Truffle Salt Substitutes: Homemade, Porcini Salt, Parmigiano and Truffle Oil

Out of truffle salt? The best substitute is a batch you make yourself from sea salt and dried truffle, and it’s less of a project than it sounds: on the labels that say, truffle is only 1 to 5 percent of the jar. Any salt can handle the salting; the truffle smell is the hard part. Without truffle, porcini salt comes closest, because porcini and truffles share a key aroma compound. Grated Parmigiano and a few drops of truffle oil can each cover part of the job, with some catches worth knowing.

Quick answer

How the ratios on this page are labeled

Every ratio carries one of four labels.

• Computed: based on a measurable physical relationship.
• Attributed: a named source publishes this ratio. We quote it as theirs.
• Disputed: named sources give different answers to the same swap. You get each one, side by side.
• Method: our starting point, based on how the two compare. Taste and adjust.

The salt is the easy part

Ratio (Computed): Truffle salt is mostly sea salt, with truffle at 1 to 5 percent on the labels that say.¹²³ The American Heart Association says table salt, kosher salt and most sea salts are about 40 percent sodium,⁴ so the same weight of plain salt seasons about the same. If you’re swapping by the spoon and your plain salt is finer than your truffle salt, start with less.

If it is finishing fries, popcorn, eggs or pasta

1. Make your own

Sellers suggest truffle salt for fries, popcorn, filet mignon, pasta, roasted vegetables and eggs.¹ To make your own, you need sea salt and dried truffle. Here’s what named products put in theirs:

Ratio (Attributed): Marini Tartufi’s label gives the most usable figure: 1.5 percent freeze-dried truffle, which it equates to 7.5 percent fresh.² That works out to about 1.5 g of freeze-dried truffle, finely ground, per 100 g of salt. It’s one maker’s recipe, not a measured standard. Other labels run from 1 to 5 percent.

Expect less aroma than a store-bought jar. Three of the four products list a flavoring next to the truffle, and the seller of the Casina Rossa salt describes it as “a touch of truffle essence for balance and longevity.”¹ Dried truffle on its own may well be milder, though no source has measured that.

2. Porcini salt

Porcini (Boletus edulis) is the most useful truffle stand-in for aroma. Its main aroma compound, 1-octen-3-ol,⁶ is also high in truffles.⁷ Those findings come from different studies and different samples (fresh porcini from Turkey; commercial truffle samples), so they show a shared compound, not equal strength.

Where porcini falls short: white truffle has its own marker compound, which was absent or low in black truffles,⁷ and no porcini study we read reports it. If your recipe means white truffle salt, porcini will be further off. The porcini study also used fresh mushrooms. It didn’t test dried porcini.

Ratio (Method): Grind dried porcini to a fine powder and start with about 1 teaspoon of powder per 2 tablespoons of sea salt. Taste it on a potato chip or a bit of buttered bread, and add more porcini if you want it stronger.

If it is giving savory depth to pasta, risotto or potatoes

Parmigiano Reggiano

Parmigiano does a different job. It doesn’t share truffle’s aroma, but it brings salt and savory depth. The wheels are salted by soaking in brine,⁸ and Parmesan is high in free glutamic acid, the compound behind savory umami taste.⁹

Ratio (Method): Grate it over the finished dish, then taste before adding any other salt. The cheese is salted in brine, so you’ll usually need less.

If you want the aroma and can use a little oil

Truffle oil plus plain salt

Truffle oil can bring the aroma while plain salt does the salting. Know what you’re buying, though. In the 2017 study, both naturally and artificially flavored truffle oils were dominated by the white-truffle marker, even in most oils flavored as black truffle, and neither kind did a good job of replicating the aroma of the truffles examined.⁷

Ratio (Computed): Use the same weight of plain salt as truffle salt, as above. Ratio (Method): Add a few drops of oil to the finished dish, toss, and taste. It’s easy to overdo.

What isn’t known

• No study we found analyzes truffle salt’s own aroma, so we don’t know how much the flavorings contribute.
• The porcini and truffle aroma figures come from separate studies of different samples. No study compares the two directly.
• Porcini is often said to be much cheaper than truffle. We didn’t find a price source, so we don’t give figures.

Related

• Truffle salt, sea salt, sea salt substitutes, table salt
• Fleur de sel, fleur de sel substitutes, Maldon sea salt, smoked sea salt, black lava salt
• Mushroom spices, spices for scrambled eggs, seasonings for fries
• MSG substitutes, MSG vs. salt