That way, you ensure that the strength of their taste remains when you add them to your favorite truffle recipe. Store your truffles for a maximum period of three days in the refrigerator. When storing your truffles, wrap them individually in paper towel and place them in a sealed jar to ensure that its odor won t affect other foods in the fridge. However, more recent studies show that truffles and other types of mushrooms can bring a lot of health benefits especially to vegetarians, people who don t eat meat and only consume vegetables. Technically, truffles are mushrooms that don t have stems and are usually found under the ground usually under oak, pine, beech, and pecan trees mostly in Europe including various parts of Italy, France, Slovenia and Croatia. Often times, truffles are sold in containers filled with rice. This rice has definitely absorbed parts of the flavour and aroma of the fungi and could be used for cooking. Given this condition, they are often described as vegetable meat. Truffles contain high protein content. They are made up 73% water, and several substances and minerals like calcium, potassium and magnesium. What also makes truffle prices soar is the difficulty of finding and harvesting these mushrooms. Typically, truffles are hunted by dogs and pigs that are specially trained so that they can use their sharp sense of smell to find truffles and to dig them. It didn t help that in 2003, France suffered a heat wave, which took a toll on the living environment of truffles. Because it is so expensive, chefs came up with an idea to turn fresh truffles into oil or a concentrate which has all the taste and odor of truffle without worrying that the fresh truffle would go into waste over time. Truffle oils are being used to give flavor or to enhance the taste of truffles when used in cooking. White truffles usually cost about $1000 to $2000 for a pound, while black truffles cost $300 to $600 for a pound. In 2007, a 3.3 pound white truffle was bought by billionaire Stanley Ho for $330,000. In 1999, a 2.86 white truffle was sold for $212,000. Why is it so expensive? Because they are very hard to find.