A new guide to 101 of the world's best hot sauces is co-authored by an alternative Sheffield musician Dean Honer. The other co-author is Neil Ridley, who is an award-winning drinks writer and regular presenter on Sunday Brunch. Dean, who is a legendary producer, has worked with everyone from the Human League to Britney Spears, and fell in love with hot sauce while playing at a festival in Austin and has been on a quest ever since to sample them all
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00:00 My name is Dean Hohner, I'm a music producer and musician and this is my home studio.
00:07 I mainly work from here but sometimes I travel around to various studios to record bands
00:15 or produce bands.
00:17 Probably released first records in the 90s, so quite a long time, probably 30 years or
00:27 something like that.
00:28 I've got quite a lot of my own projects, there's a band called Iron Monster which is releasing
00:36 a new album soon.
00:39 In the past I was in a band called The All-Seeing Eye, we worked with people like Jarvis Cocker,
00:45 Roshin Murphy, Tony Christie and more recently I've been involved in a band called The Excentronic
00:54 Research Council.
00:57 We're working with an actress called Maxine Peake, various different things.
01:07 A new direction for me is I made a book about hot sauce with my good friend Neil Ridley
01:15 who's a whiskey and drinks writer.
01:20 The idea came about I think, like a lot of ideas, over a pint in the pub.
01:26 I can't remember how we actually got chatting about hot sauce, maybe we were having a pizza
01:30 or something like that.
01:34 I suggested to him that hot sauce seemed like quite an interesting thing to write a book
01:42 about because it seemed to be a growing thing and we couldn't find any other books on hot
01:49 sauces.
01:50 So we sketched out a few ideas, sent it off to Neil's agent and she said yeah, it's a
01:56 good idea and she presented it to some publishers.
01:59 Well the book is a guide to 101 of the world's best sauces.
02:06 So we ended up reviewing and tasting probably over 250 sauces from all over the world and
02:14 we had to kind of narrow it down to 101.
02:16 Well it was going to be 100 but there was one I think that we had to get in.
02:20 So there's sauces from like Sriacha's from the east, there's lots of sauces from America
02:30 and the UK which seem to be kind of the biggest producers at the moment.
02:35 Then there's classics from Mexico and I know there's some from Africa, Iceland, everywhere
02:42 really, everywhere.
02:43 And that's Yo-Yo, she's a Yorkshire producer based in Halifax.
02:49 That's from Sheffield, Mr. Koo, Mr. Alex Koo, makes really good sauces.
02:57 We learnt a lot as we were doing it and particularly about the history of chilis and where they
03:01 originated from and how they originated in South America or Central America and how they
03:09 travelled around the world to places like India and to China from there.
03:13 So yeah it was good, it was really exciting.
03:17 The book is available from most book shops I think like Waterstones or you can get it
03:23 online from Amazon.
03:24 So hopefully it might go into some supermarkets as well.
03:27 The interesting thing is we have here some of the sauces that are made in Yorkshire.
03:33 So from Leeds we have Thick Sauce, that's the makers name.
03:41 So he does these amazing little wax topped bottles, some really interesting varieties.
03:51 From a lady called Yo-Yo Roth who I think is based in Halifax.
03:56 She's originally from Laos and she makes these amazing Laotian recipe sauces.
04:05 So the gravy, noodles and rice, ginger flavours and really really lovely sauces.
04:16 And from Sheffield, my home town, we have sauces by Mr. Alex Koo.
04:22 So these are Koo's sauces and he produces amazing stuff as well.
04:28 I think this one especially which is in the book called the Northern Beacon, I think it's
04:33 got something like 12 different varieties of chillies in it.
04:38 Really interesting stuff that he's making.
04:41 He's made this lovely hot golden syrup as well.
04:46 And the rest of these are kind of just some classics like the Cristal.
04:50 You probably can see in the supermarkets but they're still great sauces.
04:55 It's in Kona.
04:56 This is a great sauce, it's from Barbados, it's like a hot mustard sauce.
05:04 But yeah, that's a few of the sauces that I rate really highly and I think most of them
05:10 appear in the book.
05:11 So myself and my partner who I wrote the book with, Neil Ridley, he's a musician as well
05:19 so we thought how could we get the experience of eating or trying a hot sauce as a piece
05:29 of music and that's what we've tried to do.
05:31 So we've produced this 10-inch vinyl record and it comes in, oops, show you the record.
05:40 It's out under our name which is The Fire Eaters and it's kind of the four stages, it's
05:47 the four stages of eating a sauce.
05:50 There's fear and trepidation, the rising burn, terror and torment and the euphoria and joy
05:57 that you get after you've had some sauce and a really hot sauce and the endorphins are
06:02 rushing through your body.
06:03 So that's also available to buy.
06:05 I think it's on our Bandcamp page under The Fire Eaters.
06:10 So if you can find that, go and buy it.
06:13 It's just begun.
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