The most expensive mushrooms in the world, and which of them you can grow yourself

Every autumn the stories go round about a million-euro truffle or a Japanese mushroom that fetches hundreds per piece. They are usually true. Mushrooms are among the most expensive food on earth, and the reason is almost always the same: they cannot be cultivated. Almost always. Here is the price list from top to bottom, with an honest answer for each species on whether you can grow it at home.

Caterpillar fungus: over twenty thousand euros per kilo

The Tibetan caterpillar fungus, Ophiocordyceps sinensis, grows out of a dead caterpillar on the high plateaus of Tibet and Nepal and is traded in China as a tonic at prices approaching gold. Growable: no. The fungus needs the caterpillar and the altitude, and nobody has brought it into culture. Its cousin Cordyceps militaris, orange, grown on rice in controlled rooms, is cultivated. That strain sits in our library but will not become a product: in the EU, Cordyceps militaris may not be sold as food, see our piece on that.

White truffle: three to six thousand euros per kilo

The white truffle from Alba is the most famous. It grows underground in partnership with the roots of oak, poplar and lime, and is hunted with dogs. Growable: no, at least not the white one. Black truffles are farmed by planting oaks inoculated with truffle mycelium and waiting seven to ten years, and that now happens north of the Alps too. But a truffle in a grow kit does not exist and never will, for the reason explained in this piece: no tree, no truffle.

Matsutake: a thousand euros per kilo and up

Matsutake is to Japan what the truffle is to Italy: an autumn luxury eaten with reverence, smelling of cinnamon and pine. It lives in partnership with the roots of the Japanese red pine, and the Japanese harvest has collapsed so far in recent decades that most matsutake now comes from Korea, China and even Scandinavia. Growable: no. People have been trying for fifty years. To get close to the flavour, Japanese cooks suggest grilling a fresh donko shiitake with a drop of soy.

Morels: hundreds of euros per kilo fresh

Morels are a case apart. They are not mycorrhizal, so in theory growable, and China has been farming them outdoors on a large scale for about ten years with a method that sometimes works and sometimes does not. In Europe it remains at the level of trials and "morel seed" scattered in gardens with a success rate nobody dares to quote. Growable: technically yes, practically not yet at home. We do not sell it until we can do it reliably ourselves.

Porcini and chanterelle: tens of euros per kilo

Europe's two best-known forest mushrooms, both mycorrhizal, both only found wild. Growable: no. Sweden has trials with pines inoculated with chanterelle, and there is a trade in "chanterelle spores" for the garden that yields nothing. Anyone who wants to eat them goes to the woods or the market.

Maitake: twenty to fifty euros per kilo, and growable

Here the list turns. Maitake, hen of the woods, was a wild delicacy in Japan until the 1970s, with foragers keeping their spots secret; the name means "dancing mushroom", after the little dance you did on finding one. Then it was successfully grown on sawdust blocks, and it is now a supermarket product in Japan. Here it is still expensive and rare in shops, but growable: as a grow kit indoors, or with plug spawn on a thick oak for the patient. Deep, almost meaty flavour, and one of the most beautiful mushrooms to watch grow.

Lion's mane: twenty to forty euros per kilo, and easy to grow

Fresh in the shop, lion's mane is one of the most expensive cultivated mushrooms, because it is fragile and travels badly. At home it is one of the most rewarding: a grow kit produces within two weeks a white ball that would cost a small fortune in a shop, tasting of crab, see the recipes. The entire reason it is expensive disappears the moment it sits on your kitchen table.

Donko shiitake: a hundred euros per kilo dried, and growable on a log

Ordinary shiitake is cheap. But thick, cracked hanadonko, dried, from Japan, fetches prices that approach truffle per gram of flavour. That product is essentially a thick shiitake grown slowly in the cold and then sun-dried, which is exactly what a donko log on an oak in an ordinary garden does too. Anyone with a thick oak, patience and a drying rack grows the most expensive product on this list that a normal garden can produce.

The lesson of the list

What makes a mushroom expensive is rarely the flavour and almost always the growability. The species at the top are no tastier than a maitake from your own log, they are just unreachable. And the three at the bottom prove that "expensive" is a temporary state: maitake was as unreachable forty years ago as matsutake is now. Grow those three and you eat for a few tens of euros what costs an evening in a restaurant. That may be the best sum in the whole nursery.