Grass

This fascinating story made me wonder if you can get cheese and onion grass as an alternative…

Salt and vinegar flavoured grass may sound like a bonkers Willy Wonka creation, but the real thing has been found growing in a remote part of the Australian desert.

Researchers were analysing samples of spinifex, a type of drought-resistant grass endemic to Australia, when one of the team licked their hand and instantly recognised a familiar taste.

“We were doing late night experiments, handling specimens of that species,” University of Western Australia (UWA) biologist, Matthew Barrett, told ABC.

“Someone licked their hand at some point and tasted that flavour.”

Dr Barrett, along with UWA PhD student Ben Anderson, discovered eight new species of spinifex in Western Australia, with the unique flavour coming from droplets on the grass that “sparkle in the sunlight”.

“It looks pretty inconspicuous when you first get to it, but if you look at it very closely it has very, very minute sparkling droplets on the stems,” he added.