You can’t find any Tabasco sauce in Tabasco, Mexico. Did you know that? In fact, tabasco sauce does not come from the Mexican state of Tabasco. It’s an US product made using Tabasco chillies – that’s where the name comes from. We learnt this when driving through the real Tabasco.

As it’s not our preferred chilli sauce, we weren’t too disappointed. It’s nowhere near any of our favourites, although it is the best known worldwide. We don’t keep Tabasco sauce in our fridge, but we definitely always have chilli sauce on stock.

The best ones we have tried are still homemade. You can usually find them in any restaurant across Latin America – just ask for salsa picante, chile or ají, depending on where you are. You won’t find the same flavour twice, even if it’s called the same, but at least it’s always spicy. Sometimes, when we really like it, we ask the restaurants if we can buy some of their sauce to take away. And they are usually so proud that tourists were buying their hot sauce that they gave it to us as a gift. Our favourite so far? Miss Liz’s habanero sauce from Belize.

A tour that wasn’t one

The ‘tour’ itself isn’t a proper tour of the factory; it’s more of a video. This was a bit disappointing, though the second part was well worth it: tasting 32 spicy products! Some were spicier than others, and by the end our mouths were numb.

We drank plenty of orange juice and ate lots of crackers with each spicy product during the tasting – and yes, you really need to love spicy food! In the end, the smoked hot sauce came out on top.

Thousand names for one thing: cayenne sauce, chile, ají, chipotle…

One of the first commercially produced hot sauces appeared in the US around 1807 in the form of a bottled cayenne sauce. Since then, it has grown in popularity all over the world.

Hot sauces as we know them today are therefore a relatively new product, although the tradition goes way back. It’s amazing to think that the rest of the world didn’t know about this type of spiciness until the Spaniards arrived in America.

Hot sauce emerged as a means of preserving and enhancing flavour. The Aztecs and Mayans also used it as a remedy or to punish people by burning chillies to produce a burning smoke.

Our tasting session at the production site in Belize was definitely not a punishment! It was amazing to experience all the different flavours, and there are many, many more to discover. At Marie Sharp’s they mainly work with habanero chillies.

In South America, aji sauce is more common. ‘Aji’ is another name for chilli, and as a sauce it is usually mixed with onions and some tomato; further south, it also contains a lot of coriander. But not necessarily. They use other types of chilli, such as rocoto or aji.

In Costa Rica, if you want hot sauce, you have to ask for chimichurri, which is similar to ají sauce in the south, but has nothing to do with Argentinian chimichurri. In Central America, you can basically ask for chilli, or more specifically, ‘salsa picante’. Then you’re sure to get homemade sauce.

In Mexico, most things with chipotle are spicy. They have so many spicy sauces that they’re rather specific at naming them. However, there’s always a spicy and a non-spicy option, so just ask. Don’t assume that if the salsa verde is not spicy in one place, it will be the same at the next.

We’re still working our way through the large jar of habanero chilli sauce that Ms Liz gave us in Belize. Over a month later, we still have some left. Although it’s very good, you can’t put too much of it on your food — it’s really spicy!

Next on the chilli list? Well, we’ll see what’s new to try in the next region.

Banana varieties beyond the yellow banana

Did you know that there are more than a thousand varieties of banana in the world? In Europe, we usually only know one: the sweet yellow banana – the Canarian banana, or Cavendish.

The banana travelled around the world before reaching America. The plant is native to the Indomalayan region, from where it spread to Africa and the Mediterranean, and crossed the Atlantic via the Canary Islands around 1516. Curiously, in Europe we settled on the sweetest and most domesticated variety, without giving the banana tree’s many other forms a chance.

To each their own banana

There is also no lack of diversity in how they are prepared: fried or roasted, patacones or tostones (double-fried plantain), bolones (plantain and cheese balls), green tortillas, chifles (chips), boiled plantain and as many other versions as you can imagine!

I love patacones or tostones – in Venezuela, patacones are hamburgers with tostones, and Colombian patacones are tostones. Why make it easy? On the other hand, I confess that boiled green plantains or plantain soup don’t win me over: they’re too bland.

In many countries, sweet bananas are hardly ever used outside of desserts. The one that reigns supreme in kitchens is the plantain, which is as versatile as the potato.

Beyond the classic yellow, there are curious varieties such as the red or silk banana, which has a sweet flavour with hints of raspberry and a high beta-carotene content that gives the skin its characteristic colour. We tried it in Bolivia, and along with the orito, it’s one of my favourites.

There is also the apple banana, with a flavour reminiscent of the green fruit; I still have that one to try.

The banana market, a global giant

Bananas from the Canary Islands are the mainstay of European supermarkets, along with those from the Azores and the French Caribbean territories. However, domestic production only covers 11% of demand. The rest is supplied from abroad, with 74% of imports coming from Latin America, almost 4.3 million tonnes in 2021.

Ecuador, Colombia and Costa Rica are the main exporters to Europe, a reality that is very much in evidence throughout our trip. Banana trees can be found on every corner and in every garden, and every house has a bunch of green bananas hanging under the porch, ready to be used. And millions of fruit flies as soon as the odd one ripens too much.

Exports focus on bananas, still green, and less on plantains. The latter remains a niche product of immigrant kitchens in Europe.

We are impressed by the variety of plantains and bananas and their use in cooking. No one can take away my patacones or the occasional fried ripe plantain, but I will have to see where I can find them in Europe and, maybe one day, even buy some that are not just yellow.

Which ones have you tried?

Arasá (Eugenia stipitata)

There are different types of guava trees. The arasá comes from the Amazon and is larger than the common guava. The flesh is similar to that of the pear, but has hard but edible seeds. The whole shrub is used medicinally: the root for diarrhoea and the leaves for infusions.

Açaí (Euterpe)

There are two types of this fruit, so popular in breakfast bowls. The açaí is a palm tree that grows in the flooded areas of the Amazon. There is the solitary açaí (Euterpe precatoria), which produces small fruits, and the tropa açaí (Euterpe oleracea), which has several trunks. The fruits are consumed as a drink, candy or ice cream, and the mesocarp is used to make palm heart.

Copoazú (Theobroma grandiflorum)

We are all familiar with cocoa and copoazú is its relative from the eastern Amazon. Unlike cocoa, it has much more white pulp and fewer seeds. It has a slightly acidic taste. The pulp is used to make jellies, jams and marmalades, and the seeds are used to make skin creams. Chocolate is also made from copoazú, the cupulate, although we are still not entirely convinced by its taste.

Achachairú (Garcinia humilis)

This fruit grows in the Bolivian Amazon. It is sweet and bitter. Only the flesh is eaten, by breaking the skin and sucking the flesh around the seed, which is then spat out.

Unfortunately, there was no fruit when we were there, just like the next fruit. So no pictures to show, use your imagination!

Stachelannone (Annona muricata)

It’s also called guanabana. The soursop looks like a giant cherimoya with thorns that can weigh up to 5 kg. They belong to the same family but have a different taste. The soursop has a sweet-sour flavour similar to pineapple.

Ambaibo (Cecropia insignis)

Also known as guarumo, it is known for its symbiosis with Aztec ants. The hollow trunks of the tree are inhabited by these ants, which protect the tree. The fruit of the ambaibo has five edible pods, but is little known, probably because the taste is not overwhelmingly good.