THE JUNGLE FIRE STORY

"If you follow me on social media then you will already know how much I love cooking, and the natural path to follow on from that is finding the tastiest ingredients. The best way to do that is to grow your own! So a few years ago I started growing vegetables in my back garden, just simple stuff, Tomatoes, Beetroot, some salads etc and of course Chillies! Before I knew it I had a gazillion chilli plants in pots all around the garden, and come harvest time, more hot peppers than I knew what to do with! So I started experimenting with hot sauces, salsas & drying the chillies for using in BBQ dry rubs & seasoning.

I've grown all sorts of different varieties of Hot Pepper, from simple mainstream ones like Cayenne (which can still be really hot!), Scotch bonnets, Ring o' Fire, Bird's Eye, to rarer and much much hotter & famous like the Scorpion Moruga, Bhut Jolokia aka the 'Ghost' pepper & the world record hottest - the Carolina Reaper. What amazed me when I tried these for the first time, apart from how insanely hot they can be, is the intensity of the flavour and the fruityness that comes from the pods. I guess my mission with the sauces I make is to let that flavour shine through, if you can see through the heat! I find a lot of traditional hot sauces are very vinegary & sharp, I'm not into that, what I love is the sweet fruity flavour alongside the heat. 

Eat the sauce however you like, its good to try some on a teaspoon first so you can really taste what's going on and appreciate the flavour - a great wake-up kick in the morning too (even better in a bloody mary!). My personal favourite is to use it as a marinate on chicken thighs for the BBQ, I find the heat calms down a little during cooking too.

The idea behind Jungle Fire is to make limited edition batches of wonderfully flavourful, exciting hot sauces, and to share them with enthusiasts all over the world, the same approach I take to my music! I'll be making lots of different styles over the summer, some with the focus more on heat, some more fruity & suited to marinades, and some more smokey/BBQ oriented (you will know how much I've been getting into American-style 'Low & Slow' BBQing if you check my instagram!).

I will be encouraging feedback, and in fact everyone that sends in a video review of them trying the sauce for the first time will get a discount voucher for future purchases! :-)

If things go well, and after listening to feedback on what you guys are enjoying the most I may refine certain popular recipies and eventually have a few 'signature' bottles that I can make in larger quantities - but for now, this is stricktly limited underground Jungle Fire. Dub Plate sauces for those that know!"

Love from John B

Here's a random video from 3 or 4 years ago when I was first learning about growing chillis at home! Little did I know how far it would take me, and the chillis!!