Truffles — the pricey, aromatic mushrooms foraged by highly trained dogs — have grown in popularity over the years as they trickled out of fine dining establishments like Michelin star restaurants and into more casual settings before entering the kitchens of mushroom-enchanted consumers. Besides hearing about the world’s largest truffle pulling in $1million, many people get introduced to the earthy, unique aroma and flavor of truffles from dishes with truffle oil in them. Coincidently, most people have not yet tried fresh truffles. Menu items and specialty grocery products incorporating fresh truffles will come with a higher price tag than oil. Some restaurants prefer to shave fresh truffles atop a dish but now there are brands that are creating products incorporating fresh truffles for the home chef and everyday use.
It’s about time there is a high-quality brand providing real, fresh truffle products, certain stories shed light on how lucrative the business can be so naturally there are cheap counterfeits that swindle consumers. Enter Truffle Shuffle.
Truffle Shuffle Team
There are nice restaurants, and then there are Michelin star restaurants. Co-founding Truffle Shuffle, chefs Jason McKinney and Tyler Vorce, and Captain Sarah Rundle all hail out of the highly regarded Michelin-rated restaurant, The French Laundry, in California’s Napa Valley.
Working in restaurant kitchens places the team in an interesting position to cater to both home consumers and professional chefs. Simultaneously, the company is geared to the gourmand consumer and hosts intimate truffle-centric events. With a focus on sourcing the best truffles and ingredients, Truffle Shuffle prides itself on meeting the highest standards for the best restaurants.
“Our background in kitchen service makes us unique in the U.S. truffle trade. No other company is better suited to ensure the quality, attention to detail, and customer service Truffle Shuffle provides, due in large part to our years of work in commercial kitchens,” says Director of Operations Chef Tyler Vorce.
Balinese Truffle Salt
One of the products sold by Truffle Shuffle is truffle salt — a balanced mixture of high-quality salt and fresh summer truffles. The salt is sourced from a single-family farm, run by a woman named Wernie and her family in Kusumba — a small village on the southern coast of Bali, Indonesia. The sea salt is farmed by-hand using traditional methods to craft a crunchy salt to blend with those intoxicating truffles. The Summer Truffles combined with this salt hail from France and are dried at peak ripeness.
Truffle Shuffle prides itself on supporting family farms by paying fair, above-market rates and additionally, is partnered with 1% For The Planet where they nearly gave $50,000 in 2019 alone. The Balinese Truffle Salt goes great with a cheese plate, on some mac and cheese, or really just about anything. A little bit goes a long way here.
Brown Butter Truffle Honey
Honey is already an amazing food product all on its own but mix in some brown butter and truffles and your taste buds are in for a ride, which is exactly what Michelin star restaurants are likely to know. The wildflower bee honey is from Napa and Sonoma and is produced in small batches using sustainable and regenerative beekeeping methods. The truffles are only dog-harvested from Eugene and Medford, Oregon. I guess you can say this truffle honey blend is a more local product in comparison to the Balinese salt and French truffles blend.
Adding more flavor to that liquid gold is the brown butter which is butter that is melted and transformed into brown butter solids making everything more delicious. Let’s not forget the hint of fleur de sel — an expensive form of sea salt harvested in parts of France. The truffle honey is obviously great on top of yogurt and accompanies cheeses, ice creams, and nuts as a finishing touch.
Truffle Shuffle is available in select Whole Foods locations, their eCommerce website, and has a wholesale program for restaurants. The company also recently released a new truffle butter that is selling out, made with 100% grass-fed butter and white truffles. They clarify the butter like ghee so it can be stored at room temperature for multiple weeks.
Check out their website for great recipes and let know which ones you tried in the comments!
