Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28 delivered one of the warmest, funniest and most quotable mornings of the series, with Matt Tebbutt hosting chefs Donal Skehan and Asma Khan, drinks expert Helen McGinn and a special guest unlike any other: broadcaster, wordsmith and self-declared “very fishy” food lover Tom Read Wilson. Between harissa fried chicken, a watermelon curry with a remarkable backstory, supermarket wine finds and 100 tonnes of hash browns, the episode balanced serious cooking with genuine emotion and relentless wordplay.
The stakes, as ever, rested on the viewer vote. Would Tom face his food heaven — a whole roasted monkfish tail with samphire, broad beans and a chilled tomato consommé — or his food hell, a peanut butter and white chocolate blondie built from the two ingredients he detests most? The answer arrived at the end of the show, and it produced one of the most gushing verdicts a guest has ever given a studio dish.
Along the way, Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28 travelled from the slippery rocks of the Cornish coast with Rick Stein to a herb-filled garden in Provence with Marcus Wareing, before Nigel Slater rewrote the rules of surf and turf and Nigella Lawson turned holiday memories into steamed clams. It was a packed ninety minutes with something for cooks, drinkers, football fans and language lovers alike.
Matt Tebbutt introduced his special guest as a man whose “way with words can win in any situation,” and Tom Read Wilson spent the entire morning proving it. Within minutes he had described Matt’s welcome as “rhapsodic,” admitted he was “curdling with fear” ahead of his upcoming tour, and confessed that Helen McGinn had already heard a word in the make-up room she didn’t understand. The tour, beginning in Edinburgh, is built around an unusual conceit: an A–Z revue in which every letter of the alphabet reveals something about his life through sonnet, poem, song or tap dance.
Some letters, he admitted, fought back harder than others. J proved particularly stubborn until Irish inspiration arrived in the form of “the jacks,” Dublin slang for the loo. Tom recounted the origin story with theatrical relish: a man with 38 children who realised their “contemporaneous bowel movements” would overwhelm his domestic plumbing, built a five-cubicle outhouse, and inadvertently commercialised a piece of language. Matt confessed he had never heard the tale, but conceded it sounded convincing.
The food conversation carried equal drama. Tom’s heaven reads like a summer manifesto: monkfish, samphire, fresh broad beans, watercress — “the whole caboodle.” His hell, however, comes with a genuine origin story. As a child who already disliked peanut butter, he played a blindfolded condiment-tasting game at a New Year’s Eve party. The surprise mouthful sent him, in his words, “vomitoriously” over the edge. Peanut butter became his “absolute kryptonite,” with white chocolate close behind. Matt, naturally, threatened to combine both in a blondie.
Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28
Donal Skehan Celebrates Two Milestones With Harissa Fried Chicken
Donal Skehan returned to the show carrying two big numbers: he recently turned 40, and his programmes now air in 40 countries worldwide. “One for every year,” Matt noted, to which Donal replied simply, “I’m a hustler.” His studio dish honoured that international streak — harissa fried chicken, or as Matt christened it, DFC, a nod to the show’s previous MFC, Matt’s Fried Chicken.
The recipe drew on two chapters of Donal’s life. He described his love of Morocco, where he plans to return later this year to continue celebrating his wife’s 40th birthday in November, and his five years living in Los Angeles near the San Gabriel Valley, home to the largest Asian population outside Asia. A fabulously international LA restaurant that served exceptional fried chicken alongside a diverse potato salad inspired the pairing he brought to the studio.
Technique-wise, Donal packed the segment with practical detail. Chicken thighs delivered more flavour and texture than breast. White wine vinegar in the marinade tenderised the meat, though its acidity meant it shouldn’t sit too long. Rose harissa built the base, with a tip to seek out the fierier Tunisian version in a tube for extra heat. Crucially, cornflour mixed with plain flour created the shattering crispness, and a final dusting of dried harissa powder — blended with cardamom, paprika and more — landed on the chicken straight from the fryer. He served it with roast potato salad, maple bacon flattened under paper, quick-pickled onions for “vibrancy and punch,” and a herb-loaded aioli.
Donal also revealed his next moves: a new YouTube channel called Appetite, drawing on 15 years of making television in Ireland, with an ambition of reaching one million subscribers, plus Donal’s Italian Kitchen, filmed in Florence, Lucca and beyond, arriving on YouTube later in the year. Matt, meanwhile, needled him affectionately about looking “like a children’s TV presenter” despite the milestone birthday, recalling that Donal’s very first TV appearance, aged 22 or 23, happened alongside him. “You were so nice back then,” Donal shot back, “and you continue to be such a lovely man.”
Asma Khan’s Watermelon Curry Turns Hardship Into Celebration
Asma Khan’s segment carried the emotional weight of the morning. The first British chef featured on Netflix’s Chef’s Table arrived fresh from moving her restaurant, Darjeeling Express, into an impressive new home, and she cooked the most talked-about dish from its latest menu: watermelon curry.
She called it a “dish of shame” made by her ancestors in the desert, where everything died in summer except the watermelon, which only grew sweeter as the heat intensified. People craving roti and normal food improvised — “and it must have been a woman,” Asma insisted — creating a curry from the one ingredient that survived. Few people in India cook it now, she explained, because abundance has bred an embarrassment about food born of hardship and struggle. By recreating it, she forces a conversation many would rather avoid.
The dish confounds expectations in the pan as well as on the menu. Matt admitted he was shocked during rehearsals that the watermelon held its texture rather than collapsing. Desert watermelon, Asma explained, keeps its shape — and diners at Darjeeling Express react the same way. When guests order two different mains from her feast menu, almost everyone chooses the watermelon curry out of sheer curiosity.
The presentation carries its own symbolism. The feast arrives in a half-open cage loaded with aloo gobi, tamarind dhal, chilli-coriander and tomato chutneys, raita, rice and a compulsory courgette paratha, all made fresh by women and grandmothers, all refillable, all-you-can-eat. “This half cage is our victory,” Asma said, describing how people advised her not to hire women when she opened her restaurant, telling her to “get professionals in.”
Women cook in every culture without pay, she argued, and the open cage celebrates every woman who has fought through injustice and closed doors. Matt’s response — “amen to all of that, but can I check we get one of these each?” — broke the tension perfectly. Even Hollywood has noticed: Donal revealed that Paul Rudd is a devoted fan of Asma’s cooking.
Helen McGinn’s Supermarket Wine Picks, From Chicken Wine to a Sainsbury’s Newcomer
Fresh from a day at Wimbledon, Helen McGinn anchored the drinks with her trademark supermarket-shelf value hunting. With Donal’s harissa fried chicken she poured what students affectionately call “the chicken wine” — properly named La Vieille Ferme. The rosé, a blend of three grapes from just north of Provence, works beautifully with spice, and it comes with pedigree: the winemaking family behind it also makes the wine for Brad Pitt’s Provence château. Dupes have flooded the market, Helen warned, but the original remains brilliant for the money.
For Asma, who doesn’t drink, Helen refused to serve anything resembling children’s fizzy pop. Instead she chose a grown-up watermelon and lime soda — probiotic, gut-friendly, entirely natural, free of sweeteners and artificial ingredients, and £5.50 for four cans at Tesco. The lift of watermelon and lime, she explained, mirrored the curry itself. It also answered a common complaint about non-alcoholic options: too many are sweet and syrupy, and this one is neither.
Her final pour arrived with the heaven dish. A new white from Sainsbury’s Taste the Difference range, it comes from Custoza in northern Italy, a region rarely seen on British shelves because locals happily drink most of it themselves. Helen described it as one of her favourite Italian whites, from the same grape behind the much-loved Gavi. With so much happening on Tom’s plate — anchovy, oregano, consommé, samphire — she deliberately avoided anything showy. “You want one that will let the flavours on the plate do their thing,” she said.
Rick Stein Hunts Cornwall’s Next Superfood in Saturday Kitchen 2026 Episode 28’s Archive
The first archive film of Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28 sent Rick Stein scrambling across wet rocks on the Cornish coast in pursuit of seaweed, hailed as the next big superfood. His guides were Tim van Berkel, a Dutchman who made Cornwall home, and his business partner Caro, who together run one of the UK’s first seaweed harvesting companies.
What they showed him amounted to an underwater larder. Dulse, a red seaweed, delivers a famously bacony flavour when dried. Sea lettuce — the sea greens behind Chinese crispy fried seaweed — grew alongside pepper dulse, which startled Rick with its genuine pepperiness. Cornwall hosts around 500 seaweed varieties, though not all are tasty, so research matters. The health case impressed him too: seaweed’s salts are mainly potassium and magnesium rather than sodium, and Japan’s kelp-based miso tradition — kombu, once recommended by a former Japanese Prime Minister as “very good for baldness” — hints at why the Japanese “live forever.”
Rick put the harvest to work in a fried gurnard dish with sea spaghetti, linguine, garlic, parsley and chilli. He blanched 100 grams of fresh sea spaghetti quickly and refreshed it in iced water until it turned deep green, cooked the linguine for exactly seven minutes for real al dente bite, and fried bite-sized pieces of gurnard with sliced garlic, chilli and roughly chopped tomato.
Dried sea spaghetti works too — 30 grams, cooked for 15 minutes — and red mullet or bream substitute happily for gurnard. His verdict on the seaweed: less a distinct flavour, more a salty texture that lifted one of his favourite Ligurian pasta dishes. Committed converts, he suggested, could ditch the pasta entirely, or even swap lasagne sheets for brown kelp.
A Flank Steak, a Horseradish Obsession and a Voyage of Self-Discovery
Back in the studio, Matt cooked Tom a flank steak — “and I am flanking you,” Tom noted, calling the choice “very apposite” — served medium-rare with grilled onions, mushrooms and a horseradish sauce built from shallots, garlic, white wine vinegar, white wine, chicken stock and double cream, using both fresh and jarred horseradish for extra piquancy. Horseradish had emerged as a Tom obsession during his research call, on which he reeled off around 20 favourite ingredients in what he described as a “machine gun volley” until the researcher told him “that’s plenty.” He puts it in vinaigrette, on salmon, on everything. His verdict on the steak: “If we married, you would be a bigamist.”
Between mouthfuls, the conversation turned genuinely revealing. Tom traced his love of language to his parents — a French teacher mother and English teacher father — and to the complete works of Shakespeare sitting plumb in the middle of the family bookshelf. He fell in love with the sonnets as a teenager, describing them as “a hand reaching out across 400 years.”
Matt pushed further, referencing a podcast Tom recorded with his best friend. The qualities that now win him 1.4 million Instagram followers, Matt suggested, presumably set him apart as a kid. Tom agreed, and answered with unusual candour. Children who march to the beat of their own drum meet resistance, he said, and he learned “very slowly” that doing so is a superpower. The more he celebrated his quirks, idiosyncrasies and foibles, the more the people around him celebrated them too — “a hugely slow voyage of discovery” rather than a single epiphany.
His voice came up as well. Frequently mistaken for “an octogenarian lady” on radio, and compared to Angela Lansbury, Tom described it as “a bit of a yolk and burden” — though since Lansbury ranks among his heroines, he takes the comparison as a compliment. His first TV foray, an abysmal flop on a singing show, still stings; Matt admitted watching it the night before and finding the treatment of Tom’s voice genuinely upsetting. “You are an empath, aren’t you?” Tom replied.
James Sharp and Phoebe Boddy have turned the humble breakfast side into a street food phenomenon. Their business, Hash Hut, has sold over 100 tonnes of hash browns in four years — a figure Matt initially refused to believe — across three sites, including one on the South Bank that Helen McGinn confessed she walks past often and now intends to visit.
In the studio they built their iconic carbonara hash stick. The method starts with grated potato, salted to release moisture, squeezed as dry as possible, then bound with a cornflour slurry. The genius sits in the Parmesan custard: reduced cream, Parmesan and — unexpectedly — boiled eggs, which emulsify everything together. James credited the technique to Heston Blumenthal, calling it “a bit of a cheat code,” and noted that because it’s fully emulsified, it won’t split unless boiled. It even doubles as a pasta sauce: loosen it with pasta water, add spaghetti and bacon, and “get all of the Italians angry.”
The idea traces back to James’s time at a one-Michelin-star restaurant in Nottingham, where he properly learned to cook and where a chef named Liam served a little rösti that every chef fought over at the end of service — occasionally showered with staff truffle. Alongside the carbonara version, the couple presented their spicy gluten-free option, layered with crispy chilli oil, spring onion and a mayonnaise spiked with cayenne and paprika. Matt praised its lingering, building heat: “when it is spicy, it needs to be spicy.”
Their bestseller, however, remains mac and cheese piled on hash browns — “not the best for you, but we are a treat” — which unsurprisingly does roaring trade at festivals. As a husband-and-wife team, they coined the morning’s second-best phrase after all of Tom’s: “spousal ping-pong.”
From Provence Gardens to Thai Clams: The Archive Films That Rounded Out the Menu
Marcus Wareing’s film took him to a Provence garden where cook Natasha showed him how herbs elevate the humblest local ingredients. He arrived bearing a gift: his own herbes de Provence mix containing two surprises, pink peppercorns and lavender. Together they breaded — or “pané’d” — carrots, beetroot and parsnips in crumbs blitzed from stale bread with almonds, oregano and his herb blend, a thrifty trick for cutting waste. A friendly culinary border dispute broke out over seasoning: in England the salt goes in the flour, in France it goes in the egg. “Because I’m French,” Natasha explained, ending the argument.
The dish finished with boiled potatoes smothered in a parsley, garlic and dried oregano butter, after Marcus got briefly lost hunting curly parsley in what he called “a jungle” of a garden. The old-fashioned herb transported him home, to memories of his mum’s boil-in-the-bag cod in parsley sauce. Natasha’s philosophy — “butter is life” — prompted Marcus to joke she couldn’t really be French, and her generous seasoning won him over completely. His verdict: incredibly delicious, cost-effective, and built from nothing more than humble roots and the flavours of Provence.
Nigel Slater then dismantled the steak-and-lobster stereotype of surf and turf, arguing that fish can work as a seasoning rather than an ingredient — “a sort of cook’s secret.” His slow-cooked lamb shanks hid anchovies among onions, garlic, rosemary, bay, stock and red wine. The anchovy, he explained, adds “a depth and an intrigue” nobody can identify; it somehow boosts the flavour of the lamb itself. His second combination reversed the roles: trout fillets wrapped in Parma ham with sage, where the melting fat bastes and sweetens the fish as it roasts, finished with parsley, lemon and those buttery pan juices.
Nigella Lawson closed the archive with two dishes. Her toasty olive oil granola pairs maple syrup with extra virgin olive oil for “subtle smoky sweetness offset by the oil’s pepperiness,” spicing oats with ginger, cinnamon and sea salt before adding almonds, sunflower, pumpkin, flax and sesame seeds — eaten with berries and coconut milk yoghurt, or in “snatched handfuls straight from the jar.” Then, inspired by holiday photos from Thailand, she steamed clams in Thai red curry paste, coconut water and lime, finishing with Thai basil and its “aniseed muskiness” — or coriander when Thai basil proves elusive. Her philosophy landed as memorably as her food: life should be lived “greedily and gratefully.”
Food Heaven Wins as 71% of Viewers Send Saturday Kitchen 2026 Episode 28 Out on a High
The vote closed decisively. A “very high percentage” — 71%, delivered by Matt with a self-aware Trump impression — chose Tom’s food heaven, sparing him the peanut butter and white chocolate blondie with no-churn ice cream and caramel sauce that constituted his personal nightmare.
Matt’s winning dish showcased restraint and summer produce. He roasted a whole monkfish tail on the bone, basting it with garlic, anchovy and oregano dissolved in oil and butter. Alongside came a chilled tomato consommé — tomatoes blitzed with fennel, celery, shallots and garlic, then hung in cloth rather than pushed through, yielding a clear, refreshing liquid — plus a “verdant and simple” salad of samphire, broad beans and watercress. Tom, who had spotted samphire glistening on clifftops just days earlier, could barely contain himself: “Just when I thought you couldn’t whip up more of my favourite things, it is like a bottomless well.”
His verdict outdid every guest superlative of the series: “I am not being hyperbolic, but this is the loveliest thing I have ever eaten.” He credited his food-obsessed family, especially his granny — “the best temperature cook I know” — and a grandmother who reigns as “mistress of the pudding,” whose tarte tatin recipe was allegedly won by wrestling a French chef. He also cooks to music, believing the culinary arts deserve an underscore; Matt cooks to Broadway show tunes, while Asma cooks to Sufi music that reminds her, as she made her ancestral foods, of exactly who she is.
Before the credits, Tom read from his forthcoming children’s book, Pricklepaper’s Letter Magic, illustrated by Rebecca Bagley and out in September. Its hero, an altruistic hedgehog living in Regent’s Park, conducts a daily litter patrol and collects scraps of paper on his quills that always spell a word — beginning with a lion who escaped the zoo and lost his roar, until Pricklepaper’s spare “oar” restored it. Tom then delivered an impassioned masterclass on pre-ordering, explaining that early orders tell publishers how many copies to print, guaranteeing delivery on publication day rather than a hit-and-miss wait. He pre-orders all his friends’ books on principle.
The word of the day, inevitably, was his to choose: “Epicurean, because we are all being Epicurean with our wonderful gastronomical offerings, hither and yond, yond and hither.” Matt signed off by thanking Donal, Asma, James, Phoebe, Helen and “our most eloquent guest ever,” confirming no Best Bites the following morning due to Wimbledon, and teasing next week’s line-up of Poppy O’Toole, Paul Ainsworth, William Hanson and Jordan North. For anyone measuring the series’ high points, Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28 set a standard of warmth, storytelling and genuinely covetable cooking that next Saturday’s team will have to work hard to match.
FAQ Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28
Q: Who appeared on Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28?
A: Matt Tebbutt hosted chefs Donal Skehan and Asma Khan, with drinks expert Helen McGinn choosing the wines and broadcaster Tom Read Wilson as special guest. James Sharp and Phoebe Boddy of Hash Hut also cooked in the studio, while archive films featured Rick Stein, Marcus Wareing, Nigel Slater and Nigella Lawson.
Q: Did Tom Read Wilson get food heaven or food hell on Saturday Kitchen?
A: Tom got food heaven after 71% of viewers voted for it. Matt Tebbutt roasted a whole monkfish tail on the bone with garlic, anchovy and oregano, served with a chilled tomato consommé and a samphire, broad bean and watercress salad. Tom called it the loveliest thing he had ever eaten.
Q: What was Tom Read Wilson’s food hell and why?
A: His food hell combined peanut butter and white chocolate, his two most hated ingredients. The aversion began at a childhood New Year’s Eve party, where a blindfolded condiment-tasting game surprised him with peanut butter and made him violently sick. Matt threatened to bake both into gooey blondies with no-churn white chocolate ice cream and caramel sauce.
Q: What did Donal Skehan cook on Saturday Kitchen 2026 episode 28?
A: Donal made harissa fried chicken with a roast potato salad, maple bacon, pickled onions and aioli. He marinated chicken thighs with rose harissa and white wine vinegar, then coated them in plain flour mixed with cornflour for extra crispness. The dish drew on his travels in Morocco and five years living in Los Angeles.
Q: What is Asma Khan’s watermelon curry and where does it come from?
A: It is an ancestral desert dish born of hardship, created when summer heat killed everything except watermelon, which only grew sweeter. Asma calls it a dish of shame that she deliberately recreated because few people in India cook it now. It appears as a summer special on the Darjeeling Express feast menu, where desert-style watermelon holds its texture in the pan.
Q: Why does Darjeeling Express serve its feast in a half-open cage?
A: The open cage symbolises victory for women in hospitality. Asma Khan was told not to hire women when opening her restaurant, so the cage celebrates every woman who fought through injustice and closed doors. It arrives filled with aloo gobi, tamarind dhal, chutneys, raita, rice and courgette paratha, all made fresh by women, with unlimited refills.
Q: What is the chicken wine Helen McGinn recommended?
A: The chicken wine is La Vieille Ferme, a rosé blended from three grapes just north of Provence. Helen paired it with Donal’s harissa fried chicken because rosé handles spice well. The same winemaking family produces the wine for Brad Pitt’s Provence château, and Helen advised sticking with the original over the many dupes now on shelves.
Q: How did Hash Hut sell 100 tonnes of hash browns?
A: Husband-and-wife team James Sharp and Phoebe Boddy built the street food business over four years across three sites, including one on the South Bank. Their loaded creations include a carbonara hash stick with Parmesan custard, a spicy gluten-free version with crispy chilli oil, and a bestselling mac and cheese topping that thrives at festivals.
Q: How is the Parmesan custard on the carbonara hash stick made?
A: James reduces cream with Parmesan and emulsifies it with boiled eggs, a technique he credits to Heston Blumenthal and calls a cheat code. Because everything is emulsified, the custard will not split unless boiled. It even works as a pasta sauce when loosened with pasta water and tossed with spaghetti and bacon.
Q: What is Tom Read Wilson’s children’s book about and when is it out?
A: Pricklepaper’s Letter Magic, illustrated by Rebecca Bagley, is published in September and available to pre-order now. It follows an altruistic hedgehog in Regent’s Park who collects word-spelling paper scraps on his quills during litter patrols, helping characters like an escaped lion who lost his roar. Tom stressed that pre-ordering tells publishers how many copies to print.
