Scottish brothers Jock Zonfrillo and Jimmy Barnes bonded over famous fast food recipe

Following Jock Zonfrillo’s final MasterChef appearance, fans are taking a trip down memory lane with his legacy of recipes. Listen to the audio.

As Jock Zonfrillo’s fans continue their outpouring of love to his family after his final MasterChef appearance this week, many are honouring his legacy by reconnecting with the vast collection of recipes he shared online.

And one of those is the beloved chef’s tribute to a not-so-humble sandwich from his Scottish homeland called the Glasgow Roll, a passion project he shared with his close mate Jimmy Barnes.

Zonfrillo spent a year perfecting the recipe for the square sausage pattie and crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside roll, with he and Barnes determined to make it the next big thing in home cooked fast food.

While the chef was well known for his dedication to authentic Italian cooking, these Glaswegian brothers shared their love of Scottish food during the Story Time with Jimmy Barnes podcast when the rocker released his Killing Time book in 2020.

Jock Zonfrillo and Jimmy Barnes shared a kitchen bromance. Picture: Supplied/Facebook

Zonfrillo tested more than 44 recipes just for the roll.

“The things we took for granted … I’ve just spent the best part of a year trying to figure out how to perfect a Glasgow roll and a square sausage – simple, basic things we didn’t think twice about,” Zonfrillo said at the time.

“It’s a morning roll, a bread roll, but it’s extremely particular; the inside of it has got like a chew and the top of it is crispy. It’s not crunchy like a sourdough, it’s got this crisp top and the inside of the crumb has this elasticity, a chew that you don’t get in a normal bread roll.

“And then a square sausage is essentially sausage put in a terrine bowl and then they cut it. There’s no skin on the sausage and it fits perfectly into the bread roll.”

Jock Zonfrillo shared one of his favourite recipes - Square Sausage - on Instagram in August 2020. Picture: Instagram

Zonfrillo shared the ingredients of some of his favourite recipes – Glasgow Rolls and Square Sausage – on Instagram last year.

“For everyone who wants to join next weekends cook-along, here are the ingredients you will need weighed out and ready to go. All I ask in return for this is that you’re all wearing some sort of tartan. I’ll be very disappointed if you don’t...not angry... just disappointed,” he said in a post from August.

Jock Zonfrillo shared one of his favourite recipes - Glasgow Rolls - on Instagram in August 2020. Picture: Instagram

The chef and rocker’s bromance began when they were introduced in Adelaide by Barnesy’s daughter, Megan Torzyn, a decade ago.

Their families often spent weekends cooking together, with Zonfrillo and Barnes sharing a kitchen gadget obsession.

The MasterChef star was as passionate about replicating Janes Barnes’ Thai recipes as Jimmy was about learning how to make perfect pasta.

“Jane is an epic cook and I love learning recipes from Jane when I come up to the house,” Zonfrillo said during the podcast.

“The last time we were up there, we were filming Jane’s green chicken curry. It’s a basic recipe for her – she’s like ‘oh nobody’s going to be interested in that.’ Ah, trust me.”

The Scottish brothers also swapped songs for their cooking playlists. Picture: Instagram

And, of course, there were their long nights talking over a whisky or two when everyone else had gone to bed, swapping their favourite songs to include on their respective cooking playlists.

“You know the thing that really annoys me about Jock? He doesn’t ever get hangovers – he’s a superman,” Barnes said. I’d get up in the morning and he’d be frying sausage and bacon and scrambling ‘eggs’, and I’d be ‘Don’t talk to me’.”

Listen to the full wonderful conversation between Jimmy Barnes and Jock Zonfrillo

During that podcast catch-up, Barnes revealed the epic practical joke he and wife Jane tried to play on the chef late at night after a few after-dinner drinks.

“If you remember, after almost everyone had gone to bed, Jane was still up, and she said ‘Have you ever had a chicken sandwich without chicken?’,” Zonfrillo said.

Barnes took up the story: “Jane tells him ‘When we were in boarding school and we’d be hungry in the middle of the night, we’d get fresh white bread and butter with salt and pepper. And if you close your eyes, it tastes like chicken.’ We made one for Jock and he’s like ‘it tastes like bread and butter’.

“He gets into the kitchen and he’s designing the gourmet bread and butter ‘chicken’ sandwich … making up his own salts and chopping things.

“For a minute there, we nearly had him convinced.”

Originally published as Scottish brothers Jock Zonfrillo and Jimmy Barnes bonded over famous fast food recipe