Marshall's Haute Sauce brings the heat with local ingredients
When we pulled up to our shoot with Marshall’s Haute Sauce, I was a bit confused.
We were in a suburban neighborhood, full of single family homes and mature trees … hardly the typical setting for a hot sauce production facility. Turns out that Oregon — brilliantly — encourages makers to utilize their homes for food production. The state actively cultivates cottage food businesses and makes domestic food processing licenses available to people like Sarah. She and her husband, Dirk, operate their hot sauce company out of a converted garage, complete with a full commercial kitchen.
The day that we visited, Sarah was making her signature Habanero Carrot Curry sauce, one of the first recipes she developed. The habaneros that she sourced while they were in season were pulled from the freezer, bunches of carrots with the greens still attached were piled on the counter. The entire space smelled of curry and warm spices. She had jars filled with pre-portioned spices and salt on her shelves, ready to be pulled and poured.
Salt, of course, is a critical component when making something like a hot sauce. Sarah uses Jacobsen Salt not only because it’s local — she sources all of her ingredients locally — but because the salt, unlike earth-mined salts that have iodine added, has a clean, bright character that enhances the flavor of her other ingredients.
Sarah is committed to creating products that are unique to her corner of Oregon, but also to reducing food waste and also teaching others how to can and preserve. She offers hands-on classes in her kitchen and also published a book, Preservation Pantry, that teaches the fundamentals of canning and “offers up more than 100 delicious recipes you can create in your own home that make the most out every bit of your produce.”
Find a bunch of Sarah’s recipes here and take a look at her home-based commercial kitchen below:
