Hancock and hot sauce: a (spicy) match made in heaven

Kenneth Hancock has loved hot sauce from an early age. After moving to New Orleans from Bessemer, he learned to make it himself. Now, Hancock sells his hot sauce at Tostadas, a Mexican restaurant in Homewood, where he works.

“I originally started making it for myself,” Hancock said. “I love hot sauce, and I love spicy food, but most hot sauces just taste like vinegar, so I wanted to make a hot sauce that didn’t have that vinegar taste.”

Hancock said he combats the overwhelming taste of vinegar by incorporating sweeter ingredients like his mango habanero hot sauce.

Making his hot sauce involves a lot of trial and error, Hancock said. It took a couple of years of working on his mango habanero hot sauce before he was satisfied with it, he said.

He said he makes hot sauces he would like. One hot sauce flavor he created is his roasted garlic habanero hot sauce. “The roasted garlic habanero was me just messing around and trying to figure out what I would like,” he said.

He likes garlic flavors, but he didn’t like it as much as he thought he would, so he decided to roast the garlic, which made it taste much better, Hancock said.

Hancock has always loved hot sauce, but that love grew when he discovered hot sauce stores in the French Quarter neighborhood of New Orleans when he moved there after graduating high school. “It’s kind of where I found my love of spice,” he said.

Although he loved the hot sauces they sold, he realized that the main flavor in every bottle was vinegar.

“You have to use vinegar as a preservative but that doesn’t mean it has to taste like it,” Hancock said.

He worked in several restaurants while living in New Orleans, and one of them made their own hot sauce, which led him to make his own, he said.   

After moving back to Alabama, he started selling his hot sauce and got an offer from Hal Craig, owner of Tostadas, to sell it in his restaurant.

“He made it here, and everybody really liked it,” Craig said. “Instead of buying it from the store, I thought I could just buy it from him. I bought a couple bottles from him and let the customers use it. People love it.”

Hancock has been thinking about making a kiwi strawberry hot sauce and a Carolina Reaper hot sauce, which is one of the hottest peppers in the world.

He said he makes his hot sauce with all-natural ingredients at Tostadas on the weekends but has to wait until no other food is being made in the kitchen, after they close, per health guidelines.

He plans to send his hot sauces to a lab in Auburn to be tested for calories so it can be sold in stores, he said.

“I want to make it my own business,” Hancock said. “Once I get everything ready for it, I’ll be able to get a license to sell it and all of that.”

Hancock’s hot sauces are available for purchase at Tostadas and are offered on the menu. The current flavors that are available are his mango habanero and roasted garlic hot sauces.

“I want to be able to get it into stores so that way, you don’t have to be a customer here to be able to enjoy it,” Hancock said.