PEAT is an endangered resource. Formed from decomposed vegetation around 12,000 years ago, it grows at a mere millimetre per year. It can take up to 1000 years for one metre of peat to form. When it’s gone, it’s gone.
Peatlands are primarily found in the northern hemisphere, although there are peat regions in Africa, South America, Indonesia, the Falkland Islands and New Zealand.
Scotland is famous for peat – for centuries, Scotsmen have been using it as fuel for cooking, heating and housing – see historic turf and creel buildings.
The 1886 Crofters Act assigned peat banks to farmers, where they could cut turf for fires. But it was wet and heavy work, even using the special spades known as “tairsgeir” in Gaelic (pronounced “tusker”) or peat-iron. And it was time-consuming – once cut, peat must be laid out to dry. So in modern times, crofters turned to wood, oil, gas and electricity.
Peat for fuel
CROFTERS can still cut peat for their own use, selecting the darker, deeper layers and stacking them in a formation that allows the air to dry them out. With the high cost of fuel, some are returning to these old methods to heat their homes. But peat releases twice as much carbon as natural gas, which is damaging for the environment. It is the carbon content that enables peat to burn slower and longer than other fuels. Can people living in chilly northern climes afford to care about the environment if they are freezing?
During my research for this article, I spoke with accommodation owners in Islay. They were terrified of admitting that they use peat for their fires, for fear of the social media backlash. “I don’t want to end up like that pub in Ireland,” one told me after posting about their first turf fire of the season. In Ireland, turbary rights – the right to cut turf from an area of bog – are restricted.
The Islay owner spoke about her childhood cutting peat, a summer activity: “We grew up cutting peat. You’d break your back, but it wasn’t always about the peat cutting. We would talk about it as being part of your mental health, and everybody out working hard together and having picnics with somebody baking. It was hard, manual labour, and you would do that on your days off, but it kept you going all winter.”
A few years ago, I bought some peat off Amazon to add atmosphere to an Outlander-themed supper club. I note it is no longer available. Nostalgia-inducing peat-infused incense is very popular, however.
Peat in food and drink
PEAT is famously used to flavour whisky – particularly whiskies from Islay, including Laphroaig and Lagavulin. The flavour comes from peat bricks being placed in kilns to smoke the barley, which then forms the mash to create whisky.
There is an actual way of measuring the amount of peat flavour in a whisky – by measuring the phenol. Your average whisky has a phenol of 30, while one that’s heavily peated can have about 40 to 60. The most heavily peated whisky, Bruichladdich’s Octomore, reaches an incredible 307.2 phenol parts per million. I tried this whisky, savouring the sweet and savoury bonfire flavours. It evoked wintery fires, chestnuts roasting, Christmas stockings hanging over the fireplace, a comfy chair with a Harris tweed throw.
In terms of flavour, peat and smoke are a marmite experience. Like an oaky wine, you either love it or hate it.
Hannah Brown, a Glaswegian entrepreneur, is introducing peaty flavours to food. After working in the whisky industry for 12 years, including with Laphroaig, she says “there was no denying that the influence of peat smoke did change the taste, and it made something taste richer, deeper and more complex”. She got to thinking: “It’s really interesting that no one else in food and drink is peat smoking when it’s almost like Mother Nature’s secret recipe.”
“I quit my job in 2017 and went to set up Tongue In Peat, which is my Bloody Mary mixer, and we’re the world’s only peat-smoked tomato juice,” Brown says. “Back in 2017, I couldn’t get anyone to produce it, so I went all around the country trying to find a contract bottler who would be willing to make a small batch of peat-smoked tomato juice. People were putting the phone down on me.”
Emboldened by this experience, she set up The Start-up Drinks Lab “to help entrepreneurs like me essentially get off the ground”.
“We’re helping entrepreneurs launch drinks. And I believe many drinks in the market today wouldn’t exist if we hadn’t set that up.
“We ran Tongue In Peat from 2021. On the good side, we won three Great Taste Awards. We were getting listed in some of the best bars in London, America and Dubai. The media called us the UK’s best Bloody Mary mixer.
“But actually, on the flip side, we were selling hardly anything because Bloody Marys are such a niche drink. The challenge we found was we were a niche product in a niche market. We found that people who drink a Bloody Mary will probably have two a year, once on a plane and probably on Christmas Day.”
But people were using the Tongue In Peat tomato juice in cooking, adding it to sauces.
Brown continues: “We started really looking at the pasta sauce category, and it was all dominated by traditional Italian brands. We could be really bold because we’re not Italian, we’re Scottish, and we’ve got the peat smoke as a point of difference. We want to give the category a bit of a shake up, be a category disruptor.
“We make 6000 jars a month. We smoke them in our traditional Smokehouse that we built bespoke outside of Glasgow. We’ve added flavours like garlic and truffle and chili. And we just launched in early September this year. So we cold-smoke for 16 hours, and we use peat from Islay.”
Peat, just like wine, has a terroir. The peat from Islay is particular, with marine qualities. Brown explains: “Because Islay is surrounded by the Atlantic, you get this most amazing savoury sea saltiness in the environment that is transformed into the peat.’
Brown also experimented smoking with peat from the Highlands, near Dunnet Bay, which is very different. The Highland peat is sweet, “with heather floral honey notes”.
What about the environmental impact of using peat? Brown says they use very little: “We use 0.0006 grams of peat per jar. We’d have to sell 50 million jars to use a tonne of peat.”
This coming year, Brown is setting up a peatland regeneration scheme for small- to medium-sized distillers with the help of a peat consultant and the Scottish Government.
“Peatland regeneration is about three things, and it’s all about responsible peat cutting: 1. Don’t cut any land that hasn’t yet been cut; 2. If you are going to cut, you only cut to a certain depth to allow regeneration – don’t go right down to the rock bed; 3. Don’t use drills – use traditional peak cutting tools.”
Cooking on peat
ALL Scottish cooking used to be over peat fires, adding smokiness. The landscape influences the flavours.
Peat is the traditional fuel for tree-less Shetland. While it may be unsustainable for garden compost, peat still has a place in warming hearths and tummies in Britain’s most northerly islands.
During a trip to Shetland for Up Helly Aa in 2016, I visited the island of Yell, and specifically the Old Haa Museum. It was cold but sunny the day I arrived, having crossed over on the ferry.
The museum kindly allowed me to use the old fireplace and sorted out some turves of peat for me. Peat burns cooler and more slowly than wood or coal, so it is perfect for baking and stews.
Fireplace cooking requires equipment such as iron griddles, fireplace hangers, baking irons, cauldrons on legs, long-handled frying pans and idleback hangers for tipping water from a kettle while it is over the fire. Burning peat can also be piled on top of a Dutch oven to bake bread and cake, cowboy-style.
Delightful descriptions can be found in Margaret B Stout’s vintage cookbook, Cookery For Northern Wives.
“On Beainer Sunday (Sunday before Christmas), it was usual to hang up an ox head in the chimney to make broth with,” she writes.
The book includes recipes such as Krappin Muggies, Sparls, Vivda, Tar-Tin Purrie and Virpa which all sound suitably Scandinavian. With very few ingredients, Shetland wives managed to make an ingenious amount of dishes.
On a griddle over embers, I made “top” bannocks. Classic Shetland bannocks are made with Viking “beremeal” barley flour from Orkney but can also be made just with plain flour or other ancient wheat varieties such as Emmer or Einkorn.
Bog bodies
PEAT also has excellent preservation qualities. In Ireland, archaeologists have discovered ancient reserves of bog butter (dairy or animal fat buried in bogs) that have been preserved for decades – even centuries – in a wooden container in a layer of peat.
Peat also preserves bodies and clothes. Peat bogs are acidic, preventing bacteria from living and reproducing, which means a body cannot decompose.
Famous examples include the 2000-year-old Huldremose Woman, found in a peat bog near Ramten, Denmark, in 1879, and the “Windeby Girl” (later determined to be a boy) discovered in a peat bog located in the town of Windeby, in Germany.
In 1950, Tollund Man, a Dane who died 2500 years ago, was discovered so well-preserved that he was briefly mistaken by authorities as a recent murder victim. The Tollund body was found in a fetal position wearing a pointed skin cap of sheepskin and wool with a hide belt around his waist. The preservation was such that his last meal could be determined – porridge with barley, flax, wild weed seeds, and some fish.
Peat for gardening
BOTH the RSPB and TV gardener Monty Don want to ban peat, arguing that peat bogs are a valuable ecological environment and using up this resource is eco-vandalism. There are projects to restore peat boglands in Yorkshire and Wales.
Most garden centres now refuse to sell peat compost. In Westminster, LibDem MP Sarah Dyke has brought forward a bill to ban the sale of peat entirely. Its second reading is planned for January 2025. The Horticultural Trades Association has asked for time to develop effective growing alternatives.
The Scottish Government has been working on this for more than a decade, with plans to restore 250,000 degraded peatlands in Scotland by 2030.
