Avo on toast, flat whites, Tim Tams and now…chicken salt. For a country that supposedly doesn’t have a cuisine, Aussie staples are making big waves overseas.

Given that lamingtons, pavlova and Vegemite are already well-known, and half the world’s food press was in Sydney for Noma’s Sydney pop-up, it was only a matter of time before the next big thing hit.

Would it be crocodile fat?  Or abalone schnitties, such as the ones that had food critics across the globe swooning?

Nope. It’s the humble chicken salt that has New Yorkers going nuts at the moment, thanks to Perth-born, Sydney-trained chef Thomas Lim, who learnt his craft under the famed Tetsuya Wakuda.

At Dudley’s Deli, in New York, the expat chef creates his own umami-fuelled seasoning by roasting chicken skins to render our the fat, and then braising and dehydrating them. The dry skins are then ground with mushroom powder, two kinds of salt, garlic and onion powders and pepper for a next-level take on the fish-and-chip shop staple.

“Aussies travel in packs in the United States, so if you meet one, you meet twenty. And when Aussies get together, the conversation inevitably turns to chicken salt, how it’s not available in the States, and how it should be. Everyone wants to export it or recreate it but it turns out that complaining about not having it is easier than doing either,” Lim wrote for food bible Lucky Peach.

His gourmet creation sells for US$6 (around $8 dollarydoos for us folk down under). We haven’t tried it, but we’re betting it’s way more delicious that the white shaker version from the local fish and chipper.