Making Hot Sauce

We’ve put together a series covering the top 5 questions asked of us. Others might have rolled out a FAQ section for this. We’re built differently. Let’s get on with it.

At number 2 is:

How did you end up making hot sauce?

Time to post the answer to another of the most common questions asked of us at markets.

Here we focus in on “How did you get into doing this?”. Here it is in all its online glory for you. How we got in to making hot sauce.

Ever since I can remember, I always liked spicy food. Options were limited growing up in North East Scotland. Moving to London in 2000, I discovered a world of incredible, tasty and exotic hot sauces. Flavours from all across the world. Things I had no idea about. I took it all in and I loved every minute of it. Imagine my disappointment, returning to Aberdeen, several years later to find nothing had changed . Still the same few well known brands. None of those excited me before I left and they still didn’t at this point. It was like the city where hot sauce stood still. So over the next few years I imported all sorts of hot sauces and shared them with people. And during those years, the options for hot sauce in Aberdeen remained the same as they always had. Those mass market sauces on supermarket shelves were still all that was on offer.

That’s when I decided that as a region with a reputation for excellent food & drink, that we could do better. Much better. And so in 2015, I started experimenting with making my own hot sauces. It turns out that there was more appetite for what I was doing than expected. One thing led to another in 2018 when a chef in Aberdeen wanted the now much more refined sauces for their menu. Then came the whirlwind of registering a food business. With some help from other sauce makers, I worked through getting things signed off. Now I could do this commercially. I quickly picked up my first ever stockist…in London.

I was now making hot sauce for real.

In 2018, this show transitioned from my little hobby to become a hot sauce side hustle. By the end of 2019 things had moved on for us. We were receiving love throughout the UK. And so I incorporated the LTD company and began making hot sauce full time.

If you are out there, making your own hot sauce and hoping one day, to sell it, feel free to give me a shout with any questions. I only got off the ground because others further along the road helped me. I have always been available to do the same for others. The quality and variety in craft hot sauce has never been stronger. Making your own hot sauce is fun. It saves you from those uninspiring options, still on the big shop shelves, all these years on.