{"id":523573,"date":"2025-10-24T01:43:28","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T01:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/523573\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T01:43:28","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T01:43:28","slug":"south-west-london-turns-up-the-heat-at-annual-hot-sauce-competition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/523573\/","title":{"rendered":"South West London turns up the heat at annual hot sauce competition"},"content":{"rendered":"

London\u2019s annual hot sauce competition returned to Balham, where fifty homemade sauces were labelled and ready for tasting.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The annual Chilli Sauce Championship. which happened on Sunday, is brought together by Paul Ellison, a hot sauce enthusiast whose passion project has grown into one of south-west London\u2019s most tongue-tingling traditions.<\/p>\n

The sauces, decanted from pickle jars, yogurt tubs and tupperware boxes, were lined up for the 11th year.<\/p>\n

\"\"The chilli sauces, lined up and ready for tasting by hot sauce fanatics. Credit: Jolly Thompson Photography<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chilli Sauce Championship has become so popular that Ellison, a 2020 Masterchef contestant, has had to cap entries, welcoming sauce-makers on a first-come-first-served basis.\u00a0<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s competition, held upstairs at Balham Bowls Club, featured sauces inspired from across the globe, from Caribbean-style heat bombs to Indian-inspired blends.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ellison told the Londoners: \u201cA lot of them can be quite fruity, like this year we\u2019ve got mango based sauces, we\u2019ve got pineapple based sauces and a few plum sauces as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

The strongest flavour palettes this year were fruit-based, Ellison said, a trend that gave rise to this year\u2019s winning sauce Mango Tango, crafted by Dale Andrews.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean honestly I expected it,\u201d Andrews said. \u201cI won third place last year and it was a great sauce then.\u201d<\/p>\n

Andrews pleased crowds when he adapted his 2024 entry from Guava Lava to the 2025 winner, Mango Tango.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrews said: \u201cI\u2019ve been obsessed with hot sauce since I was about five years old.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother\u2019s husband decided to pay me \u00a35 to eat her chilli. And yes, I\u2019ve loved hot sauce ever since.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Among the more experimental entries was The Fooll, a fermented rhubarb hot sauce by Chris Caroll, who has entered the competition with his wife Vicky Caroll for the past five years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI try to enter every year and I try to improve year on year,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe last two years I\u2019ve been doing a fermented sauce rather than a cooked sauce because fermentation is a lot better for your gut.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Caroll\u2019s sauce was inspired by his organic vegetable box deliveries.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn March I got a load of rhubarb and prepped it, chopped it, froze it and then waited until later on in the year,\u201d said Caroll, \u201cthen I defrosted and fermented it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

When asked about the spice-flavour balance, Caroll said: \u201cIt doesn\u2019t have to be thermonuclear to be a good sauce.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two years ago, one of the sauces that won was in the mild section.<\/p>\n

Caroll said: \u201cThat\u2019s the good thing about this \u2014 it\u2019s open to the public and anyone can vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s truly all about flavour rather than something that\u2019s just ridiculously hot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over the years, three of the hot sauces have gone on to be commercially produced.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of Ellison\u2019s particular favourites was called Smokey and the Bandit, which came in second place in 2013.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The chef, Denis Jose-Francois, went on to start his own hot sauce business which he ran for five years.<\/p>\n

The Chill Sauce Championships is sponsored by Kate O\u2019Neill and James Nicolian, owners of the UK\u2019s biggest online chilli emporium, Some Like it Hot<\/a>, <\/strong>which sells over 600 chilli sauces.<\/p>\n

Ellison, who rates his spice tolerance an \u2018eight out of ten,\u2019 also makes his own hot sauces with a very particular criteria.<\/p>\n

\"\"Pete Ellison, host of the annual Chilli Sauce Competition. Credit: Jolly Thompson Photography<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got about 12 that I really love to make, but I always want them to be able to be used as a ketchup.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething you can use liberally on a burger or your eggs in the morning, so that you get the burn but also the flavour.\u201d<\/p>\n

For those wondering how to cool the burn, Ellison confirmed there is some science behind cooling your palette with dairy, but it must be full-fat.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormal or skimmed milk is not as effective. You need some high-fat yoghurt or cream to emulsify the active ingredients,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat doesn\u2019t work is tequila or spirits, once a friend of mine gave me a taste of a fresh scotch bonnet, and then a shot of tequila afterwards.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd all that did was spread the heat around and make it worse.\u201d<\/p>\n

The annual Chilli Sauce Championships<\/a> takes place in October every year, with hot sauce chefs already brainstorming their 2026 entries.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Featured image credit: Jolly Thompson Photography<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"London\u2019s annual hot sauce competition returned to Balham, where fifty homemade sauces were labelled and ready for tasting.\u00a0…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,170038,5554,1442,393,4884,170039,257,16,15,32391],"class_list":{"0":"post-523573","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-britain","9":"tag-chilli","10":"tag-community","11":"tag-competition","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-hot-sauce","15":"tag-london","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-wandsworth"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115426610801636965","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}