10 Most Expensive Edible Mushroom Varieties

They may be not be typically considered the most expensive of foods (a place held by oysters and caviar and probably other vaguely fishy things), but for real epicureans, certain mushrooms are a delicacy well worth paying for. If you’re tired of the closed cup and button mushroom, why not see if your bank account will stretch as far as any of these? Because this is the internet, I’m going to talk in a bit more detail on each of these – but for the discerning individual that just cannot wait to discover the most expensive mushroom due to some kind of expensive mushroom emergency, they are as follows:

1. Cordyceps Sinensis (Yartsa Gunbu) – Approx. £5000 per 100g (dried)
2. Tuber magnatum (European White Truffle) - £1500 - £12500 per 100g (fresh)
3. Tuber melanosporum (Black Truffle) – £200 - £300 per 100g (fresh)
4. Tricholoma matsutake (Matsutake Mushroom) - £170 per 100g (dried)
5. Morchella esculenta (Morel Mushroom) - £40 per 100g (dried)
6. Hericium erinaceus (Lion’s Mane Mushroom) - £20 per 100g (dried)
7. Boletus edulis (Porcini Mushroom) - £11 per 100g (dried)
8. Cantharellus cibarius (Chantarelle Mushroom) - £5 per 100g (dried)
9. Lentinula edodes (Shiitake Mushroom) – £1.10 per 100g (fresh)
10. Flammulina velutipes (Enokitake or Enoki Mushroom) - £1 per 100g (fresh)

Now for the bit where I cover more information than is strictly necessary, and that you could ever possibly need to know, in order to try and rank on search engines for the little bit above. I’ll try to make it as interesting as I can…

1. Cordyceps Sinensis (Yartsa Gunbu) – Approx. £5000 per 100g (dried)

Honestly, for my underdeveloped palette and vegetarian lifestyle, these are right out. The fact that you’d be looking at five grand for a decent omelette is just an added discouragement. You see, the cordyceps sinensis – like many other of the cordyceps genus – are what are called entomopathogenic fungi. This means that they often parasitise various insects and arthropods (on rare occasions leading to zombie apocalypses).

In the case of cordyceps sinensis, the particular insect it parasitises is the ghost moth (more specifically its larvae) in which it germinates before mummifying the larva and fruiting from its body. If that’s got your mouth watering, you’ll need to be careful as – despite its use in traditional Tibetan medicine and the fact that it’s literally more expensive than gold – it contains rather a lot of arsenic.

While I’m sure it’s lovely, I’m afraid it will forever remain one of the many things I won’t try due to a lack of money and a distaste for its origins – like the conservative party.

2. Tuber magnatum (European White Truffle) - £1500 - £12500 per 100g (fresh)

Weirdly, the cost of this one varies depending on the size of the truffle – you’d pay significantly more, for example, for a single one-hundred-gram truffle than you would for several with an equal overall weight. Which, as a fat man, strikes me as a progressive attitude to take, and I look forward to being valued equivalent to my mass.

Truffles, unlike the cordyceps, are symbiotic rather than parasitic – and the European White Truffle grows alongside beech, hazel, oak and poplar trees. Strictly no moth murder required. Generally found in Southern Europe, the truffle possesses a deep, earthy taste with hints of garlic, and has been known to grow to weigh more than a kilogram – with one such portly specimen, a 1.5kg whopper, being sold to a casino magnate for around £165,000.

The price is generally considered to be driven by rarity and difficulty in cultivation. Even those places that do cultivate them still require expertly trained animals to find them (dogs, I was almost disappointed to discover, as pigs kept eating the truffles they found – which seems pretty fair to me) as their mycorrhizal fungal filaments cannot be directed – meaning that they don’t stay where you put them. Fungi after my own heart.

3. Tuber melanosporum (Black Truffle) – £200 - £300 per 100g (fresh)

The black truffle, like its cousin tuber magnatum, is a symbiotic tuber and has formed a relationship with deciduous trees, predominantly in France, Italy and Spain (producing 45%, 20% and 30% of all black truffles respectively), which the truffle protects by supressing the growth of competing flora around the base of its host. However, it’s not just their trees that truffles seek to ingratiate themselves with – in fact they produce a chemical called anandamide, which acts in a similar way to endocannabinoids in cannabis, making truffles addictive and capable of provoking a ‘high’.

Weird, really, that such an expensive and, therefore, generally upper echelon fungus should be legal…

Anyway, the black truffle price is also dependent on the size of individual truffles, though its growing scarcity is also likely to drive up prices – as well as the difficulty of cultivation – with France seeing drops in production from up to 1,000 tonnes in 1937 to between 20 and 50 tonnes according to the most recent available data.

Unlike the white truffle, the aroma of the black truffle (similar but milder) intensifies rather than diminishes with heat – making it ideal for shaving on to soups, risotto, and other cooked dishes.

4. Tricholoma matsutake (Matsutake Mushroom) - £170 per 100g (dried)

A phrase I could never have imagined writing: the matsutake is the first vaguely mushroomy looking mushroom to occur at the top of the most valuable mushroom list.

The matsutake is also another symbiotic fungus, and grows in the litter layer of forests where it interacts with the root network of host trees, indeed its name (at least its common Japanese name) comes from matsu and take meaning ‘pine tree’ and ‘mushroom’ respectively.

While the mushroom has been consumed in Japan since the neolithic period, its odour (which also gives it a secondary scientific name tricholoma nauseosum) meant that it remained largely a Japanese delicacy. Unfortunately, the pinewood nematode bursaphelenchus xylophilus, as well as climate change, have reduced the capacity of Japanese production and the overall availability of the mushroom in general.

It is now considered a vulnerable species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The matsutake is also the star of a critique of capitalism called The Mushroom at the End of the World which is an excellent book and well worth a read (not to mention being far cheaper than the matsutake mushroom).

5. Morchella esculenta (Morel Mushroom) - £40 per 100g (dried)

Despite looking like the homes of a nightmare species of arachnids seeking to invade earth from a Lovecraftian otherworld (the arachnids themselves probably look like the Devil's Finger), the morel is said to possess a pleasantly meaty texture and an earthy, nutty, vaguely smoky taste (the latter may be influenced somewhat by its pyrophilic tendencies – they are often found following medium intensity forest fires due to increased soil alkalinity).

Like the rest of the top five most expensive edible mushrooms, attempts to cultivate the morel have been largely unsuccessful and the commercial morel market relies on the harvesting of wild mushrooms. However, they are a present across continents in the northern hemisphere, and have formed symbiotic relationships with several tree species throughout Europe and North America – and are the basis for at least three mushroom-based festivals in the latter: the Illinois State Morel Mushroom Hunting Championship, the Ottawa Midwest Morel Fest and the Mesick Michigan Mushroom Festival.

As a spring fruiting mushroom, one of the advantages of the morel is that it seldom co-occurs with common toxic fungal varieties – though they can grow alongside the ‘false morel’ gyromitra esculenta which, honestly, is one of the few things with a more disturbing appearance than the morel itself.

6. Hericium erinaceus (Lion’s Mane Mushroom) - £20 per 100g (dried)

Either a parasite or a saprophytic, or possibly even an endophyte the lion’s mane mushroom is commonly found growing on dead hardwood trees (saprophytic behaviour) but is sometimes found on living trees (possible parasitism) but without seeming to cause harm (possible indication of endophytic behaviour).

Despite its seeming ability to thrive using a variety of methods (or make up it's mind, one or the other), the mushroom is actually the subject of conservation efforts in the UK and picking and sale of the fungus is illegal. Lion’s Mane is commercially available as an import, however, and is said to have a flavour akin to lobster. It is also commonly used in traditional Chinese medicine and, unlike many of the top ten, has been successfully cultivated commercially throughout Asia.

The fruiting body of the lion’s mane mushroom produces clumps of long spines which gave it its name – and is also the source of many of its colloquial names (such as the ‘bearded hedgehog’). To my mind, it would not look out of place under water and may well be a secret agent operating on behalf of sea anemones seeking to overthrow human dominion of the land.

7. Boletus edulis (Porcini Mushroom) - £11 per 100g (dried)

Another mushroomy looking mushroom, porcini marks the point of the top ten that denotes where they become a slightly more omeletteable price. With a creamy texture and a nutty taste, porcini mushrooms have been a staple of Italian cooking for thousands of years. However, they’re another symbiotic mushroom variety that proves difficult to cultivate and so are most often found dried.

Fortunately, the porcini retains its taste extremely well during the drying process. Porcini mushrooms, while prized as an edible fungus, also hint at a part of the wider future of fungus – it is capable of growing in areas considered polluted by heavy metals. The mushroom produces chelating agents which store heavy metals in a detoxified form in the mushroom’s tissue. While mushrooms grown in these conditions become toxic themselves, they become agents of something called mycoremediation, a process whereby an environment is decontaminated using mushrooms.

8. Cantharellus cibarius (Chantarelle Mushroom) - £5 per 100g (dried)

The common English name of the chantarelle originates from the Greek kantharos meaning either ‘tankard’ or ‘cup’ in reference to its shape – though the German name Pfifferling refers to its peppery taste instead.

The chantarelle is likely to be the first among the top ten that readers will be familiar with seeing in UK supermarkets as the orange or yellow funnels are among the most popular wild mushroom varieties. The chantarelle contains less water by weight than the average mushroom, and fewer water and alcohol soluble flavourings – meaning that they lend themselves well to dishes which are cooked in wine.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that their popularity is linked with the increased popularity of French cuisine in the 18th and 19th Century. Like most of the top ten, chantarelles are also difficult to cultivate – again, they require a complex symbiosis with specific tree varieties, making them another mushroom which is almost entirely gathered wild for commercial sale.

9. Lentinula edodes (Shiitake Mushroom) – £1.10 per 100g (fresh)

Readily available fresh, the shitake mushroom will be another mushroom familiar to UK shoppers. The reason for this is that it is among the easier mushroom types to cultivate – and has been cultivated commercially for more than 900 years in China where a 185-word description of its cultivation was found in the records of a Chinese prefecture during the Song dynasty (960 – 1279 CE).

Commonly used in East Asian cuisine, the mushroom has a meaty texture and rich, buttery taste which develops through cooking, they became a Japanese staple following a book by Japanese horticulturist Satō Chūryō (佐藤中陵) in 1796 and it is from the Japanese practice of cultivation – using logs from felled Shii trees – that the mushroom gets its name: shii for the tree and take meaning mushroom.

10. Flammulina velutipes (Enokitake or Enoki Mushroom) - £1 per 100g (fresh)

The enokitake is the only one in this top ten where the cultivated mushroom will be more familiar than the wild variety. The long stemmed, pale enoki common to Asian cooking is in fact the result of extensive cultivation – while the wild mushroom is far shorter and varies in colour from a pinky orange to a deep brown.

The mushroom has a crisp texture and a subtle, savoury flavour that lends itself to soups, salads and noodle dishes. The common name is of the same formulation as the other Japanese names on the list – the enoki being the deciduous tree it commonly grows on in the wild, with the take suffix meaning mushroom. To achieve the long, slender stem prized by cultivators, the mushroom is grown in CO2 rich environments.

Again, this aspect of its cultivation hints at the use of mushrooms and other fungal species in other areas – mushrooms play a vital role in natural carbon sequestration and are often overlooked by climate activists. However, mushroom habitats are at risk from nitrogen pollution caused by industrial fertiliser – making it important for all of us that our mushroomy friends should be protected.