Small & Spicy: Local Hot Sauces Bring the Heat

Jun 10

Small & Spicy: Local Hot Sauces Bring the Heat

BY ALLIE NOLAND

The Inland Northwest is blending chilis, vinegar and storytelling into mouth-watering hot sauce for a personal touch to any meal. Small batch hot sauce has been trending over the last couple of years, and the industry is full and thriving. Standing out takes a blend of quality ingredients, friendly faces and a deep-rooted passion for community through food. These four Inland Northwest businesses are representing the power of local and the power of heat through hot sauce.

3 Ninjas

With an idea to start a fusion food truck in 2014, Michael Anderson, Steven Kitchens and Tymen Hofmann haven’t looked back. The three lifelong friends decided that working together and working with food is what they want to do. With two restaurants and three hot sauces being sold in the Inland Northwest region, they have seen incredible support and love for their creations.

At the start of their journey, the 3 Ninjas food truck provided a place for the trio to create, taste and share their hot sauce creations with customers, resulting in a masterful sauce that satisfies all. They even have “Ninja test subjects” that still come in to try new recipes.

“Hot sauce, to me, isn’t just about burning your face off,” Kitchens said. “It’s about getting the right amount of vinegar and the right amount of pepper. We make an all around good sauce, not just hot sauce.”

Now, 3 Ninjas has three hot sauces: Mango Habanero, Smoky Jalapeno and Sweet Melissa’s. Smoky Jalapeno is an all purpose sauce that can go in anything, according to Kitchens. It’s great for adding to marinades, mixing into ranch, spicing up a bloody mary mix or even putting it on your breakfast in the morning. Mango Habanero is a perfect fit to sweeten and spice up lighter flavors like chicken and fish. Sweet Melissa’s is for the brave.

“If you can handle the heat, you can put it on anything,” Anderson said.

Find 3 Ninjas hot sauce on Facebook @mobilespokane, at the Kitchen Engine, Huckleberry’s, My Fresh Basket or visit one of their restaurant locations to buy a hot sauce bottle and have a meal.

Fletcher’s Sauce Co.

If you’ve lived in Spokane for some time, you’ve probably seen Fletcher's Gourmet Hot Sauce or BBQ Sauce at your table in a diner or on the shelves at the grocery store. Fletchers has been around for over 60 years, when Frank Fletcher created his famous BBQ sauce right here in Spokane.

The idea for the hot sauce didn’t come about until 2010, when the business was handed off after Frank’s retirement to a family working in the restaurant industry in Spokane. The new owners realized that the BBQ sauce was so delicious, that making an equally delicious hot sauce was the move. Now, the two sauces are being sold all over the world.

Fletcher's hot sauce can go on eggs, be splashed into soup or can spice up any recipe. Its medium spice makes it a versatile sauce that can go on pretty much anything, according to owner Rick Mattson who took over in 2020.

Find Fletcher’s sauces at your local grocery store or visit fletcherssaucecompany.com to see why it has been around for so long.

Guero y Maria

Hand picked peppers and fermentation are the keys behind the well-known and local hot sauce, Guero y Maria. Owner Allen Dearie started this business in 2018. After immigrating from Mexico to the United States, Allen’s family has brought their love for hot sauce and food with them, sharing it along the way.

After owning multiple Mexican markets and serving meals with locally sourced ingredients, the Dearie family found people coming from all over to eat their food and try their hot sauce. Allen Dearie decided he wanted to take on the hot sauce idea and start bottling it.

Sticking to two main sauces, Guero y Maria features Salsa Verde Hot Sauce and Habanero Hot Sauce. Recently, the addition of Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce was made for foodies that are looking for a fiery, serious taste of heat.

Each pepper is handpicked from local farms in Quincy, WA, along with additional ingredients, like garlic, tomatillos and cilantro. Spices are added to the fresh produce, and everything gets blended up before being fermented in tanks for 30 days. The sauce process is simple, but takes ample time. According to Allen, the wait is worth it.

You may recognize the iconic bottle (featured on the cover), decorated with two dolls wearing authentic Mexican dress. Guero y Maria is used, sold and loved at many restaurants and grocery markets in the Inland Northwest, including Cochinito and My Fresh Basket.

Crafting an eye-catching and trendy logo that stays true to the story behind the sauce was a huge part in the bottling aesthetic, according to Allen. Countless hours of brainstorming and sketching were put into the punk-rock-esque label and the branding has also been applied to T-shirts and stickers.

Find Guero y Maria in Spokane at My Fresh Basket or visit their website gueroymaria.com to get a taste of what everyone is talking about.

Vandal & Irish Spike’s

Vandal Pepper Sauce started in 2018. Originating at The Breakfast Club restaurant in Moscow, ID, the OG recipe was a large collaboration of several people at the restaurant and was carefully mastered in the kitchen over a couple of years. Now, lining the shelves across 12 states, you can find Vandals and spice up any dish.

Chef and co-owner Christopher Connelly, known colloquially as Spike, says it is the perfect cross between the garlicy, bright heat of well-loved Sriracha and the taste of fresh lemon. With body and tang, Vandal Pepper Sauce is a versatile hot sauce that will trigger a mouthwater as soon as you see the bottle. “Breakfast is incomplete without a few dashes of Vandal Pepper Sauce,” Spike said.

Seeing Vandal take off in popularity, Spike was inspired to release more hot sauce creations into the world and get them onto shelves in the Inland Northwest. With knowledge in the hot sauce industry and over 10 years of experimenting with sauces, the Irish Spike’s brand was born.

With over 35 flavors of hot sauce, Irish Spike’s is masterfully crafting imaginative and innovative sauces with classic tastes like habanero to funky flavors like pineapple, mango and banana. Spike is all about finding ingredients to make the chili flavor pop while not overwhelming the food that is about to be sauced up.

Spike’s ideas for the crazy sauces simply comes from a walk around the grocery store or farmers market. For example, he sees coconut and thought to marry that flavor with roasted red peppers. This was the inspiration behind his “Sweet Lava” sauce, a variety celebrity chef Alton Brown even featured on his show. Irish Spike’s is always releasing new flavors of hot sauce to spice up at-home recipes or jazz up something new. From its most popular sauce, “Unicorn Blood,” to new and innovative sauces like “Bizzaro Sauce” or “Killer Rabbit,” there is always a new sauce to try.

Find Irish Spike’s and Vandal at Huckleberry’s, My Fresh Basket or Main Market Co-op in Spokane. Visit irishspikes.com or vandalpeppersauces.com to find where you can pick up a bottle…or five.