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Black gold...Mark started experimenting with his kitchen Aga.

A British farmer has launched this year's must-have food product after stumbling across a 4,000-year-old Korean recipe on the internet.

And now the Dorset farmer is hoping to become Britain's first Garlic Millionaire as top chefs inundate him with orders for the unique product.

His top secret recipe includes slow cooking the pungent bulbs for 40 days to change their colour, texture and taste.

Mark Botwright wanted to find a way of preserving some of the 900,000 bulbs of garlic grown on his farm so they could be eaten all year round.

The answer came when he chanced upon an ancient Korean recipe for 'black garlic', a way of preserving garlic bulbs using exposing them to heat and moisture for more than a month.

Mark spent 18 months perfecting the recipe to transform regular garlic bulbs into sweety, sticky black garlic, said to have the texture of dried apricots and the taste of balsamic vinegar.

He even built his own special heating room at his 13-acre farm in Bridport, Dorset, so that he could ramp up production to 2,500 bulbs every 40 days.

The product has been such a hit he now supplies it to some of the best restaurants in the country including The Ritz and The Ivy.

And it has been given the thumbs up by a host of top chefs including Nigella Lawson, Mark Hix and Yottam Ottelenghi.

One bulb of black garlic costs 3.50 pounds and has a shelf life of over a year.