Luxury Ingredients: The Most Expensive Food You Can Buy

$3,740 The Japanese Densuke melon is a 17-pound black watermelon. Harder, crisper, and sweeter than typical cultivars, only about 65 of these prized fruits are harvested each year. In 2011, a Densuke was auctioned off for $3,740 in Japan. This bargain price is a true sign of the recession: Just a few years back, a Densuke was sold for $8,100. Find recipes with watermelon

$1,300 per 16-ounce strip steak Since the 1800s, the Japanese have taken extraordinary care with raising and breeding Wagyu (which means "Japanese-style cattle") beef. To achieve this "caviar of beef" standard (which produces consistently marbled, low-cholesterol, highly tender meat), farmers will go to great lengths, including hand-feeding the cows, regularly massaging them with oil to soften and distribute the subcutaneous fat, and getting them tipsy on beer to stimulate their appetite. Instead of breaking the bank on the beef from Japan, try an a Kobe-style American Wagyu beef strip steak, which are bred from the same type of cow and raised in a similar fashion as their Japanese counterparts. At an average of about $50 per 12-ounce steak, these heavily marbled beauties are a fraction of the price. Find recipes with steak

starting at $300 per pound Kopi Luwak is known as the world's rarest, smoothest, most flavorful, and most expensive coffee. Only 500 pounds of these beans are produced each year on the Indonesian Island of Sumatra, and it's no easy feat. First, consider how it's produced: Coffee grows as a seed inside a fruit similar to a cherry. The Palm Civet — a smallish, carnivorous forager that looks like a tropical raccoon — looks for the sweetest coffee cherries to swallow whole. The animal digests the fruit only, and the undigested coffee beans pass through. Then the beans are collected, cleaned, and roasted like regular beans. Palm Civets have unique natural enzymes in their bellies that penetrate the coffee beans and cause 25 otherwise unreachable flavors in the bean to be released during brewing, while simultaneously neutralizing the coffee's bitter oils. Who wouldn't want to wake up to that? Test your coffee knowledge with our fun quiz!

$70-$1,060,000 per bottle Diva Vodka is wheat-based, triple distilled, filtered through Nordic birch charcoal, and then filtered through precious gems. A glass tube runs through the center, filled with 48 crystals for garnishing. The crystals are prepared by hand and come in unique combinations so that each bottle is tailored to its owner. Its price ranges depending on the semi-precious and precious stone content. Find vodka cocktail recipes

$30-$40 per kilo (2.2 lbs) Produced from the stigma of a Crocus sativus flower, saffron spice commands a hefty price tag, in part because of the labor-intensive gathering process. To produce one single pound of saffron threads, harvesters must hand-pick 225,000 stigmas from 75,000 blossoms. Plus, saffron crocuses only bloom for three weeks of the year, adding a time-crunch to this process. Originally employed in ancient Egypt, Rome, and China as a dye, a perfume ingredient, and in the kitchen, saffron is used in small amounts to add aroma and color to dishes like paella, risotto, and bouillabaisse. Find recipes with saffron

$1,280 per 15-pound bone-in ham Each step in the preparation of Jamón Ibérico de Bellota Ham is key in securing its perfection. The Ibérico hogs are the original swine of Spain. Their particularly high fat content allows for a prolonged curing period and extra flavor, which is greatly enhanced by the pigs' diet of acorns. Once butchered, the hams are hung in factories with open windows and caressed by the mountain air for at least 2 years, producing dark red meat that's sweet, nutty, and melt-in-your-mouth tender. In January 2010, a leg of Ibérico ham went on sale for 1,800 euros at London retailer Selfridges flagship store. The 15-pound ham leg comes with its own DNA certificate as proof of authenticity.

$54 per bottle Produced on the Greek island of Crete, the Koroneiki olives used to make Lambda are harvested by hand. Koroneiki olives are known to be the best Greek variety available, having a famous fruity flavor. They are cold pressed within 10 hours of picking. The oil is later packaged by hand in a sleek 500 ml bottle. But can one really taste the difference? Probably. The oil is said to have a distinct fruity flavor and slight peppery tones. It also has an extremely low acidity - 0.19%, as compared to average extra virgin oils, which vary between 0.1 and 0.8%. Find 8 great non-cooking uses for olive oil

$30-$40 per kilo (2.2 lbs) The Macadamia nut's intimidating price tag stems from its many purposes. Not only is it buttery and delicious tasting, but the nut's high oil content is useful in cosmetics, especially in skin care products. It takes a Macadamia tree 7 to 10 years to produce nuts, and the nuts must be cracked before sold. Their shells are so tough, they would break a standard home-use nutcracker. Find recipes with macadamia nuts

$1,000 per pound Matsutake Mushrooms weren't always so ridiculously expensive. In fact, they were once quite reasonably priced. But now, in Japan and Okinawa, they're facing extinction. Due to an increase in nematodes, which kill the trees these mushrooms grow under, the amount harvested has been cut in half. Still, people see out these regal-looking mushrooms with massive stems the size of sugar cane stalks. They have a strong, spicy flavor and scent paired with a meaty texture. If you're not willing to shell out for this Japanese variety of the matsutake, don't fret. You can find a more frugal variation of the mushroom growing along the Washington coast and sold in Canada, Oregon, Idaho, and Northern California. Find recipes with mushrooms

$7 per ounce of whole beans Vanilla is the second most expensive spice, following saffron. This is due to the extensive period of fermentation and aging that is required to bring out the vanillin flavor in these orchid pods, which takes about 2 1/2 years all together. Before hand pollination became a widespread practice, only royalty and the super-wealthy cooked with vanilla, because so little vanilla grows naturally. The orchid flower that produces vanilla pods bloom and die within a few hours, creating a precious small window for natural pollination to occur. Find recipes with vanilla

$200 per ounce Available from September to December, white truffles are a gourmet indulgence that'll cost you — around $200 an ounce, which amounts to about 2 pieces. These special mushrooms, which can only be located by trained pigs or dogs, are found in the Piedmont region of Italy and are becoming increasingly rare every year. Precious white truffles are usually eaten raw, shaved into thin slices over anything from pasta to omelets and chicken. For a more affordable taste of this revered fungus, try a bottle of white truffle oil. An 8.5-ounce bottle of white truffle oil runs anywhere from $20 to $40. A white truffle from Pisa, Italy, went for a record-setting $333,000 in 2007.

starting at $5,200 per pair We'll eat half a garden-variety cantaloupe in one sitting without thinking twice. Not so with the Yubari King cantaloupe, a prized Japanese melon that commands between $5,200 and $20,000 per 8-pound pair. These orange-fleshed orbs are grown only in the city of Yubari (much like true Champagne, which must come from the Champagne province of France) and are valued for their exquisite proportions and flavor. In 2010, the first two Yubari melons were auctioned for $16,000 total, bouncing back from a disappointing purchase price of $5,200 in 2009. Find recipes with melon