(brief bright music) - [Dog Handler] Three tugs and then he gets to work.

One, two, three, let's get to work.

(lively music) - [Rachel] Chanterelles, morels, the Pacific Northwest is well known for its wild mushrooms, but I had never heard a peep about truffles until I met the folks who started Truffle Dog Company and learned that Oregon and Washington are teaming with black gold.

But you need the trained nose of a pup to find them.

(lively music continues) I am Rachel Bell, host of Your Last Meal podcast, longtime Seattle journalist and food writer.

Here on The Nosh, we explore some of the region's most delicious stories.

Today's adventure, there's truffles in them hills.

(conga music) Just over an hour outside of Seattle, fragrant black and white truffles are lurking just below the forest floor.

(whimsical music) But a forager never reveals their location.

I met up with Truffle Dog Co's Alana McGee and Aiko Veil at one of their secret spots.

They take aspiring truffle forgers out on adventures, and will even teach you how to train your dog to be a truffle hunter.

- They they are.

- Puppy ears, yeah.

- Is that Cowboy?

- You got Cowboy, and Miss Flora, and then Ruby.

Come on puppy, wake up.

- Oh, hi.

- And Nicole.

- You're so pretty.

- [Alana] Pretty girl.

Oh, good girl.

- Hi.

- She says hi.

Where you going?

(Rachel chuckles) To the truffles.

All right, well let's get the doggies all geared up, and we will head out.

Come here, Ru.

Ruby Ru.

- You ready for the truffle shuffle?

- I am.

Ooh, off she goes.

She's very excited.

- So how many times can you visit a spot in the season?

- Depending on the size of the site and the season, like some years are better than others, like last couple years we're not super great, this year is okay, and that has a lot to do with weather.

We give like sites time to rest, we don't wanna over harvest, we don't wanna take more than we're gonna use for stuff or give to our students.

And this is where we'll pop in.

There you go, go on.

(playful music) Where is it?

Let's go find a truffle.

Hey Ruby, Ruby.

Hold on puppy, wait for us.

I know it's hard to wait.

She is on something.

See how she's bee lining towards something?

- Yeah.

- We gotta catch up to her.

- [Rachel] It is amazing though to see, in all of this moss and fern that we can't see anything, that she goes right towards it.

- [Alana] I'm trying to keep an eye on her, 'cause if she starts digging, it means she found something.

And I don't want her to eat it, (chuckles) so we gotta get there.

- [Rachel] Is she on one?

Hey, Ruby.

I'm coming, don't eat it.

(Ruby sniffs) Watch out.

(Rachel and Alana chuckle) - [Rachel] Get out behind her.

- And then I kind of just gotta wait, and I help her if she needs it, but I'm gonna let her dig a little.

They can be really deep.

Where is it?

- Oh, I see.

- Yeah.

Oh, thank you, thank you.

Ah, spit it out, thank you.

You got some of it, you cheeky monster.

That smells fabulous though.

- [Rachel] Good job, two so far.

- [Alana] And Cowboy might have one up here.

- [Rachel] If you didn't know, you would never know that this was a truffle, you'd just think it was a dirt clod.

- Good job, Ru.

Good job.

- It's just incredible, because you know how much people pay for truffles, to just be walking around in the dirt and have a whole basket-full.

- Yeah.

It's a good day.

- It is a good day.

- It's a good day.

- That's a nice one.

- You wanna smell that?

- I wanna sniff it.

(chuckles) See, I like this, 'cause I sniff everything anyway, and this feels like finally I can just be myself in an appropriate environment.

- I'm gonna run out of snacks, puppy.

- Mm, that's a big one.

So just like total basics, what is a truffle?

- Great question.

So a truffle is essentially a mushroom that grows underground.

So a specific type of mushroom called a hypogeous fungi.

- Hypogeous fungi.

- And what it is, essentially, is like the apple on an apple tree.

So inside of this are all the seeds, which are the spores, which is how mushrooms like reproduce normally, they're above ground, wind blows their spores.

But they give off those lovely aromas because they're made to be dug up by mammals, consumed, and then deposited elsewhere.

- I didn't even know that there were truffles up here.

You hear about people mushroom hunting, but never about truffles.

- I mean we have a lot here in the Pacific Northwest in general, right?

And so, we're in Washington, and I think more and more people are learning about it.

It's definitely something that's fun to do, we do recommend you do it with a dog.

A little more sustainable, a little more friendly on the environment.

Some of the other ways that people harvest are a little more destructive to the environment, and can really damage the trees and the ecosystem, so we're really conscious of that.

And when we teach our students, we really wanna stress being a good steward for the environment and taking care of it, right?

'Cause this is, you know, home to, not just us, right?

There's a lot of things that live here.

(gentle music) For our native black truffles, you need Douglas fir.

That's what they grow in that symbiotic relationship with.

They like a little bit older, a little bit wetter environment, so we're looking at anywhere from like 25, but realistically like 30 years old, to about 60.

When the trees get above that, it doesn't mean you won't find a few, but the trees actually don't need the mycelium anymore that the truffles grow on.

- You know, you always hear about European truffles, I never hear about Pacific Northwest truffles, like at a restaurant.

Why is that?

Are they just not as good of a quality?

- Well, you know, this is kind of the debate in what we're trying to educate people on.

So the quality is actually really good, people just haven't been exposed to them and educated about them.

So they can compare, there actually were on like blind taste tests with some like James Beard chefs and things like that, where they did rate really, really highly, like comparable.

It's also knowing how to use them, they are used a little bit differently than some of the European types.

- Oh, okay.

- And they don't last this long.

Like, you can get stuff from Europe and you can keep it for- - A couple weeks.

- A couple weeks, these, they'll probably start going back in four days.

- Let's go clean 'em up them, and go through 'em and try 'em.

- I'm excited to see how they look when they're clean.

- I know, I know, I'm excited.

- Let's see if we can find our location.

- Yeah, we'll make you get us out.

- Really, you wanna be in this forest for another seven hours?

Okay.

- The doggies would like it.

- Let's try.

- Okay, let's go.

Okay, let's go.

- Let's go, let's go.

Ruby, this way.

(whimsical music) Roots, roots, roots.

Ruby.

Let's go, come on.

(brush scrubs) - How do you infuse things?

Because it's different than I thought it would be.

- Yeah, it's actually pretty simple.

So we have the truffles that we cleaned, some of them right here.

And then what you do is, you take anything that has fat in it, alcohol as well too, but fat's kind of the easiest place to start, cheeses, butter, meat.

So we've got some salami in here, we've got nuts, obviously high fat.

But essentially what you do is you then close it, and then you would put this in your fridge for a couple of days.

- It's so interesting to me that you just put the truffles next to the food.

You know, 'cause I think a lot of people, the truffle that you get commercially is like truffle oil, truffle salt, and you can like see that there's something in there, but this is like, it just is next to it.

- And you don't really want it touching the food.

- No, because it's a living organism, like botulism can be a factor, and stuff like that, so you wanna be really conscious.

- So let's taste some of the things that you have infused.

So what do we have?

Alana and Aiko brought cheeses and butters that they'd already infused with truffles.

It just takes a few days for the flavor to sink in, and then you can remove the truffles and use them to infuse something else to add a delicious earthy perfume.

How many things can I sniff today?

(chuckles) Aiko made truffle-infused creamy tomato soup with fresh truffle shaved on top, and a delicious truffle pate with pureed truffles, garlic and nuts.

Mm.

Mm.

That's really good.

So great.

Yay.

I'm gonna eat more.

- Yeah, this is fun.

Well, thank you for coming out, this has been super fun.

- Thanks for having me.

- Of course, of course.

- In your woods, in your personal woods.