Pecan truffle ✦

Truffe de pécan

What it is

It surfaced as a farming curiosity: a Georgia plant pathologist digging around pecan roots in the late 1980s kept turning up truffles, later confirmed as Tuber lyonii. They fruit along the herbicide strips where orchard management has pushed the soil towards neutral, which means the growers had been making them by accident for years.

In the kitchen

The hickory-smoke note is fat-soluble and much milder than an Alba truffle's, so use two or three times the weight and warm it thirty seconds in butter rather than shaving it raw.

Goes with

Pecan Butter Egg Cream Chicken Corn Sweet potato

Same species

Bagnoli truffle Bianchetto truffle Musky truffle Burgundy truffle Chinese truffle Oregon white truffle

In season alongside

Acorn Antep pistachio Artichoke Bintje potato Black trumpet Borlotti bean

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