Three recipes for a fiery chilli kick – and the best hot sauces to buy

I’m sorting out the fridge and my kitchen cupboards, not a favourite task but I do unearth condiments I’d forgotten about. The range of fresh chillies available here is still limited – you’ll find jalapeños, mixed Thai chillies and the fiercely hot Scotch bonnet in supermarkets – but the number of chilli pastes and sauces on the market has exploded.

Things were very different in the late 1980s when I started to cook with chillies. I used to harangue friends to bring back tins of chipotle in adobo – dried and smoked jalapeños in a spiced tomato sauce – from trips to America, and I’ve kept the paper bag from the Coyote Café in New Mexico that carried dried chillies home to me. Their flat, crinkled bodies, dark and supple, made me think of tobacco leaves and each has a distinctive flavour.

Pasillas are prune-like, cascabels have a whiff of tropical fruit and chillies de arbol taste like toasted nuts. I learnt how to use these in Mexican cooking but was interested in chillies in Indian, Vietnamese and Thai food too. When my appetite focused on a chilli-rich supper I wanted to eat it immediately.

One of the sad things about undergoing chemotherapy five years ago is what it did to my tongue. Chillies can be painful now. The oncologist told me things would go back to normal, but they didn’t. My tolerance for heat fluctuates. For certain periods I can book Thai and Sri Lankan restaurants and eat without tears, but this never lasts. You can’t regret treatment that was lifesaving, but I had such a love of chillies – it’s a cruel punishment.

There are still endless bottles and jars of chilli pastes in my kitchen: harissa, Indonesian sambal oelek, Turkish biber salcasi, Korean gochujang, plus the rust-coloured Lao Gan Ma crispy chilli in oil (an umami bomb with fermented soy beans). Overflowing drawers contain more hot pleasures and there’s a big jar of all-purpose chilli flakes by the hob. I’ve become skilled at knowing exactly how much to add to my arroz con pollo and spaghetti with chilli, parsley, garlic and lemon when my mouth is sensitive.

Of the chilli sauces I buy my favourite is Encona West Indian Hot Pepper Sauce, my go-to. I like the bottle with its square shoulders, and its fruitiness (it’s made with Scotch bonnet and habanero peppers). There’s always a tussle about whether Tabasco or Frank’s RedHot sauce is on the shopping list – you do need a chilli sauce that is thin and hot and can be added in shakes. My children love sriracha, but I suspect it’s because that big bright-red bottle with the goose is so striking. I find the flavour metallic.

Marketing and design are a big part of a chilli sauce’s success. I like to think I’m immune to these things but still buy Le Phare du Cap Bon harissa because I discovered it in couscous joints when I was an au pair in Bordeaux. I fell for the bright-yellow tube emblazoned with long red chillies and that lighthouse. Harissa varies hugely between brands – there are dried rose petals in some, though they’re usually undetectable.

My own rendition is my favourite – deep and woody and strong on cumin and caraway. Thai sweet chilli sauce is the commercial sauce I like least as it’s so sweet and gloopy; I started to make my own chilli jam and offer the recipe here.

Chipotle paste and gochujang are the relatively new kids on the block and both are brilliant stirred into aioli or mayonnaise to serve with chicken, pork, roast tomatoes and waxy potatoes, and a must at summer barbecues.

On doctor’s orders Diana Henry is taking a break from her column. We can’t wait to have her back in these pages, but in the meantime we hope you enjoy these previous favourites from her archive.