Hot Times

These 3 local hot sauce brands will add a kick to your next meal.

Orlando: home of theme parks, basketball…and hot sauce? Three local pepper proponents are creating award-winning condiments that will excite your palate.

Journalist Eyal Goldshmid and his wife, attorney Deborah Moskowitz, started making several varieties of sauce in their home kitchen four years ago, and now their Fat Cat label (fatcatfoods.com) can be seen on store shelves the length and breadth of Florida (including Fresh Market and Orlando International Airport). Their Purry Purry and Mexican-Style Habanero sauces, made with local ingredients, are particularly good.

Poca’s Hottest Hot Sauce (pocashottest.com) is the brainchild of Orlando chef Wendy Davis, who concocts fiery condiments inspired by, and named after, local musicians. Rock and funk band Shak Nasti has sparked a sweet and spicy Cajun Honey Mustard Sauce, high-energy metal heroes Gargamel have the pepper, carrot and honey Crybaby label named after them, and AC’s Chili and Herb rub has drummer extraordinaire Anthony Cole to thank for its versatile flavors. Available at Poca’s Hottest store at Artegon Marketplace.

Horror movie fan Zachary Zouzoulas has a thing about zombies, and while his namesake creation, Zach’s Zombie Sauce, might suggest a mind-numbing inferno, the rich sauce has layers of exotic spice and warmth that is more seductive than painful. Sold on the zachszombiesauce.com website.

—J.H.