23-06-2025
A chilli-head's guide to hot sauce: what to buy and when to use it
There's no guaranteed heat in a British summer, but our national craving for hot sauce is both certain and growing. In the last year, Tesco sold an extra 2.5 million bottles of the condiment – a rise of almost 20 per cent. Sales of sriracha, for example, were up by nearly 65 per cent and those of Encona West Indian pepper sauce – available on supermarkets shelves since the 1980s – rose by over 28 per cent last year.
Demand has led to a boom in both supply and spread of these fiery sauces: independent online food market Delli lists over 100 different varieties; celebrities have their own (Ed Sheeran's XXXtra sauce, the latest in his Tingly Ted's range, sold out two weeks after launch); some even crop up in fine-dining settings. Chef Rodney Wages, owner of the Michelin-starred Avery restaurant in Edinburgh, gives diners bottles of house-made hot sauce as a souvenir. While hot sauce is being served over buckets of fried chicken this summer on the manicured lawns of Scottish luxury hotel Gleneagles.
Nando's hot sauces might make up half of Tesco's 10 bestsellers, but there's plenty out there beyond peri peri…
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How to use hot sauce
The hot sauce taste test
The hot sauce spectrum
There's no official definition for hot sauce, so almost anything goes: 'As long as you've got chillies in it, you can call it hot sauce,' says Jamie Cleland, maker of Big Jim's Kitchen. With chilli peppers, and often vinegar and salt at their core, you might also spy fruit, vegetables, herbs and spices in the mix – yielding sauces that are smoky, fruity, a slow burn or blow-your-head-off bold. Variety is what makes this condiment so compelling. '[It's] like the second coming of craft beer, with interesting labels and weird and wonderful flavour combinations,' says Cleland. 'Customers aren't just buying a condiment,' says Delli's head of brand, Octavia Pendrill-Adams. 'They're investing in a story, a flavour and a community.'
Sriracha, a relatively mild Thai sauce derived from chillies (often jalapenos), distilled vinegar and pickled garlic, is driving the trend, thanks to its distinctive 'deep, fermented flavour which, along with lots of sugar and salt, makes it very addictive,' explains Liam White, founder of Dr Will's, which includes a squeezy sriracha in its range of condiments.
Then there are buffalo sauces (hot, rich and creamy to slather over charred meat), and bottles bearing named chillies which each deliver a different heat profile. 'Cayenne will give you a quick tickle or sizzle of heat at the front of your mouth,' explains Zoe Simons, senior brand development chef for Waitrose. 'More lingering, flavourful heat mid-palate comes from spices like jalapeno, gochujang and chipotle – and habanero and ghost peppers both have a delayed intensity for that back-of-the-throat kick.'
'When we started in 2014, it was all about heat for heat's sake,' says Pam Digva, co-founder of Nottingham's Sauce Shop. 'A blisteringly hot sauce may be fun, but often sits at the back of the cupboard gathering dust. We lacto-ferment all our chillies [leaving them in brine] to create depth of flavour, and focus on using the sauce in more ways.'
