Jan’s Pepper Sauce
The story behind my mummy’s hot pepper sauce
I grew up with a lot of guava trees in our yard in Trinidad & Tobago and my parents made guava jam, jelly, cheese, stew and nectar from the guavas for sale. Mummy also made lots of preserves, chutneys, lime pepper, and pepper sauce. Her pepper sauce was by far the most popular. Little did I know my parents supplemented their weekly incomes with these items and more to pay my school fees.
Mummy started to focus more on the lime pepper and pepper sauce as they were faster sellers with better margins. Plus, we had moved from the house with the guava trees.
Word spread and she was making pepper sauce every weekend to supply the demand. But as her jobs got better and more demanding she stopped making so much pepper sauce and spent more time fishing and having fun when she was not working. She was by now co-owner of the company she worked at.
When I got married and relocated to Jamaica, my husband’s family who had been to Trinidad for the wedding and had the pepper sauce, wanted more when what mummy had given them was finished. I called and asked my mum how to make it… it took a few years to eventually get the whole recipe out of her. She was not one to give out her recipes even to me.
I started making for friends and family and when my babies came along my mother-in-law decreed no pepper sauce making as she was afraid the fumes would burn the babies. So, for 13 years no pepper sauce was made in the house. When the kids were in their teens I restarted, but the demand got so big I could no longer afford to give it away and started selling. It took off right away. Serious pepper eaters order the sauce by the gallon.
The Pork Store earlier this year asked me to give them for sale and I had a label done with a shelf-life study, and a nutritional analyst and Jan’s Pepper Sauce became official! The Jamaica Food and Drink Kitchen is waiting on me to supply them, as well.