Some of these food ingredients are astronomically priced – do you know the most expensive goodies?
Saffron
If your figure shines like gold, it is likely he was preparing with saffron .
Spice, earned the nickname “red gold ” – a bright orange pterostigma, or stigma, flower crocus, which is used as a food coloring. And she appreciated not just “weight in gold”, it is more expensive than gold, if you compare the price per gram. But why saffron is so expensive?
The reasons are simple. Saffron crocus bloom only for a week or two a year, in the autumn; Spice collection time-consuming, because they can be harvested and processed by hand.
Each little flower only three stigmas, that is, per kilogram of saffron requires about two football fields crocuses . This 300,000 colors.
Caviar
Sturgeon roe is considered one of the greatest delicacies in the world. It is difficult to process and pack, but, more importantly, it is very small in nature. The most famous caviar – beluga caviar is fish sturgeon family, inhabiting the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea.
Since the beluga is endangered, then legally you can sell a very small amount of her calves.
To begin producing caviar, beluga require up to two decades, but to extract eggs, the fish must be killed.
Another less common sturgeon caviar albino, this species is almost completely extinct in the wild.
According to the ” Guinness Book of Records “, has become the most expensive caviar elderly individuals beluga albino at the age of about 100 years. Her white eggs were sold for 34 and a half thousand dollars per kilogram.
oysters
Oysters, which are now considered to be a luxury, not always treat the secured class.
At the beginning of the XIX century, oysters were cheap as potatoes, they ate simple hard workers and villagers. There were so many that oysters stuffed pies. But overfishing and pollution dramatically affected the oyster stocks, and the deficit will increase their costs.
Prices are in various restaurants of the world vary, but a dozen of these molluscs in one of London’s finest seafood restaurants will cost you about $ 65. At the famous Borough market you can buy oysters at 10 pounds (13 dollars) for 8 pieces, but serves them on a paper plate and crush. On the coast – even cheaper, but still accessible to all of their product can not be called.
Truffle
So highly prized white truffle is one of the most rare subterranean mushroom in the world, find it very difficult. It grows only in the region of Piedmont in northern Italy among the roots of certain trees. The white truffle is much rarer than any other.
White variety has a very intense taste and aroma, making it even more attractive. They can not cultivate or get artificial conditions: for centuries, people have tried to grow truffles, but they still can get only in the wild.
It is this unpredictability, along with the complexity of collecting, are the cause of such a high cost.
A record amount for a single white truffle paid the owner of a casino in Macau Stanley Ho in 2007. He gave 330 thousand dollars for one of the biggest truffles found in the last decade – the weight of 1.5 kg. Unbelievable price for the underground fungus.
Iberian ham
This type of cured meat is produced in a certain area, located on the territory of Spain and Portugal, where live oak forests of the Iberian black pig (pork or mixed breed, at least half of the Iberian). This area is called Deheza. Where pigs roam freely and enjoy the acorns – and only acorns – before slaughter.
The classification of Iberian ham is very, very strict: jamon with “black label” is considered the best and is made from purebred Iberian pigs.
Furthermore, the ham doroguschy dried for 36 months, and sometimes up to 48 months, in special drying conditions.
According to the “Guinness Book of Records”, the most expensive jamon (a pork leg), which can be bought, it is a sort of Iberian «Manchado de Jabugo», which sells for 4080 dollars.
But the price is not so shocking when you consider that the pigs are grown in all three years, and their feet are dried for about four years.
Wagyu beef
Wagyu is translated simply as “Japanese beef”, but to get it can only be from one of the four species of Japanese cows. Meat tightly mixed with fat, which melts during the cooking process, which makes the steak tender and juicy. Such meat almost melts in your mouth.
Some fans say that it looks like a soft fish, collapsing while eating.
The high price is related to the process of growing: in order to qualify for the grade Wagyu cows should be grown and fed according to strict regulations, and the calves were given special food, to ensure the formation of fatty streaks – “marble.”
This beef can cost up to $ 640 per kilogram in Japan.
coffee Luwak
Technically, it is a drink, not the food, but because Luwak coffee is worth seven hundred dollars per kilogram, it certainly has a right to a place in this list.
Coffee lyuvak made from the coffee beans which have been eaten, partially digested, and then ejected from the feces Asian palm civet (marten) .
It does not sound very appetizing. But it is believed that coffee aroma is enhanced animal stomach acids – as the digestion and fermentation is added to the coffee beans a special flavor, flavor.
It is possible that this is just a gimmick, and the espresso obtained simply terrible, but to understand, you need to try.
There is this story and really sad aspect – for the poor civet: more and more animals are grown on spetsfermah where they live in cages, like hens, and where they were force-fed with coffee beans.
Foie gras
Foie gras – it’s very expensive pate made from duck or goose liver. Birds are fattened for this purpose to epic proportions – up to ten times more than usual.
As a result, it turns fragrant paste, bold and delicate.
Lovers of gourmet delicacy willing to pay for a high price. But the real high price paid birds themselves – for fatty liver of ducks and geese are fed corn through feeding tubes.
This practice, four and a half thousand years. Then the ancient Egyptians discovered that the meat of many birds becomes much more fragrant after artificial overfeeding.
Today, many countries have laws prohibiting this practice, the manufacture, importation or sale of foie gras, but the product is still popular.