Fans shocked by odd ingredient in MasterChef winner's spaghetti bolognese

Fans have been left enlightened after former MasterChef Australia winner Adam Liaw shared the recipe for his spaghetti bolognese online.

Adam, who took out the coveted title back in 2010, took to his Instagram account to promote his weekly 15-minute online cooking class over Zoom.

Sharing the ingredient list for his bolognese sauce, Adam then revealed that he uses two teaspoons of Aussie staple Vegemite in the sauce, which we should have seen coming, considering the cooking class was in collaboration with Vegemite.

Calling it the “Aussiest spag bol ever”, the sauce also contained four slices of bread, which Adam described as a Vegemite toast pangrattato.

Despite many people having never tried the bizarre combination of flavours together, the majority of them who joined in with the call were delighted with how it turned out.

“People always look at me strangely when I say I put Vegemite in spag bol, now I feel like I’ve been validated,” one person wrote.

‘This just changed my life!! Somehow my whole life growing up as an Asian-Australian kid, I had this story in my head that “I don’t like vegemite” (which also went with a childhood doubt that I was not Australian enough). I’ve always identified with favourite flavours like miso, dashi, soy, savoury umami Asian flavours. But now I’m living in quarantine overseas and my Aussie husband ordered 12 jars of vegemite to last the lockdown. He’s been eating vegemite every day, multiple times a day, and I didn’t even try it. After seeing your post, I had a revelation and went running into the kitchen shouting “Vegemite is umami!!!!” And immediately made myself vegemite on toast for the first time in my life and absolutely LOVED it. Haha I feel whole. You make me feel proudly Asian-Australian, AND my life just got a whole lot more delicious,” another person wrote.

Adam’s Zoom series comes as the new season of MasterChef Back To Win has hit our screens with the bang.

As contestants battle it out to take out the trophy, Adam can no doubt relate to a lot of the pressures they are dealing with.

Back in February, Adam spoke with The Guardian about spending seven months in “what the television world calls ‘lockdown’.”

“No television, radio or newspapers. One 10-minute phone call with our loved ones a week. Every moment, waking or otherwise, was spent supervised or chaperoned between either ‘the house”’– a multimillion-dollar harbourside mansion in Sydney’s ritzy Elizabeth Bay – or the production studio in Alexandria,” he wrote.

Adam went on to say that while it was “oppressive” it also “represented a kind of freedom” as they weren’t allowed to have access to their mobile phones so had no social media to check and no stresses from the outside world.

The top chef went on to say that while it helps the contestants to focus, it’s also why you “see a reality TV contestant weeping over a burned scallop” as they’ve got tunnel vision on the task at hand.

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