I. Byron Bay Chilli Company
Let’s start up North, shall we?!
There are not really a lot of things happening in Byron Bay. Sure, it is a beautiful spot and while it is the “door” and starting point for a lot of fun excursions, e.g. to the rainforest or the remains of the Great Barrier Reef, it is essentially a town close to a beach far up in the North-East in a country where the sun shines. Locally and culturally Byron Bay is known for creating laid-back singer/songwriters in the vein of Jack Johnson, major, great multi-day music festivals, i.e. Splendour in the Grass and Blues Fest, wellness retreats and the odd internationally acclaimed band like Parkway Drive.
What began in the Byron Bay hinterland with a chili patch overlooking a hill over 20 years ago, has become a renowned range of chili sauce, corn chips, and salsas: The Byron Bay Chili Company. What started as an experiment to create something that would go with their burritos, tacos and nachos -- sold at Byron Bay Markets -- they started making their own chili sauce, salsas, and corn chips the way they like them.
Since then, Byron Bay Chili Company has grown into a global brand, winning awards on three continents, including the Grand Prize Scovie Award from New Mexico, and is now made and available in the UK with plans to expand to the Middle East.
It all started with their Salsa Picante and Salsa Verde. Word of mouth spread quickly, and eventually led them to become available at Australian and mainstream supermarkets and American chili wholesalers. Not long after they expanded their range with Asian/Latin fusion sauces inspired by Thai, Indian, and Mexican flavours. The common denominator of BBCC’s sauces is that they produce actual sauces that are thick, rich, and opaque.
BBCC’s Range include Fiery Coconut Chili Sauce with Curry and Ginger, which goes well with barbequed chicken or as salad dressing; the Spicy Sweet Chili Sauce with Savory Lemongrass has a nice citrus blend and is an all-rounder, especially nice with fish tacos and Smokin' Mango Chili Sauce with Chipotle Chilies has a mango twang with a tomato backup and three kinds of chilies.
Some of my favourites are the spicy Red Cayenne Chili with Lime (With a not too strong tartness, it has been awarded "Best Louisiana Style Hot Sauce" twice in America at the Scovies), and both their Green Jalapeno with Coriander and their Gold Habanero with Mango Chili Sauces (which have won double Gold at the Great Taste Competition in London).
Covering a wide range, BBCC has something for every palate no matter if you use it as a condiment, dipping, marinating, grilling, stir frying. Even the hottest of BBCC’s varieties are still flavourful. The Green Jalapeno Sauce, with its balanced, blended flavours of green chili, coriander, mango, coconut, and cumin is extraordinary. Same goes for Caribbean-style hot sauce.
Salsa-wise, Byron Bay Chili Company trusts in fresh coriander leaf, fresh onions, and fresh garlic.
Their rich Salsa Picante is a spicy blend of red tomatoes, fresh onions, garlic and coriander, jalapeno chilies and spices.
Great in meat gravy, it adds a nice spice to the traditional roast dinner stirred into marinara and bolognaise sauces for zesty pastas and lasagnas.
Their Red Bean Salsa is comprised of kidney beans and smoked jalapeno chilies (Chipotles), tomato, onion, garlic, and oregano – it’s basically barbequed chili in a dip. Combined with BBCC’s thick gluten-free corn chips, it is a meal in itself. Their Mild Salsa Picante is made of spicy tomato, coriander, jalapeno salsas and comes in two heats, the medium having more chili than the mild. Both are bitey though, and on the hot side of medium and mild.
II. Melbourne Hot Sauce
Let’s head further South:
Melbourne is the capital and most populous city of the Australian state of Victoria. Some say that there is a correlation between its temperate oceanic climate and changeable weather conditions and the international cultural centre it has established itself as. Music-wise it is one of the live capitals of the world with about 62,000 live concerts annually and more live venues per capita than Austin, TX.
The prolific and awards adorned Melbourne Hot Sauces Company is based in St. Kilda and produces small batches of hand crafted hot sauces that use all natural ingredients with no added preservatives, additives, colouring, thickeners, stabilizers or extracts. ?
They produce a wide range of hot sauces with a focus on flavour, depth, and balance using as much quality local produce as possible.
Founder Richard Nelson has been a chef for 16 years running kitchens that mainly specialise in Mexican, Cajun, Creole, Caribbean, and Latin cuisine, which eventually led him into making his own hot sauce and forming Melbourne Hot Sauce in 2013. The Chipotle BBQ was the first sauce he came up with and was created especially for basting pork or beef ribs on the barbecue or smoker.
MHSC’s philosophy is that anyone can make something hot. The key is to have depth, balance and flavour, merging the key characteristics of sweet, savoury, acidity, bitterness, salt and heat.
Agree?
Agree’d!
Your humble narrator’s favourites of the MHSC’s range include the Habanero Roja, which makes a great addition to a Bloody Mary (the Tomatillo and Jalapeno giving the needed zing to Avocado) and Lime Sorbet and Spicy Sanchez, which features a mix of some of the worlds hottest chilies (Carolina Reaper, Trinidad Scorpion, Bhut Jolokia, Red Habanero, Orange Habanero, Chipotle). I drastically overdosed when I first sampled Spicy Sanchez and recommend for your first experience that you have a liter of milk as antidote and peanut butter to coat your tongue with to do damage control. Back in the day it would have definitely been a candidate for the Victory Records hot sauce catalogue.
Melbourne Hot Sauces also do a limited release Melbourne Hell Sauce a few times a year, which includes also some of the hottest chilies in the world and usually sells out within days of release. These chilies can range from 1 million shu to 2 million shu on the Scoville scale. In comparison, the humble Jalapeno rates about 3,000-6,000 thousand shu.
