When we talk about chilli sauce, we are describing an enormously vast category packed with varying flavour profiles and origins which reach every corner of the world. There’s the aromatic sambals of Malaysia, garlicky sriracha, tangy Louisiana hot sauce, piri piri of Portgual, fruity Caribbean pepper sauces, sweet chilli sauce and savoury Chiu Chow chilli oil of China – to name just a few. And with the likes of TikTok, Instagram and YouTube (not least hot sauce-based talk show Hot Ones) exposing us to independent producers and regional recipes, it's no wonder we're delving further into all things chilli. 

Chefs Pat Bingley and Glyn Gordon had worked in the likes of L'Enclume and The Ledbury before deciding in 2016 to push on with plans to open a restaurant based around all things fermented. To build some buzz, they made a batch of kimchi – their early days, Pat says, were spent filling their cars with cabbage and experimenting with recipes – and shared it with their restaurant connections. It took off – so much so that they never got round to opening the restaurant, and instead Eaten Alive was born. As well as ferments like kimchi and sauerkraut, they make a range of hot sauces (there's raw kimchi, cacao and lime, scotch bonnet, smoked sriracha and champagne citrus XO varieties), which they sell to restaurants. Though the likes of Leon and Gail's are among their biggest customers, they also work with fine dining restaurants, Pat says. ‘While there was only the merest suggestion of heat used by fine dining restaurants when I was there, these days you can get some punchy flavours as global food has melded,’ he says. ‘It’s the era of globalisation and that has applied to food, too. You don’t have to go to a Thai restaurant if you want to see authentic ingredients – now you can just click on a video on YouTube.’

They aren’t alone. Plenty of chefs have taken sauces to market, from Poon’s Extraordinary Chilli Oil to James Cochran’s 12:51 scotch bonnet jam, flavours which are being weaved into dishes like one-star Cornerstone’s crab bun, served with Swiss chard kimchi and chilli oil. At Mayfair's Fallow, chefs Will Murray and Jack Croft began selling their own sriracha during the pandemic, using it in dishes including its smoked cod’s head. ‘We used to have a gazpacho says,’ Will explains, ‘and after the first time we made it we had loads of chilli and garlic leftover. This was in the second lockdown, and we closed our doors and fermented it. If you ask most chefs what they have with their scrambled eggs, they’d prefer sriracha over traditional brown or red sauce. At Fallow our mantra has been ‘cook what chefs want to eat’, so we did.’ After much trial and error (including important lessons around stabilising and pasteurising bottles – in the early days, a visiting VIP chef opened a bottle, with the sauce shooting ‘a solid half a metre in the air’, Will laughs), production has ramped up, and they've recently had their first 1,000-bottle order.

As the UK's culinary scene diversifies, we're also being introduced to recipes from emerging cuisines. Take West African cooking, which over the past decade or so has finally started getting the recognition it deserves here in the UK thanks to the likes of Jeremy Chan's two-star Ikoyi and Joké Bakare's Chishuru. Chilli, and in particular the distinctive fruitiness of scotch bonnet, runs through West African cooking and its often heat-packed dishes. Shito, for example, is a cherished Ghanian hot black pepper sauce with a deeply earthy, fishy and smoky flavour. Though recipes vary from home to home, its ingredients – including ginger, dried fish, prawns, tomatoes, garlic and peppers – are usually blended and cooked for around an hour, before it's enjoyed as a side, dip, marinade or even dressing. We're also discovering more of the joys of Malaysian cooking, including sambal, an aromatic chilli sauce which is being celebrated by the likes of Abby Lee and Ramael Scully. A heady combination of fragrance and heat, there are tons of varieties, including sambal oelek, a blend of fresh chillies, vinegar and salt, and sambal belacan, which uses a fermented Malaysian shrimp paste (see a recipe for that here). Despite its complex flavour profile, it's often straightforward to make, even in bulk, freezes well and is really versatile – use it as a condiment, turn it into sauces or stir it into dishes.

Our adoration of hot sauce appears to be here to stay. As culinary influences travel around the world, those flavours will increasingly be weaved into everything from street food dishes to Michelin-star tasting menus. It is, Will says, a welcome reflection of wider changes in our tastes. ‘It’s people moving away from the more generic options,’ he nods. ‘When it comes to sauces, there’s space for everyone.’