Bloodwood Newtown owners, Claire and Mitch

Sydney’s Bloodwood Restaurant & Bar has long had an excellent reputation for its beer dinners.

Owners of the Newtown venue, chefs Mitchell Grady and Claire van Vuuren, have joined Australian Brews News as regular contributors, starting with a recipe for one of their signature dishes.

“We’ve been playing around with the hop flowers for awhile,” Grady says.

“We made a jus for one of our dinners and that turned out really well, better than I expected, because the flavour can be quite full-on.”

Grady says he and van Vuuren have used both dried Centennial and Galaxy hop flowers in the hop salt for this dish. Any flavour hop will do, but using it very sparingly is key.

“You don’t use too much – otherwise it’s gross. It’s an easy one, just mix it in with some salt.”

“The miso chicken’s quite sweet, so it gives it a little bit of bitterness, and the piney aroma comes through from the salt when you mix it in with the fried chicken,” he says.

The hop salt is an optional extra, so if you can’t get hold of the hop flowers, don’t despair. Bloodwood instead served the miso chicken with a salsa at the recent Great Australian Beer SpecTapular in Sydney.

From Bloodwood’s beer list, O’Grady has selected either Mikkeller MAD4 Bubble Sencha Beer or Nomad Freshie Salt & Pepper Gose to match with this dish.

Miso fried chicken, hop salt

Miso fried chicken, hop salt

Ingredients – miso chicken
4 boned skin on chicken thighs cut into 4-5 strips
100ml mirin
100ml rice vinegar
100g miso paste
200g rice flour

Mix all ingredients together and marinate in the fridge over night.

Hop salt
10g dried hops
100g sea salt

Pre heat oven to 180c. Mix hops and salt together on a tray and place in oven for 10min. Remove and cool to room temp. Grind together with your palms. Set aside in an airtight container for later use.

Heat 2L of cotton seed oil to 175c (you can test with a small piece of chicken, if it starts to bubble and float it is ready).

Toss chicken in potato flour until coated and fry until golden brown. Remove from oil and pat dry on paper towel. Sprinkle with hop salt and enjoy.

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