One Sauce to Rule Them All
Stuzzi was lovingly handcrafted by 4 spice addicts who agreed that there should be a single sauce that can span multiple cuisines. The hot sauce world is packed with brands that stay in their lane (Mexican hot sauce for Mexican food, for example) as well as hot sauce lovers who own libraries of sauces in order to have the right sauce for any occasion.
Stuzzi Will Travel
The thing is, the 4 founders also travel a lot (read all about the founders here), and we all wanted one hot sauce that could be the answer for anything we might be eating while on the road. Let’s be honest: no normal human should be dragging along an extra check-in bag with a line-up of spicy options, though we have considered it! (Did we mention that Stuzzi is 3.4oz on purpose? Carry-on size, baby!) How do you make a hot sauce that can span the rainbow of international flavors? You keep it clean, only 3 ingredients: chilies, vinegar, salt. The fewer additional ‘flavors’ added, the more versatile the sauce is. The chilies excite, the vinegar lifts (think about what a squeeze of lemon does to a dish!), the salt balances. It’s the holy trinity of flavor.
We Wanted It to Not Only Be Delicious—but to Have Style
We also wanted a clean hot sauce that actually tasted good, not something drowning in sugar, artificial colors or flavors, dyes, thickening agents, or preservatives. Since the 4 of us come from backgrounds of flavor (2 chefs, a winemaker, and a tequila-maker), we knew that if we just followed the age-old adage of How to Make Things Delicious, we would be in good stead: spend time choosing the best possible ingredients, let them slowly build in flavor, and then resist the lure to keep tweaking what should shine on its own, if you’ve done your job right.
While we were mulling over what else the hot sauce world could use, we noticed that there are an awful lot of similar-looking bottles. Therefore, we took a hard turn and headed down the path of How to Stand Out: a custom bottle embossed with the name ‘Stuzzi’ tucked inside a handsome one-of-a-kind peek-a-boo box that gives the viewer a hint of what’s to come.
Looks Good, Tastes Good, Feels Good
The choices to take the time to make exactly the hot sauce that we wanted to eat, as well as creating a package that matches the charisma of the sauce took a while, a couple of years, to be honest. We got real geeky about the viscosity of the sauce (thicker than Tabasco, thinner than Sriracha), the spice level (enough to make spice lovers happy but not too much as to obliterate your palate), and the flavor profile. We endeavored to find a flavor/ aroma balance for the sauce that spoke of more than most 3-ingredient hot sauces. For example, we use a very singular dried pepper that gives the sauce its depth (read more about that here: The Genesis of Stuzzi: 3 Special Ingredients.)
Suffice it to say, we have put in the time, we trust our ingredients, and like any hospitality individual worth their salt, we are giddy to share Stuzzi with you. We know you will adore it.
