Matt Burgess
Matt and the EGG
As part of Big Green Egg’s 50th birthday celebrations, we’re sharing 50 brand-new recipes from an amazing cast of cooks. Next up is one of New Zealand’s greatest gifts to the British food world: the chef, fire-cooking expert and chilli sauce innovator Matt Burgess.
Matt, a proud Maori who spent seven years heading up the wildly popular Caravan restaurant group and now runs his own food consultancy, has an approach that’s typically Kiwi: a love of bold but balanced flavours and a complete rejection of arbitrary rules. He was already known as a barbecue master when he first got his hands on an EGG about seven years ago – and it blew his mind. “It’s like you’ve spent your whole life watching black and white TV, then all of a sudden you’re given an OLED screen,” he says. “I became obsessed with it.”
A CHAT WITH MATT
Almost as compelling a talker as he is a cook, Matt took time out to chat with us about his journey from adolescent troublemaker to big-name chef, his unconventional approach to flavour, and the night he celebrated his birthday with Kylie Minogue.
BACK TO BLAK
Giving a subtle kick to all three of Matt’s recipes is his very own Blak Fire condiment, a spicy soy chilli sauce offering a versatile blend of heat, spice and umami. “It’s got scotch bonnets in it, so it gives you an initial kick, but the heat turns off quite quickly and allows the spices – cinnamon, allspice, pimento – to really come through,” say Matt.
