What Is Craft Sauce?

Craft sauce might not be a term you’ve come across before, but one which explains what we do really well. Following the boom of the craft beer movement a few years ago, came a surge of independent food producers, creating products which the big brands could only dream of coming close to, in terms of flavour and quality… and that’s where we sit.

We are a craft sauce brand making condiments that do your food justice. UK made, using real ingredients for real flavour. SAUCE GOT REAL.

We are fiercely passionate about flavour. We won’t add any ingredients unless they’re offering up some flavour benefits. We make sauces that do your food justice. They don’t overpower and they aren’t bland. Sauce can make and definitely break a meal which makes your condiment choices all that more important. Our sauces don’t include anything artificial either… too many big brand sauces are packed with artificial ingredients whether it be thickeners or flavour enhancers. It’s corner cutting, isn’t it.

Another thing we take seriously, is chilli fermentation (read more about that here). We use lots of chillies in our hot sauces, from fiery Habaneros to Scotch Bonnet and Amarillo chillies. We ferment all of them. Mike (our in-house chilli expert) nurtures them through the ageing process, making sure they’re bursting with as much flavour as possible before being turned into one of our sauces. Big up Mike, chilli legend.

The team cook our sauces in open vessels. In 2014, Pam and James were cooking tiny batches in pans on their kitchen hob.

Imagine that, but a lot bigger - would be pretty tricky to supply the likes of Morrisons and Sainsbury's from the kitchen hob! Because they’re open, we use evaporation to thicken. The cook times are longer and there’s a lot more care and attention needed, but the flavour is intensified to a level which the big brands couldn’t replicate. Despite the pans being bigger than the kitchen hob gear, they’re still fairly small in the overall sauce making world. Our sauces are made in small-batches at our HQ in Nottingham, taken care of by our team of chefs. Small-batch means the ingredients can shine and the flavours stand proud. Nothing masked. Taste them for yourself. 

Our small-batch, flavour-focused approach means we can be super experimental. We could just make Tomato Ketchup 24/7 but that wouldn’t be very exciting. James (co-founder) has been known to knock up some legendary kitchen samples in his time, from chocolate BBQ sauces to a sweetcorn ketchup. We’ve done collaborations with some great craft breweries, in Neon Raptor and Tiny Rebel, using their beer in BBQ/hot sauces alongside launching an outrageous Brussels Sprout Ketchup. There’s lots more to come…