London’s annual hot sauce competition returned to Balham, where fifty homemade sauces were labelled and ready for tasting.
The annual Chilli Sauce Championship. which happened on Sunday, is brought together by Paul Ellison, a hot sauce enthusiast whose passion project has grown into one of south-west London’s most tongue-tingling traditions.
The sauces, decanted from pickle jars, yogurt tubs and tupperware boxes, were lined up for the 11th year.
The Chilli Sauce Championship has become so popular that Ellison, a 2020 Masterchef contestant, has had to cap entries, welcoming sauce-makers on a first-come-first-served basis.
This year’s competition, held upstairs at Balham Bowls Club, featured sauces inspired from across the globe, from Caribbean-style heat bombs to Indian-inspired blends.
Ellison told the Londoners: “A lot of them can be quite fruity, like this year we’ve got mango based sauces, we’ve got pineapple based sauces and a few plum sauces as well.”
The strongest flavour palettes this year were fruit-based, Ellison said, a trend that gave rise to this year’s winning sauce Mango Tango, crafted by Dale Andrews.
“I mean honestly I expected it,” Andrews said. “I won third place last year and it was a great sauce then.”
Andrews pleased crowds when he adapted his 2024 entry from Guava Lava to the 2025 winner, Mango Tango.
Andrews said: “I’ve been obsessed with hot sauce since I was about five years old.
“My mother’s husband decided to pay me £5 to eat her chilli. And yes, I’ve loved hot sauce ever since.”
Among the more experimental entries was The Fooll, a fermented rhubarb hot sauce by Chris Caroll, who has entered the competition with his wife Vicky Caroll for the past five years.
“I try to enter every year and I try to improve year on year,” he said.
“The last two years I’ve been doing a fermented sauce rather than a cooked sauce because fermentation is a lot better for your gut.”
Caroll’s sauce was inspired by his organic vegetable box deliveries.
“In March I got a load of rhubarb and prepped it, chopped it, froze it and then waited until later on in the year,” said Caroll, “then I defrosted and fermented it.”
When asked about the spice-flavour balance, Caroll said: “It doesn’t have to be thermonuclear to be a good sauce.
Two years ago, one of the sauces that won was in the mild section.
Caroll said: “That’s the good thing about this — it’s open to the public and anyone can vote.
“It’s truly all about flavour rather than something that’s just ridiculously hot.”
Over the years, three of the hot sauces have gone on to be commercially produced.
One of Ellison’s particular favourites was called Smokey and the Bandit, which came in second place in 2013.
The chef, Denis Jose-Francois, went on to start his own hot sauce business which he ran for five years.
The Chill Sauce Championships is sponsored by Kate O’Neill and James Nicolian, owners of the UK’s biggest online chilli emporium, Some Like it Hot, which sells over 600 chilli sauces.
Ellison, who rates his spice tolerance an ‘eight out of ten,’ also makes his own hot sauces with a very particular criteria.
“I’ve got about 12 that I really love to make, but I always want them to be able to be used as a ketchup.
“Something you can use liberally on a burger or your eggs in the morning, so that you get the burn but also the flavour.”
For those wondering how to cool the burn, Ellison confirmed there is some science behind cooling your palette with dairy, but it must be full-fat.
“Normal or skimmed milk is not as effective. You need some high-fat yoghurt or cream to emulsify the active ingredients,” he said.
“What doesn’t work is tequila or spirits, once a friend of mine gave me a taste of a fresh scotch bonnet, and then a shot of tequila afterwards.
“And all that did was spread the heat around and make it worse.”
The annual Chilli Sauce Championships takes place in October every year, with hot sauce chefs already brainstorming their 2026 entries.
Featured image credit: Jolly Thompson Photography
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