In the Kitchen with Big 5 Sauces #Blog

Briony Wilson
15th October 2018

As you know at Taste Cheshire, we love to go and meet with our fabulous local producers in their natural habitat; the kitchen. Mostly because I’m really nosey and want to know what they do when they aren’t out there selling and If I want to know then maybe so do you!

So this week we went to see Darren Andrews from Big 5 sauces, Darren’s business is inspired by his South African roots and his sauces were actually created as a biproduct of his South African catering business, famous for its Hog Roasts. Darren was making all of his own sauces and marinades which people were always asking to buy, this proved the need to bottle these wonderful products so he could share this unique tastes.

The products are each inspired by different areas of South Africa and the different cultures of those areas. Darren’s current range includes the; Big 5 Zingy BBQ Sauce, Big 5 Cape Malay Curry Sauce, Big 5 Durban Curry Sauce and Big 5 Roast Chilli & Garlic Paste, which works as a great marinade.

Darren makes all his products at the wonderful NoWFOOD Centre at Chester University, a great development centre for food and drink businesses which I am proud to say Taste Cheshire was instrumental in creating. It offers total development support, kitchen facilities and incubation space for start-ups. The aim is to help young food and drink businesses grow and hopefully provide a foundation for them to build on.

The state-of-the-art kitchen is the ideal location for the batch production and scale that Darren needs to make his products, so this week he was making Big 5 Zingy BBQ Sauce and I offered to come along and help. Sadly, I cannot take any credit, I didn’t help I just badgered poor Darren and assistant Precious with a million questions.

When I arrived, Darren had already started to measure out the long list of ingredients ready for the first batch, who knew so many ingredients went in to BBQ sauce, well I guess that is why it tastes so good. We started with frying off the onions, a very “emotional” job. Whilst we had the jars sterilising in the ovens, each stage has set timings, but after making these products so many times, Darren can do it all by eye and smell. After the next addition of seasonings, including; ginger, garlic and chilli, the kitchen smelt amazing. Whilst I was somewhat surprised by the ingredient knowing what the end product tastes like, you can tell how developed Darren’s palette is and how his products are layered with flavours. These seasonings are part of the reason this sauce is zingy after all.

After the flavours were cooked out a little, it was time to add the sweetness – the apples and dates. Again we cooked them down and then added sugar to create that wonderful caramel flavour. Now it was time to balance out the flavour with one of the core elements – tomatoes. For most BBQ sauces, tomatoes and onions are the main base, with sweet elements from sugar and a kick from vinegar. But in South Africa most would use chutney as base within the sauce, this is what really differentiates South African BBQ from the American and English versions. These are flavours Darren was going for, including the different fruit and vinegar elements. Next, we moved on to adding the sticky molasses and Worcester sauce that adds that bitter element, again adding to the layers of flavour, and this substantially thicken the mix as does the final element of Corn starch, because no one wants a runny sauce! At this stage the mix looks a little strange, the colour you would expect, but not the consistency, the batch is cooked down for a little while longer and then the mixture is blended to create that smooth texture you would expect.

The kit within the kitchen is very advanced and bottling was a very interesting process to watch, when Darren started they hand bottled all the jars, but this complex machine of tubes and valves made the process much more efficient. Darren and Precious create a production line, to fill, each bottle, lid it, label it and store it. For every jar must be turned upside down once filled and lidded to create the vacuum to stop the possibility of contamination from any condensation from the hot liquid going in to the cooled jars. Both Darren and Precious have asbestos fingers, these filled jars are very warm, and yet they can bottle 100’s of jars in such a short period.

The final stage is hand labelling the jars with the main labelling and then packaging ready for sale. It is a very labour-intensive process, but all done with love.

Thanks Darren for asking us to come down and see you in action, I hope we weren’t too much of a distraction, and to everyone out there I hope this encourages you all to give this delicious BBQ sauce with a bit of a difference a try. Don’t forget most of Darren’s products are all Gluten Free and some are vegan, so there is something in this range for you all!