Ukuva Sauces - The 'HOT mammas' and the party animal...

In the beginning (±1996) there were the BIG 4 - the HOT mammas: Zulu Fire Sauce, Swazi Mama Mamba, Malawi Gold and Umsobo iYaBaba (loosely translates as 'the big daddy sauce' (not for weaklings).

The Big 4 are all built on real vegetables: real, fresh onions, garlic, carrots and/or sweet potato, some with fresh coriander leaf and fresh chillies. This gives that awesome depth of flavour... you can taste there's no shortcuts.

FIRE SAUCE (aka Zulu Fire Sauce) is hot, but not incendiary. The name comes from the colour changes that happens while it is cooking - it swirls with dark orange, through maroon and finally settles at dark red. Fire Sauce is red chilli living its best life. It is made for red meat - and anything tomato.

MAMBA SAUCE (aka Swazi Mama Mamba) is hot - hotter than Fire Sauce - and alongside Malawi, they are singular in their class - there simply is nothing else like it out there in the world of chilli sauces. Swazi is hot and tangy and cool and fresh all at the same time - and its the true soul-mate of chicken and fish.

GOLD SAUCE (aka Malawi Gold) is possible the hottest of the lot. Don't let the 'orange' fool you - it is flavour in a class of its own, so if your passion is hot AND flavourful - you'll be smitten!

PERI PERI SAUCE (aka Mombasa) joined the ranks a few years later. Where the 'Hot Mammas' have gravitas on their side, Peri Peri is altogether more frivolous and fun - if a sauce could have the character of a real party animal, this is IT. It is everything you expect it to be, red chilli, lemon, pepper and parsley - and the best, best flavour-friend of flame-grilled chicken and prawns.

And what happened to Umsobo iYaBaba? We had to discontinue it after a few years. It was so hot - imagine a sauce with weapons grade chilli in a menacing shade of purple... Even the people making the sauce were afraid of it. Customers bought it for curiosity, but no one fell in love with it... So that was that.

Oh - and there are people asking why, after more than 25 years did we have to go and change the names... Frankly, we were happy where they were, but lately a number of interest groups on social media spent an inordinate amount of energy agitating about 'cultural appropriation' etc, and no amount of us engaging with them (we are real Africans!), could convince them. So, to save our retailers and customers some aggravation, we are gradually changing all the names to something more culturally sensitive. After all, its about the sauce...