The captivating richness of Lee Kum Kee’s Truffle XO Sauce is the fruit of Lee Kum Kee’s love for creating the perfect sauce. To make each jar, Lee Kum Kee’s master craftsmen carefully combine the best scallops and black truffles available, with a myriad other ingredients to achieve the perfect balance of XO sauce’s richness, and truffle’s depth and aroma.
Lee Kum Kee’s Truffles XO Sauce is an exquisite blend of generations of Eastern and Western culinary heritage. The finest scallops and the deep richness of black truffles combine to enhance the flavor of any dish, whether Chinese or Western.
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For centuries, the enticing taste, delicate perfume, and extreme rarity of truffles have driven gourmands into dizzying frenzy. For many, there is nothing as unique and as perfect as the truffle, diamond of the kitchen.
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For centuries, truffles have taken pride of place on the tables of society’s elites. Ancient Egyptian, Greek, and Roman literature all contain references to truffles and in the 1600s, Italian Catherine de’ Medici introduced truffles to French royalty. To this day, truffles are sought after by national leaders and the upper echelons of society. In ancient times, as today, the gift of a truffle bestows honour on both giver and receiver.
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Black truffles grow only on the roots of a few species of trees, though their relationship is strongest with the Holm Oak tree. In return for growing on roots, truffles help trees absorb phosphorus from the soil, helping them grow healthy and strong.
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In Italy, truffles are hunted by many breeds of dog, but among them, female Lagotto Romagnolos are considered the best. Bred in ancient Italy, the breed is blessed with an extraordinary sense of smell and intelligence. Each one is trained from a young age to signal a truffle’s location to the truffle hunter and will only obey one hunter.
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Once found, a truffle is carefully dug out by hand. Disturbed soil is then gently replaced to preserve the root for future truffles. This hunt for truffles is intricately tied to fate and luck. Sometimes a hunter will find a wealth of truffles, and other times they will go home with nothing.
Once revealed, truffles are painstakingly selected by truffle experts based on scent, shape, size, and colour. A quality truffle exudes the rich, intense aroma that has made truffles famous, sits heavily in the hand, is round and can reach the size of an orange.
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The unequalled taste of quality truffles comes from abundant umami, one of the five basic tastes. It is responsible for the truffle’s rich, earthy, dense, and mysterious taste.
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The rich aroma and delectable taste of Italian truffles are prized by gourmet chefs the world over. That is why Lee Kum Kee uses only the best Italian truffles, each one lovingly dug from the pristine forests of Italy’s Bologna Hills, one of the country’s most renowned truffle sites.
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Nestled in the valley nearby is the ancient city of Savigno, truffle capital of North East Italy. It is here that Lee Kum Kee brings its truffles for sorting. Savigno is intensely passionate about truffles and each year it celebrates them with the Savigno Truffle Festival, and an extremely competitive truffle dog race to find the best truffle dog in Italy.
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Only the best truffles are selected for Lee Kum Kee’s TXO Sauce. Each truffle is carefully washed in a custom made truffle cleaning machine and then washed by hand. Afterwards, the best ones are chosen so that only perfect truffles reach Lee Kum Kee’s sauce masters.
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