Cook's Tour

In short, they've seen a few things, but it was on a trip to Aberdeen that they really had their eyes opened.

"We just couldn't believe the amount of fat that goes into a buttery," laughs 51-year-old Dave Myers, the slightly less hairy of the two. "Fifteen butteries use up a whole pack of butter and half a pack of lard…"

Stubbly, cuddly and with heavy northern accents, television's most unlikely gourmet pin-ups have just completed their biggest project to date, a 15,000-mile culinary tour of Britain for their new BBC2 series The Hairy Bikers' Food Map of Britain. There are 86 counties in the UK, and the Hairies (as they are known to their biggest fans) visited 30, devoting a programme to each one.

Their buttery experience came via a visit to Aberdeenshire on the Scottish leg of their tour, which also took in Argyll and Bute, Dumfries and Galloway and Moray.

Their time filming north of the Border brought back plenty of memories for the pair, who dreamed up the Hairy Bikers over the course of a few chilly jaunts on their motorbikes in the Highlands.

"The hairy bikers started in Scotland," says 42-year-old Si King. "Dave lived in Huntly at the time and I'd go there on the bike then we'd go into the Highlands together. There's nowt better. We'd take a frying pan, a gas stove, a knob of butter and a lemon. We'd buy bread locally and go fishing for trout."

He sighs nostalgically. The description of the experience certainly sums up the Hairies' approach: no-nonsense cooking outside with the simplest, freshest ingredients possible and a couple of oily bikes thrown in for good measure. Their part travel, part cookery, part comedy format kicked off in 2005 and they have since won millions of fans.

Food Map of Britain was their biggest undertaking to date however, and not just because of the sheer scale of the programme (it will run every weekday for six weeks.) They began filming last September, and riding their bikes over the winter from county to county took its toll. "The level of fatigue involved in riding those motorcycles in the winter in what were dangerous road conditions was a nightmare," says King with a sigh. "The level of concentration that you have to have in those conditions. That was tough, a big ask. It was insane."

Burning rubber in the sleet and hail may not have buoyed their enthusiasm levels, but when it comes to the culinary delights on offer, their mouths seem to be watering at the very memory.

"I lost my urchin virginity in Tarbert," laughs Myers. "I tried my first sea urchin there and I loved it. In Scotland there's just some of the best produce. I mean Argyll and Bute has a longer coastline than France. We did a programme in Campbeltown and went out with a languoustine fisherman, then in Aberdeen we took some seven-day hung beef and some 28-day hung stuff and the difference was astonishing. A haggis maker in Dumfries called Stuart Houston was one of my favourite ports of call – we made some lovely haggis tempura. Then there was the gentleman who farmed mutton in Dumfries, proper mutton; five years old. Cook that for 24 hours and it's fabulous."

"What I love about the Scots is that you have a great sense of place and tradition," adds King. "The produce is second to none. The Scottish waters are alive with seafood and there's a great level of husbandry and care. When we did butteries, everyone had their own story about them, which was great. Then there's the Aberdeen Angus and the langoustines. Oh, and the porridge. My god the seafood was unbelievably good, one of the best fruits de mer that I've ever eaten. I knew that it was good but I didn't know it was that good. There was just a great sense of place, pride and history. It's a bit of a misnomer that all you eat is deep-fried pizzas and Mars Bars."

The duo sampled the delights of one of Scotland's most notorious delicacies, however, and found themselves pleasantly surprised. "We did try the deep fried Mars Bar in Stonehaven actually," says Myers. "It's like a chocolate fritter. Some of the posh chefs are doing mini ones and dressed up with ice cream it's quite nice. But a whole one is a bit much…"

Myers and King set themselves a series of challenges as part of the tour, setting up a mobile kitchen and cooking in the street on more than one occasion (it was in Union Street in Aberdeen that they knocked together the butteries and gave them out to passers by). They also chose to visit kitchens which were a bit more outside their comfort zone, challenging fine dining chefs to cook-offs, and had more than one mishap along the way. Like the time they put damp bladderwrack in a deep fat fryer and it "exploded".

Culinary disasters aside however, they were surprised at just how much they learned about British food, and British people's attitudes towards cooking. "Every county has it's own identity and people feel quite passionate about it," says Myers. "The experience confirmed some things we already knew, like the quality of the produce, but we also found that individual counties' identities are still there. Everyone has their own thing and each dish tends to be a product of the history and geology of the area."

"The biggest surprise was that there's a deep interest in our food heritage," adds King. "The British are canny and quiet and don't like to make a fuss of it, which is to our detriment when the French or Italians would scream it from the rooftops. It's changing though; people have a great affinity to their local food and the local traditions around it. Our attitudes towards food are changing from 'we eat to live' to 'we live to eat'."

The Hairy Bikers' Food Tour of Britain starts on Monday at 5:15pm on BBC2