The Spice Bag has become as essential to a hangover these days as a blanket and a box of teabags. What did we all do before this bag of greasy goodness came into our lives? (We ate three-in-ones, we know).

For the uninitiated, a Spice Bag is a takeaway meal you can get which consists of crispy chicken/chicken balls, chips, and a mystery blend of Chinese spices all shaken up in in a bag, with a sauce on the side. It's basically everything you love about the chipper in one bag. There's even a Spice Bag Appreciation Society on Facebook with over 17,000 members.

So where did this great dish come from? Were the ancient civilizations of China eating this until one day someone brought it to our shores? Well, no, but one intrepid RTE reporter called Liam Geraghty decided to find out and 'go full Jessica Fletcher all over this'.

His investigation initially led him to New World Chinese in Carlow, where a spokesperson told him that it was a fella called 'Stephen' who came up with the idea about "two or three years ago".

Mystery solved right? Wrong.

There's many claims that the Spice Bag has actually been around much longer than that, so Liam's investigation then brought him to JustEat.ie, who were able to tell him that the first Spice Bag ever ordered on their website was from Golden World in Tallaght back in 2012.

AHH, so it was good old Tallafornia that's behind the delicacy? Nope.

The folk at Golden World passed up the opportunity of claiming the dish, and said that that it initially started in The Sunflower Chinese in Templeogue

Liam then set off to The Sunflower, where they could confirm they were doing the Spice Bag as far back as 2010, and even told Liam how it came about;

"We kind of looked for something different as a staff, you know for when you're finished. The food is always the same so when you work here you like to have something different. So we tried a few different things one night, and we came up with the Spice Bag, and it was quite tasty. Then a friend tried it, and told their friend about it, and they asked would you do it for their friend, and it snowballed from then and I suppose the rest is history, it just grew and grew."

So, now you know!

Anyone else absolutely murder a Spice Bag right now?