Sunday 25 September 2022 05:05 PM True story of the humble Aussie who invented chicken salt trends now
Outside of Peter Brinkworth's friends and family, few people know he invented chicken salt, or that it's even Australian.
Now the South Australian man, who is every bit as unpretentious as his creation, is getting his moment in the sun with a short film set to be released about the seasoning called Salt of the Earth.
'The other morning my wife kissed me and said 'I just kissed a film star',' Mr Brinkworth, now 81, tells Daily Mail Australia.
'I'm very flattered and I can't quite believe it to be honest.'
Outside of Peter Brinkworth's friends and family, few people know he invented chicken salt, or that it's even Australian
Chicken salt is celebrated in its hometown Gawler, especially in a restaurant named after the classic Aussie seasoning, which is called Extra Chicken Salt. It even has a chicken salt flavoured beer on tap
When compared to the greatest ever Australian inventions, chicken salt may not have saved lives as the black box flight recorder did, or even improved as many as the cochlear implant.
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But for its sheer popularity, which has seen chicken salt colonise every takeaway shop selling hot chips, it's the equal of any of them.
The film, called Salt of the Earth, recalls the origins of chicken salt and how far its come.
'You have to be amazed really, it was just an idea, but I suppose most good inventions just start out as someone's idea.'
Mr Brinkworth tells Daily Mail Australia he has 'no friggin' idea' how he came up with it or how much money he made from it.
But he damn well knows how good it is: good enough to put on his eggs every morning for breakfast and on his steaks, 50 years after he came up with the recipe.
Mr Brinkworth first mixed and sold chicken salt from the Gawler's Ozone Theatre, just above the roundabout in the above photo
Now the South Australian man, who is every bit as unpretentious as his creation, is getting his moment in the sun with a short film set to be released about the seasoning called Salt of the Earth
The son of a chicken farmer, Peter Brinkworth worked for his father and later his older brother, Tom, who eventually become one of Australia's largest pastoralists.
After a spell as a delivery driver, Peter opened his own chicken shop and a frozen chicken wholesale business in his 30s, just as chicken shops began to take off in South Australia.
'In the 1970s there were chicken shops everywhere in SA but hardly any interstate,' he remembers.
Mr Brinkworth sold the recipe and his chicken wholesale business to immigrant family company Mitani in 1979, which commercialised chicken salt
'We were in the industry and we had a chicken shop too, and I decided I wanted to put a flavour enhancer on the chickens on the rotisseries rather than a bit of this and that. So I concocted a mixture.'
It was in his shop, in the old Ozone Theatre, that he mixed up his first batches of chicken salt.
Mr Brinkworth doesn't remember how long it took him to get the mix right: 'I don't friggin' know, it was 50 years ago.
'I just mixed it up and that's what it is.'
He does admit that he did add 'unspecified herbs and spices' to the description as 'a bit of a joke'.
The recipe is no secret -
