What is the best way to serve fresh truffles on a dish? To help answer that question directly, we have put together a quick guide to offer a few suggestions on how to best serve your fresh truffles.

TLDR

• Shaving truffles on dishes adds visual appeal and promotes a balanced flavor in each bite.
• Grating truffles on dishes exposes more surface area, and fibres of the fresh truffle to the dish and to the air; releasing more of the aroma from the fresh truffle into a dish.
• We encourage you to use both techniques to get the maximum yield from each fresh truffle.

Shaving Fresh Truffles

Shaved truffles on top of a dish can be visually very impressive. The look or aesthetic appearance of truffles can immediately trigger a mouth-watering reaction. The beautiful marbling of the fresh truffle can be almost hypnotic with its complex array of interwoven patterns, alongside the beauty of a well plated dish.

Another benefit of shaving truffles over a dish is it helps to create balanced flavor in every bite, especially when combined with bite-sized foods, like ravioli or bites of vegetables, fish, or meat. In this case, a single truffle shaving can be placed on top of each individual bite on the plate to curate the exact flavor the chef wants the guest to enjoy. 

One additional perk of shaving fresh truffles over a warm dish is the larger surface area of the truffle slices absorb some of the heat and steam of the dish underneath and vaporise the aroma. This creates even more drama to the dish as the perfume of fresh truffles can gently waft around guests.

You can buy a professional truffle shaver here. Otherwise you can use a mandolin.

Grating Fresh Truffles

While shaving delicate thin slices of truffles can be visually alluring, grating fresh truffles can offer other benefits. By grating truffles into a dish, you increase the surface area and internal fibres of the truffle that are exposed to the air, as well as breaking down and releasing more of the truffle protein. This can increase the impact of the flavours and aroma the fresh truffles impart on the dish. 

This method is particularly helpful when the goal is for the truffles to impart their flavour and aroma within the dish, rather than as a seperate flavour element. Many chefs use this technique to great effect when making truffle pasta, risotto, or truffle sauces.

Use a microplane, zester, or fine grater to most successfully grate fresh truffles.

Why Not Do Both?

One of our favorite hacks is to start by grating a truffle using a microplane, fine grater or zester, then switching to a truffle slicer to shave perfectly formed truffle slices onto the dish. Because fresh truffles are typically round or have some bulbous shapes, grating lets you use the tougher-to-shave outer portions of the truffle to maximize flavor and aroma in the dish, then shave perfectly shaped slices to create maximum visual appeal onto a dish.