You're Just 2 Ingredients Away From Gourmet Black Truffle Butter

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Do you want to polish up your popcorn, ritz up your risotto, or make your potatoes posher? One easy way to add an elegant, seemingly decadent touch to almost anything you make is to add a pad or two of black truffle butter. The compound butter is easy to make and doesn't have to break the bank. Serve it with your next meal and your family may wonder if you've gotten a raise.

While you can easily purchase black truffle butter already made, it's perfectly easy to make it yourself. First, the formula for making any compound butter is dead simple: You soften the butter, add the aromatics (truffles, in this case), blend the ingredients together, and roll it into a log to freeze or keep in the refrigerator. As an added bonus, making your own truffle butter ensure quality. Why? All too often, when you buy or order anything that says it's truffle-flavored, it's been made with artificial truffle oil or with truffle flavoring. When you make it yourself, you know what you're getting.

Most recipes for truffle butter use black rather than white truffles. One of the biggest differences between white and black truffles is their smell. White truffles are substantially more pungent than black truffles and can overwhelm the flavor of a delicate companion like butter. White truffles are also rarer and, as a result, more expensive than black truffles. While the cost of both varies, you can expect to spend approximately $200 an ounce on white truffles and about $36 to $55 an ounce on black truffles. For truffle butter, you should plan on using ½ ounce to two tablespoons for each pound of butter, depending on how strong you want the flavor.

You can use either salted or unsalted butter for truffle butter. While you're being decadent, consider amping it up a bit further by using a European-style butter. Butter made in the European Union generally has more butterfat than most sold in the United States and is the secret for making bakery-style croissants at home. There are, however, some American brands like Plugrà, Vital Farms, and Vermont Creamery that make butters in the European style.

Truffles may seem rare, but you can often find them at local specialty food stores or order them online from gourmet shops and truffle exporters from France and Italy. If the price seems high — and they could go higher now that the EU is facing a 20% tariff on imported goods — there are less expensive options, like the truffle paste or truffle carpaccio made by Urbani. Truffles also grow in Oregon, and you can find companies online that will ship within the United States.

Of course, if you're buying a truffle, you want to handle it gently. You can rinse it to remove any dirt, but don't scrub it too hard. You can grate it with a fine cheese grater or dice it by hand. You can combine the ingredients by hand or with a food processor, blender, or mixer. The only thing you can't do? Complain about how hard it is to make truffle butter.