It's dolloped on eggs and slathered over ice cream: How Britain ditched ketchup and bought into the £4.6bn hot sauce industry!
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Most bridegrooms keep their wedding speech safely in the inside pocket of their suit. Will Sebag-Montefiore kept a small bottle of Tabasco Habanero Sauce, a very spicy version of an already spicy condiment. ‘Regular Tabasco doesn’t cut the mustard – I had to have their hottest one. I guess it is a full-on addiction,’ says the comedian and actor, 33. ‘I have hot sauce with every meal.’ Yes, even on his wedding day.
![[Hugh Jackman and Ryan Reynolds brave chilli-laced chicken wings on hot ones, July 2024]](https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2024/12/16/15/93197995-14198087-Hugh_Jackman_and_Ryan_Reynolds_brave_chilli_laced_chicken_wings_-a-10_1734362813887.jpg)
He is not the only one. Hot sauce has become, well, very hot. In the UK there are thousands of consumers admitting to slathering it on pretty much every dish they consume, from eggs at breakfast to ice cream before bed. There is also a growing army of companies – from multinational food giants to tiny small-batch sauce makers – that supply this craving.
. In short, Britain has gone mad for hot sauce, a term used to describe any condiment using chillies as the key ingredient, from Nando’s mild peri-peri sauce to Wiltshire Chilli Farm’s Regret, which contains a dash of chilli extract that is six times hotter than pepper spray. Iceland is about to launch Pepper X Chicken Tikka Masala and Pepper X Chilli Mac & Cheese: ready meals made from the world’s hottest pepper. Owing to the intense level of spice, the supermarket has even introduced a purchasing restriction, requiring customers to be 18 or older.
Industry bigwigs talk it up as a ‘ketchup killer’. At online supermarket Ocado the sales of hot sauces in 2024 are up 24.5 per cent on 2019, compared with a mere two per cent increase in mustard sales. Ocado’s Meri La Bella, says: ‘We think there is huge growth potential still in the hot sauce category and predict this momentum will continue.’.
