the buzz

“Add Some Bang to It! With Sunny Bang's New Private Label Hot Sauce”

Brooklyn is the borough where anyone with a pot and a live flame can turn a random culinary thought into a food business. Indeed, from pickles to chocolates to bitters, Brooklyn’s DIY-artisans are churning out some of the best pantry staples in the country. Now comes Sunny Bang’s Private Label Hot Sauce, a tangy, well-tempered, fire-breathing chile sauce made in Fort Greene by chef Sunny Bang, a Korean native who was inspired to channel his kimchi roots into this brilliant new fermented sauce.  Splash it on eggs, spoon it over a charred flank of steak, smother some grilled fish, heck, even douse your left over Chinese, and you’ve given yourself one of the best gifts of flavor ever given. Bang’s sauce is spicy but balanced, with a punch of bright warm heat that’s intense but not unjustifiably painful.

Bang, who spends his nights as Executive Sous Chef at the new Strip House in midtown, is a Tom Colicchio protégé (he worked at Craftbar and Craftsteak) and has a deep appreciation for local ingredients. To fire up his hot pot, he’s sourced local Red Holland chiles along with sea salt from the Maine Sea Salt Company (the same sea salt used to season Mast Head Brothers’ Chocolates) and a white wine vinegar made in the Hudson Valley by Brother Victor, a monk at the Our Lady of the Sanctuary Monastery in La Grangeville New York. “I had heard about a vinegar that Gray Kunz used to use that was made by monks. It was almost like a myth,” recalled Bang. “I wanted to find it for my sauce.” With a little research, and help from fellow cooks and an article from Food Arts, he found Brother VIctor and wrote him an old-fashioned handwritten letter (no email for this monk) inquiring if he was still in the vinegar business. Bang received a letter in return: “I am still making vinegar. I have set aside a five gallon jug for you.” Bang drives up to get it every time he needs to restock.  

To bring his sauce to life, Bang chops his chiles and soaks them in the vinegar, sea salt, and New York City tap water filtered by reverse osmosis and sets it aside in large containers to where it undergoes lactic fermentation for two weeks, which gives the sauce a little more freshness and pop than your average over-cooked hot sauce. It’s then pureed and bottled and sent out to distributors like Brooklyn Kitchen and Provisions in Fort Greene. The result is a raw food (most hot sauce is cooked not created by fermentation) that’s gluten free and vegan and which, thanks to its lactic fermentation, has the added health benefit of a probiotic. What’s most significant to me is that the taste: tangy and perky, with a zippy zap that’s less acidic and sharp than Red Rooster. Lemme put it this way: You can lick your fingers and get a nice blaze of heat without wincing in pain.

In addition to the original recipe, Bang will be releasing more special sauce this summer: one inspired by Indian pickles called Achaar, and by summertime and black chile hot sauce and a bright green one made from jalapeno ribs and seeds that has some beautiful citrus notes.

To get your hands on some pay a visit to the Brooklyn Kitchen and Provisions in Fort Greene. You can also order it online http://www.sunngbangprivatelabel.bigcartel.com. $12.95 a bottle.  

Share ! Post a comment