Gurd Loyal's Bonfire-buttermilk Korean fried chicken · Rach Pilston
Gurd Loyal’s second and latest book Flavour Heroes, celebrates a well stocked and flavourful pantry with recipes that break all the rules of how ingredients ought to be used, and instead lean into the full flavours that every ingredient has to offer. Here, Gurd makes a hero of our go-to ingredient Pure Sea Salt Smoked over Oak.
From Gurd: ‘I am something of a pyromaniac. Not so much for the love of fire per se, but for all those smoky-tobacco, bonfire flavours that I am near-on obsessed with. Barbecued ribs, flame-toasted marshmallows, pan-charred sausages, flambéed crêpes, hot-iron smash burgers – anything that promises the taste of flames makes me salivate! With this in mind, there are two ingredients that I’m never without – oak-smoked sea salt and smoked water from the brilliant people at Halen Môn in Wales. The sweet heat of gochujang, combined with the scorched salinity of smoked salt spark in this fried chicken recipe. An explosion on the taste buds, without the flames; sometimes you really can have smoke without fire.’
Photography by Patrica Niven for Penguin Random House publishing.