Spicy doesn’t often describe traditional Maine cooking. But then again, Maine cooking ain’t your grandma’s dinner table anymore, as fresh new restaurants have popped up around the state and specialized ingredients have hit kitchens and grocery stores in the past two decades.
Here are five Maine-made hot sauces that have sprung up in recent years that will liven up your cold weather cooking — whether it’s taco or burger night, a takeout evening, a Maine seafood spread or a low-and-slow Sunday afternoon for roasts, stews and casseroles.
Hot Choy
Bangor-based Hot Choy is made by John Patterson, a longtime area musician and connoisseur of spice. Hot Choy is a personal recipe honed by Patterson over the years, now available at the European Farmers Market on Saturday mornings on Buck Street in Bangor, where he also offers banh mi sandwiches and tostadas. There are two varieties of Hot Choy — the spicier Chipotle Lime, made with a blend of roasted peppers, lime, tamari, ginger, garlic and cilantro, and the milder Mango Habanero, made with fresh mango — all made with fresh organic ingredients. Bust it out on Chinese, Thai or sushi night, or dollop it on sandwiches or tacos.
Inner Beauty Hot Sauce
A mustard-based sauce flavored with Scotch bonnet and habanero peppers, citrus, pineapple and other tropical fruits. This cult classic hot sauce was first produced in Massachusetts in the 1980s, but about ten years ago, Bangor salsa purveyor Todd Simcox began making his own version of Inner Beauty. It’s so popular that it regularly sells out, but you can find it on sites like Amazon, or, if you’re in luck, on local grocery store shelves. Try it on kielbasa, tacos or burgers, mix it into baked beans, glaze a ham with it, make salad dressing — tons of possibilities.
Sanjeeva’s Hot Sauce
Ellsworth South Asian restaurant Serendib has served up Indian and Sri Lankan cuisine for close to a decade now. A few years back it began jarring up chef and owner Sanjeeva Abeyasekera’s customer-favorite homemade hot sauce — a mix of fresh chilis, garlic, ginger and other spices, in a blend of vinegar, oil and soy sauce. It’s unsurprisingly fabulous on Indian, Thai and other southern Asian dishes, as well as on eggs, in soups and on noodles.
Maine Gravy
This Damariscotta-based hot sauce brand makes four varieties inspired by towns in Lincoln County. There’s Boothbay Blues, a gently spice blueberry hot sauce; the vinegar-based classic sauce Pemaquid Piquant; the spicy and numbing Midcoast Mayhem flavored with miso and Sichuan peppercorns; and Damariscotta Damnation, featuring everybody’s favorite face melter, ghost pepper. Try the Pemaquid Piquant on fried seafood, or on some fresh Maine oysters, or on some shepherd’s pie on a cold winter day.
Resurgam Fermentation
These hot sauce mad scientists in Portland create wild fermented hot sauces featuring unusual flavors, including Original Leek, made with leeks, an array of hot peppers, maple syrup and spices, naturally fermented with no vinegar added. It also makes Spruced Up, a green sauce kicked up with the flavor of Maine spruce tips, and Habanero!, made with, shocker, habaneros, as well as carrots and onions. Douse your avocado toast with it, or shower it on pulled pork or pot roast.