These sauces lit a fire under our bellehs...
Over twenty-or-so years I’ve subjected my alimentary canal to the full scale of chilli heat levels: from the warm throb of Tabasco all the way up to the World’s Hottest Curry, listed as such by the Guinness Book of Records, which nearly ended in a hospital visit and actually made me cry grown-man tears in the morning as I clenched an ice-cube between my cheeks. Back then, naff labels often featured crude cartoons of characters suffering unfortunate incidents, relating to sauce names like ‘Ass-plosion’ and ‘Pan-galactic supersonic colon blaster’ (only one of those is made up), and their contents were usually a luminous orange blend of ambiguous chillies, with flavour sold down the river in pursuit of pure OTT-chilli heat.
Fortunately, hot sauce and its side-kick BBQ has grown up. A growing category of seriously-good sauce, made by people balancing complex and unusual ingredients with nuclear-spice has taken off. Big Guys Thiccc Sauce is the product of OG Nottingham resident, Luca Rollini, who used time under furlough to grow his product from an initial batch of sauce knocked up in his mum’s kitchen and sold via Instagram comments, to an established brand with its own kitchen that enjoys collaborations with some of the most exciting brands in the UK street food scene.
His core range features a delicious Maple BBQ Sauce, made dark and sticky with molasses, bourbon, honey and maple syrup. The hot sauce we tried was the LA-inspired Black Truffle Hot Sauce, laced with fresh truffles, truffle dust and onions caramelised in truffle vinegar. The balance in this sauce was an achievement – fruity, super-hot, garlicky and plenty truffle-some.
Big Guys knock out batches of sauce on a weekly basis. Look out for collabs and world-flavour variations of their wax-dipped hand-grenade bottles. Follow them on Instagram to keep your lips burning…
Big Guys Thiccc Sauce website
Big Guys Thiccc Sauce Instagram
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