Ina Garten Loves This Ingredient So Much, She Buys 6 At A Time

Apparently Ina Garten loves white truffle butter. The Barefoot Contessa loves it so much that, when talking with Food Network about the 10 store-bought ingredients that she adores, she admits that she "[orders] like six of these and keep them in the freezer."

White truffle butter, as Bon Appetit explains, is, as you might imagine, butter infused with white truffles. Garten's fondness for white truffle butter becomes even more apparent when you examine some of her recipes shared by Food Network. There's tagliarelle with truffle butter, roast turkey with truffle butter, and fettuccine with white truffle butter and mushrooms, all of which feature a good three ounces of white truffle butter.

Of course, not all of Garten's recipes composes manage to avoid white truffle butter, probably because a 2.8 ounce jar of white truffle butter could set you back $30 on Amazon. That said, Trufflecart.com sells similar sized jars for $6.00, not including shipping. Still, you must either have money to spend or love truffle butter even more than Ina Garten to splurge on it as your spread of choice.

To call truffles popular is an understatement. As The Atlantic reports, not many other foods enjoy such a thriving black market.

This excitement (and high price tag) is no doubt due to the rarity of the fungus. CNBC explains that truffles are "nearly impossible" to cultivate, which shrinks the supply considerably. On top of that, finding them requires large teams and trained dogs, which can take a lot of money, time, and effort. Small supply, high demand, and a costly gathering process has resulted in what CNBC deems "the diamonds of gastronomy."

All of those expenses purchase a flavor that many are biologically incapable of appreciating anyway. The BBC reports that the attractive aroma of truffles comes from a hormone called androstenone, which some humans can't even detect!

Most of us are unlikely to be involved in this gold rush. Instead, we must content ourselves with truffle oil and butters made from truffle oil, which Reader's Digest describes as olive oil with other synthetic chemicals. "Using real truffles like the wild Perigord or the white Alba gives chefs an opportunity to play and shine, which cannot be done using less-than ingredients or fake chemicals like dithiapentane," chef Florence Bertheau told Reader's Digest. For more everyday cooking, you shouldn't feel bad about grabbing some truffle oil, but if you want to truly pay tribute to Ina Garten, splurge on the white truffle butter.