MIKEY BELL

I’m dedicating an entire post here to my love of spicy food, but not spicy food itself. I want to focus on sharp, chilli-based, vinegary, spiced condiments, and give them a moment.

When facing a plate of food, I always ponder whether or not it has a space for hot sauce.

When I can close my eyes and imagine eating it and how the food and notes will feel in my mouth, its flavours, its textures, and how it will make my soul react, I will quite quickly be able to identify if and what kind of spice it could hold to take it to another plane of enjoyment. It’s a subtle art.

Allow me to explain.

A rich, cheesy dish such mac and cheese, for example, or something fluffy and crisp like a plate of French fries or cheese-crusted nachos, will always, for me, call for the sharp hit of something vinegary, like a Frank’s hot sauce. It’s something about the creamy, fluffy, almost-nursery blandness and the repetitive uniformity of the texture and eating style – I just feel like it’s better suited for something bullet-sharp and cutting.

However, when faced with the component-style of something like the long tangles of noodles and crunchy vegetables or a deep, steaming multi-textured bowl of ramen, with all of its dismantled joy, I feel like I need something thicker and more complex in its nature, creamy in it’s body, so that there is something to pull all the components together with a little uniformity, so I would opt for a sriracha here.

It’s rarely about making something hotter, and more about complimenting textures, balancing flavours, and enhancing experience, but never overwhelming. I love for something to be spicy, don’t get me wrong, but blowing the lid off my head is so rarely what I’m chasing when I contemplate hot sauce.

Fancy exploring my faves?

And by the way… I’m not counting mustards here. That will have it’s own time and space, I think.

So my faves, my girl band, holy trinity, and yes they’re in order, are:

Frank’s Red Hot Hot Sauce – my main girlie. My number one. Classic, sharp on the tongue, high vinegar content, quite salty, hot but not fiercely spicy. Fabulous. Never lets me down. Also, my spice of choice in a Bloody Mary, my version of which you can find here.

Honourable mention – shout out to her little site, Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo sauce. Slightly milder and sweeter than the original, but nice and buttery. A good entry-level to Frank’s. Definitely was the hot sauce that converted my partner to gently adding heat to his meals.

Sriracha – she’s smooth, creamy, garlicky, slightly sweet but leaves a more sharp, prominent tang on the roof of my mouth. Can blow your head off if not balanced right, so I almost need a lot going on the plate to want sriracha, and I zig zag it across all of the meal, whereas I’m a bit more considered how I add other hot sauces. Also, I don’t need the other flavours. Original is fine for me. Also, cheaper or dupe brands don’t compare to the real thing, I’m sorry to say.

Cholula – closes out my girl band. Lesser used if I’m honest, but always near, just in case. She’s the smokier of the three so I wheel her out only in specific circumstances where smoke is not missing from a meal, but present and needing amplification, like tacos, fajitas, sometimes ribs, or barbecued food.

And also, over the years, while I’ve remained faithful to my girls, I’ve also developed a long love for other whacks of heat that are on stand-by in my house.

Let’s explore.

Chilli crisp oil – crunchy, umami, spicy, can transform a meal instantly and often have to stop myself from putting more and more and more on. Wonderful on a cheesy soup.

Red pepper flakes – inexpensive, intense, easy to control your heat levels, can stay next to your hob alongside the salt and pepper. Don’t think I can eat noodles without them.

Pickled chillies – thinly sliced, covered in rice wine vinegar and a pinch of sugar, left to steep for a while, thrown on noodles or curries or into sandwiches. Majestic.

But then there is this one sauce.

I am so glad to be able to bring her to you.

I’ve called it a sauce but I also don’t feel that does it true justice in how it is used in my house. It’s a sauce to be spooned on top of things just as much as it is a dip or a dressing, so much so that I don’t even call it hot sauce in the house, I just call it the ‘chilli ginger stuff’ and we just know what that mean.

This recipe started life as Chilli, Ginger and Garlic Sauce from Nigella Lawson’s Simply Nigella, and I made it so often that I didn’t need the recipe anymore because it was burned into the corners of my mind. But the more I made it, and I personally think this is not only the best bit, but the purpose of recipes, it evolved and I shaped it into something else, something tailored to the preferences of the house.

Now I can’t remember how I got it to the recipe below, because I’ve been making this for over ten years, tweaking, twisting, updating here and there. In fact, it was actually published on this website once before and even included in my first ebook Life Through Food, in a very early version, but the version below is the one I return to the most.

The thing that has remained throughout every version is my quest for sweet and sour balance. 

I believe Nigella’s original version uses sugar and lime, and while I stayed with that version for many years, the more I made it, the more I wanted to push up the sweetness a little bit so that it could hold more acidity.

I didn’t want to overwhelm it entirely with more sugar, so I found a nice balance with honey, which gave not only a depth of floral, tangy flavour, but also added to the citrus burst of the lime. It also gave me greater flexibility in adding more chillies, ginger and garlic if I had them available, knowing honey was more forgiving to catch the balance.

I make her often but not as my go-to sauce, you understand. I only make her when I know I want to have a real treat with my meal, and unlike my girlband, she truly could go on any meal. I wouldn’t put Frank’s, for example, on rice or noodles, lovely though I know it would be, in the same way I can’t really see me dipping a potato into Cholula. 

But this girl, she could do it all, and for that reason, I want to really earn her.

Let’s look at what she can do.

Dip – fries, wings, sticks of vegetables, nachos, your finger while you’re stood at the fridge door pondering dinner.

Drizzle – over grilled or roast meats or even some charred halloumi. Oh, she would be marvellous in an oyster, thrown down the hatch with an extra squeeze of lime.

Swirled – through a bowl of plain, buttery rice or bowl of tangly, soy drenched noodles with a few steamed vegetables.

Spread – into sandwiches or burgers and definitely in any form of flatbread

Mixed – through some mayonnaise or creamy yogurt if you need to make them go further.

So where does she sit amongst my girlband?

She doesn’t sit there at all, actually. She’s not pulled out at every opportunity, she’s only made when I know she will really serve the moment. She’s rare. She’s solo. She pops up now and then when I think ‘you know… I miss her and I need her right now for this very specific thing…’ and then I make her, she has her moment, she changes my world, and then I leave her alone until I need her again.

She’s Adele.

Let’s call her what she is. She’s Adele.

Makes approx. 500ml

Approx. 100g red chillies – chopped and seeds in or out, your call

300g roast red peppers – drained from a jar

20g fresh ginger – peeled and roughly chopped

2 garlic cloves

5 tsp flavorless oil

3 tsp runny honey

2 limes 

1. Very short recipe here, you guys, it’s pretty simple. Add the chillies, red peppers, ginger, garlic, oil, honey, juice of the limes, and a pinch of salt into a jug.
2. Blitz with a hand blender until everything is completely smooth and uniform, creating a very vibrant, fiery-red sauce.
3. Taste for seasoning, adding salt if you want to ramp up the flavours or lime if it’s a little too sweet or more honey if it’s too spicy. 
4. Look at your consistency too – if you want it thicker, add a few more red peppers and blend (tasting again to see if you need to balance against the extra sweetness and richness) or if it’s too thick, perhaps add a tiny splash of water and blend to thin it out.
5. Transfer to a clean jar or bottle and I’d say use immediately and with wild abandon, but then refrigerate. It will keep for about 2 weeks no problem, and my favorite bit, is that the flavours will certainly deepen and it’s almost, somehow, gets redder, as it sits.