For years, ketchup was Natasha White’s condiment of choice, dressing her eggs, potatoes and anything greasy. Then she discovered someting new.
“I never liked Tabasco, but one of my closest friends is Korean and she introduced me to Sriracha sauce,” White, a 26-year-old New York restaurant manager, said of the Asian-inspired hot sauce.
One summer, she said, “we put it on everything.”
Yes, it’s now a big condiment universe out there.
Highly specific hot sauces, artisanal soys and complex chutneys get the kind of attention once reserved for the main dish. The big three — ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard — have moved to the back of the nation’s collective refrigerator.
“Every other kind of condiment in the country has become more prevalent,” said John Willoughby, executive editor at Gourmet magazine. “We are looking for stronger tastes and more unique flavors.”
Sales of ketchup, mayonnaise and mustard have stagnated since 2001, actually declining 2 percent between 2004 and 2005, according to a recent market analysis from Packaged Facts, the publishing division of MarketResearch.com.
The report — which predicts the decline will continue through 2010 — blames the change in part on a lack of innovation in traditional condiments. Changing demographics also play a role.
With a world of flavors to explore, here are some tastes worth trying:
Artisanal soy sauces, such as Mitoku
These salty potions made from steamed soy beans are delicately crafted and aged, some in barrels for more than a hundred years. They are to Japanese cuisine what fine oils and vinegars are to European fare.
“It’s a quick way to add a lot of flavor to something ketchup and mustard can’t do,” Willoughby says. “As people are looking for quicker ways to cook meals, they have become a good way for a shortcut.”
Chutneys
These spicy or sweet chunky spreads indigenous to India have been adapted to Western tastes for hundreds of years, especially in Great Britain, which has a long love affair with Indian food. These are a wonderful accompaniment to spicy and savory foods.
Companies such as Stonewall Kitchen and New York-based Hampton Chutney now stock shelves of gourmet grocers — and a lot of regular supermarkets, too, — with flavors such as mango, cilantro and peanut.
Pickles
These are so beyond the jars of bread and butter pickles you toss on your burger. Pickling, especially of less common items such as carrots, green beans and okra, is turning into big business for some companies.
“Somehow kimchee seems to be everywhere,” said Dana Cowin, editor-in-chief of Food and Wine magazine, of Korea’s pickled cabbage condiment. “You see it at farmers markets in New York, but also in Minneapolis. They even sell it as Sam’s,” the wholesale club owned by Wal-Mart.
New York-based Rick’s Picks pickles in unusual brines seasoned with paprika, rosemary, lime and ginger. The company has seen profits triple every year since starting in 2004 and now ships 10 different pickled vegetables to roughly 400 shops nationwide.
Roasted red pepper spread
This staple of Eastern European and Middle Eastern cultures has become hugely popular as a sandwich spread or addition to sauces. It is made from pureed fire-roasted red peppers mixed with olive oil, spices and other ingredients, such as eggplant.
Hot sauces
“(Hot sauces) are becoming more condiment like,” says Jim Kelley, founder of Savannah, Ga.-based hot sauce dealer Mo Hotta Mo Betta. “They are becoming something that you can eat at every meal. They are hot, but not so hot that they burn you.”
That helps explain how they’ve grown into a $156 million industry. Kelley says sales of his hot sauces have grown from about 75,000 bottles a year when he started to more than half a million, with nearly a third of the growth coming during the past two years.
Innovative hot sauces now comes spiked with all manner of seasonings, including wasabi, habanero, even pineapple.
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