Celebrity chef reveals his first thoughts of our hangi!

Matty Matheson wasn't expecting much from his first taste of traditional Kiwi tucker.

Sitting around a hangi pit with Kiwi chef Morgan McGlone waiting for his meat and veggies to cook, Matheson says he expected everything to be overcooked and flavourless.

"I thought everything was just going to be mush," says the celebrity chef and star of Vice food show Dead Set on Life. But the Canadian bad boy of food television couldn't have been further from the truth.

Matheson - known for his impressive takes on gut sticking comfort food - got in touch with McGlone to help him film the first episode of his show's third season in Hastings.

He told him: "I wanna make a whole episode around you being Maori."

McGlone showed him two different styles of hangi, cooking Matheson "kumara, corn, potato, eggs, prawn, venison sausage and mussels" in the ground, and the same ingredients in wicker baskets lowered into geothermal pools.

Matheson wasn't prepared for just how good a hangi could be.

"I had no idea really and everything came out so perfectly. One was smoky, one wasn't but they were both cooked perfectly. Both techniques [were] phenomenal."

His New Zealand experience opens the third season of Matheson's show, which debuts here this weekend. This time around, there are some changes: Dead Set on Life is focusing on the people Matheson meets rather than the food they cook.

The food wasn't the only thing Matheson experienced while in New Zealand. He also added to his impressive collection of tattoos - a piece influenced by his time with McGlone.

"I got different kinds of waves to show strength and prosperity and I got my wife, my son and my mum, my dad, my sister, my two brothers, my two nephews, and my close-knit family," he says.

"I got some connective stuff with Morgan in there ... It's a cool piece."

• This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission.