffle community among the members. Was a mycologist named Charles Lafe, who had started the Oregon Truffle Festival in 2006 in order to jumpstart the US truffle market and culture.

The three day event includes a competition among dogs to sniff out the most truffles. It's typically dominated by Lato Roman YOLOs, an Italian breed that costs upwards of $10,000. But in 2018, a rescue Chihuahua named Gustav took the top spot. Seriously. Y who, if [00:17:00] Oregon has superb truffles, Rowan figured other spots in the country did too.

I live in Vermont, and I

Rowan Jacobsen: thought, what a bummer that, you know, the one place in the world that doesn't seem to have any truffles is the Northeastern us. So then I really poked around. I asked people, they're like, no, there's, there's nothing here. No chef had ever heard. An Eastern truffle. But then I finally found a guy in Quebec of all places who had figured out how to cultivate this native truffle that's native all over the Eastern us, and it's called the Appalachian truffle.

And it had this beautiful sort of cinnamon colored reddish coat. It was the only truffle I'd seen that wasn't white or black. I smelled it and it smelled really good. So then I thought, that's amazing. You know, too bad. I will probably never find it anywhere.

Paddy: Rowan had reason to be pessimistic. Nobody was digging up Appalachian truffles in the wild, or at least that's what he thought until through what only can be described as the truffle underground.

He got a tip.

Rowan Jacobsen: There's this one dude, he lives in [00:18:00] Maryland, a guy named Jeff Long, a retired attorney who was hunting this truffle and finding it in somewhere in the Appalachians. I'm, I'm not allowed to disclose where exactly, but somewhere in the Appalachian

Paddy: Hills. This was huge news in the truffle world.

An almost unknown species was being found in the forests of the East coast. Rowan soon learned that chefs were chomping at the bit to get ahold of the Appalachian truffles. So he arranged for an introduction to Jeff Long, as well as a guy named Ben Cable, a veterinarian from Maryland who had sunk a small fortune into trying to farm these rare fungi.

Rowan convinced Ben and Jeff to take him along on a hunt by promising not to reveal too much about any locations and to make their dogs famous in his outside story. 'cause dog owners love that.

Rowan Jacobsen: And yet what really stands out is that we got nothing. Ben had picked out what he thought was pretty darn good habitat, like it checked all the [00:19:00] boxes, and then we went through for a few hours with both Ben's dog, who's kind of in training, and Jeff's dog who's a master.

Nothing. And that's like with the Appalachian truffle. We still don't really know. It's we're we're just. Trying to figure out, you know, why is it here and why is it not here when these two spaces look pretty much the same. Truffles are sneaky. They like to hide and they make you work for them

Paddy: At Rowan's urging, Ben and Jeff agreed to meet him for another hunt two weeks later in an area.

Ben had found truffles before Rowan began the day with just Ben and his dog Daisy. Daisy, get him. Get him. Who once again wasn't finding anything. Well, she starts panting like that. You know, she's not sniffing much because she's breathing through him now. So Ben tried

Rowan Jacobsen: a new tactic. He kind of just dropped to his knees.

I thought he was just giving up and he pulled the moss back like a blanket looking much better. This kind of spot here. And [00:20:00] I looked for a second and then realized that there was a truffle in there. Holy moly. There's one just like that. That's usually how it goes, and we are both like. Holy shit. We just found it without, we don't need a dog.

So then we just scrambled around and we found several more. I I, oh, there's one. There's another one. Oh my God. These tend to be, have a nice shape. Anyway. There's a third one. Oh my God. They're everywhere. You know, I, I did the classic thing where you pick it up and you smell it right away. I picked it up and I smelled it.

Nothing like it smelled like a rock. Uh, and I was like, oh my, where, where's the smell? Isn't? Is this an Appalachian truffle?

Paddy: It was an Appalachian truffle, but truffles only emit their intoxicating smell when they're ripe. The ones Ben and Rowan had found weren't ready yet. Even worse. By digging them up prematurely, they'd guaranteed these ones never would be ripe.

It was very

Rowan Jacobsen: disappointing to, to go from [00:21:00] the peak of treasure found, right? Like, oh, there's all these little red bundles of treasure in the ground, and you know, we're dancing a little jig. But then when you smell them and suddenly realize, A, you don't have any treasure, and B, you've just killed the treasure two B, that's a bad, dark, dark moment out there in the woods.

Paddy: I'm not a treasure hunter. I'm a murderr. No. Yeah,

Rowan Jacobsen: yeah. It is like you just picked all your grandfather's prized apples or something. Before they were right,

Paddy: but then Jeff showed up with his dog. Estee. Where's truffle ela? ELA A Lato Roman Yolo.

Rowan Jacobsen: That looks promising.

Paddy: Who is a master truffle sniffer? Where is it?

Oh, there it is.

Rowan Jacobsen: Whoa. Whoa. They basically saved the day. Geez. Wow. They do exist. They do. You guys weren't just making it up big ones. This turned out to be a really good. Spot. We, we were surrounded by truffles, but we wouldn't have been able to [00:22:00] tell, you know, we would have have to just like claw around with our hands for acres.

Where is, where

Paddy: is honey?

Rowan Jacobsen: But they were everywhere through there.

Paddy: Oh, there it is.

Rowan Jacobsen: Bingo. And many were ripe. Not all. So esy just like, you know, tree to tree

MIKE: anymore,

Rowan Jacobsen: never. Wasn't on a truffle. Another one. Another one. Another one. So we are basically just like running behind Esee and, oh, very truffle. Okay.

Digging, digging. Spot after spot after spot. And we could have just kept going. Excellent job.

Paddy: Excellent. What a good boy you are. Excellent.

Rowan Jacobsen: Eventually we had more truffles than we knew what to do with.

Paddy: What did the good ones smell

Rowan Jacobsen: like? Good ones. It's a really great smell. It smell. I like it. It smells like, uh, the hole.

Spice shop at once, like a lot of cocoa and clove. It's really rich warming smell, and then a little bit of that like soil and earthworms [00:23:00] and old love affairs. You know?

Paddy: God, I love it. Is it, I mean, is it safe to assume that the Appalachian truffle is your favorite truffle? Can you name a favorite truffle?

Is that a hard thing to do? I

Rowan Jacobsen: can't name. Favorite truffle there. My favorite truffle is the one I'm with.

Paddy: Rowan's feature story about his Appalachian truffle adventures with Ben and Jeff. Ran an outside's January February issue. It was titled Finders Keepers. When outside published this article was like the Truffle Mafia.

Upset with you? Did you get any kind of scary phone calls? Were people excited? Were people pissed? All of the above, I would say.

Rowan Jacobsen: But

Paddy: really,

Rowan Jacobsen: the Truffle Mafia is cool with it mostly, but there, i, I got contacted by one very cool mushroom hunter who used a false name, but eventually he revealed to me who he was.

So he's very concerned. He, he wants people out there hunting truffles, but he wants them to do it. [00:24:00] Pro, right? He wants, you know, a lot of respect for the environment and he doesn't want it to become commercial. Like, he kind of hates what's happened in Italy where, you know, it's like the mafia really is involved and, and, uh, he, he would love to see it become a.

A hobby. It's something you do with your dog. And if you're lucky, then you have this awesome meal at the end rather than like a, a financial thing. And I actually think that's a pretty cool way to think about it. But if suddenly these things are going for $6,000 a pound, like the European ones, then you know, uh, fuck it.

People are gonna be like,

Paddy: you're gonna have the sopranos of the truffle world. In in Appalachia. Yeah. They're gonna, they're gonna be have like Hoover vacuum cleaners out there on the forest. Are we on the precipice of the American truffle explosion?

Rowan Jacobsen: Oh, no question. We are right on the edge of, of a burgeoning.

American truffle scene. It's gonna take a few years, but it's going to grow, uh, [00:25:00] grow every year. And, uh, all the dogs out there are gonna thank us for it.

Paddy: Rowan believes that truffle hunting could eventually become a welcome pastime in American outdoor culture. One that's challenging as hell, but that ends with a delicious meal.

A bit like fly fishing, but with dogs instead of rods and reels. After that fateful hunt, when Jeff's dog, Estee found all that stinky goodness, Ben and Jeff divided their treasure trove and gave Rowan a small sample to enjoy.

Rowan Jacobsen: I have to say, it was one of the best meals I I ever had, and it was one of the simplest, so I, I was camping up in the hills of like crystal clear brook going by my campsite.

So I, I made a fire and all I had with me was eggs and a little bit of butter. And then I had this little tiny truffle, which was my only, my, you know, my little four gram reward from the day's hunt. So I just set a pan over the fire and melted the butter and, [00:26:00] you know, fried the egg and flipped the egg.

And just as the egg was kind of setting, I like shaved the, the whole truffle over the egg and, and it hit the butter and the, and then suddenly it's like I was in this, you know, like sort of this little cocoon of firelight as, as. The evening was darkening and suddenly the smell of this truffle was just filling this whole cocoon around me, and so it was nothing but these spicy cocoa haunting smells swirling around me, and I ate the egg and the truffle, and that was it.

That was dinner and the that. Then I was just there with the stars and it kind of crystallized for me, you know, sort of what the essence of the truffle hunt is about and what the reward. Could be, should be.

Paddy: Would you rather relive that moment or your first kiss ever? Yeah. In this case, I think I'll go, I'll go go

Rowan Jacobsen: with that moment.

There's more elements there. [00:27:00] Yeah. Yeah.

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PADDYO VO:

Rowan Jacobsen writes about science and nature and the less-explored corners of the world. You can check out his fascianting stories and books, like Truffle Hound, Wild Chocolate, and In Defense of Sunlight: The Surprising Science of Sun Exposure, at Rowan Jacobsen dot com. And you can follow Rowan's foodie adventures on Instagram at Unreal Rowan Jacobsen.

Rowan's story about the hunt for the Appalachian truffle ran in Outside's January 2022 issue, and you can find it on Outside Online. This episode originally aired in May of 2022. It was edited by Michael Roberts and produced by me, your host, Paddy O'Connell but you can call me PaddyO. Replay editing by the storytelling wizard Micah "the fungus is among us, maaan" Abrams. Music and Sound Design by Robbie Carver. And booking and research by [00:28:00] Maren Larsen.

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