The HOT interview with Sauces Martin!
Pioneers in Made in France chilli sauces, made with French chillies, Martin sauces have been delighting us and raising temperatures for 6 years now! To mark the launch of HOT FISH, the hottest of sardines, we met its founder, Jean-Baptiste Martin, on a visit to Quiberon...
BIO EXPRESS
Jean-Baptiste Martin is a chef who graduated top of his class from the Ferrandi school, one of the world's leading cookery schools. He works for prestigious Michelin-starred restaurants such as the Trianon Palace in Versailles, the Grand Véfour in Paris and the Oasis in Cannes, not forgetting his experience as a chef in the French Navy during his military service: " On a boat, the only pleasure you really get is eating, so the role of cook is very important! ".
Jean-Baptiste travelled to California to work as a chef in a French gourmet restaurant in Silicon Valley, where he met Anna, a pastry chef, and they married in Santa Clara. At the restaurant, he was introduced to the chilli culture by his brigade of Mexican cooks: " There's no pepper in Mexico and Mexicans are the world champions of chilli: they use it everywhere! ". So, after seeing his team-mates handling chillies on their break to spice up their personal snacks, Jean-Baptiste started cooking chilli sauces for them, and the results were fabulous...
Back in France in 2007, Jean-Baptiste and Anna set up a cookery school in Viroflay, called 'Coup de cœur', and behind the scenes, they continue to work the chillies with the seeds they brought back from America... It wasn't until 2019 that they launched Martin Sauces, joined by Jean-Baptiste's first cousin, Benjamin, to manage the commercial side and strengthen the family business.
Now with around thirty chilli sauces and condiments to their name, as well as honey, vermouth and beers, the Martins are putting chilli in every sauce!
Can you tell me how HOT FISH, this beautiful brand collab between Sauces Martin and la belle-iloise, came about?
If we go back to the origins, we can say that it was born 45 years ago, when I tasted la belle-iloise sardines for the first time, in Quiberon! I must have been 2 years old, and now I'm 47...
As part of my family is originally from the area - my great-grandfather was the watchmaker at Saint-Goustan in Auray and we have a family house in Port Haliguen - I've spent all my holidays here and I've been eating la belle-iloise for about forty years.
So, when we launched Maison Martin, I said to myself " we absolutely have to put the sauces we make into these fabulous tinned fish! . We did some tests with François Sehier, the head chef at la belle-iloise, and the results were really conclusive. HOT FISH was born and today we have a superb French product combining our two areas of expertise as canners and saucier: la belle-iloise sardines combined with our FOUDRE sauce, with red Habanero peppers grown in France! And I'm very happy with it!
Do you have a favourite la belle-iloise recipe?
Yes, I've got two! The Green Peppercorn Sardines, which have an excellent aroma, and the Two Chillies, because, unsurprisingly, I prefer sardines with a little spice... (laughs) And now there's a third one too: HOT FISH!
Can you tell us about the beginnings of Martin Sauces?
The Maison Martin adventure took about ten years to think through before we launched.
When Anna and I returned from the United States, we realised that the range of hot sauces on offer in France was very limited: there were only American or Asian sauces, and we decided that we needed French sauces! But at the time, there were no hot pepper crops in mainland France, so we had to carry out some real agronomic research...
So, alongside our cookery school, we grew our own chillies in pots on our terrace in the Paris region, using seeds we'd brought back from America to find out which varieties could produce fruit in mainland France. Over 7 or 8 years, we tested more than 150 different species. One day, there was even a police helicopter over the terrace - they must have thought we were growing something else... (laughs)
Meanwhile, we were making little sauces for friends, schoolchildren and so on, and everyone kept asking us for more. We had to make more and more of them, so much so that in 2019, we decided to create a box to do just that!
With the species identified and the data collected from the terrace, we approached several market gardeners to offer them the chance to grow chillies. Many said no, but others were convinced, and they were right to do so! For example, one of our market gardeners, who has been with us since the beginning, supplied us with 100kg of chilli peppers in the first year, and now we're up to around twenty tonnes. So it's a win-win situation, both for him and for us!
And that's how we became the first on the market to offer hot sauces made with French chillies, and today we make between 500,000 and 600,000 bottles of sauces a year!
What is the manufacturing process at Maison Martin?
The season for chillies is summer, so the challenge has been to learn how to preserve them. To meet this challenge, we have developed a know-how that involves crushing fresh chillies as soon as they are picked and stemmed, and fermenting them for several years in cellars, in barrels.
This natural fermentation process preserves the chillies at room temperature without the addition of chemicals or preservatives. It's a natural method that doesn't dehydrate the chilli pepper and allows us to refine its flavour, giving our sauces tangy notes and aromas not found elsewhere. Like good wine or sardines in oil, our chillies improve with age!
Where do you get the inspiration to create new sauces?
Inspiration either comes from a taste in your head or from a concept. I have a sort of library of flavours in my memory: I classify tastes and think up interactions and combinations between chillies and spices, herbs and ingredients.
I love unexpected combinations of flavours, like our sauce LA TRUFFE where we combined black Périgord truffles and chilli peppers. At first, we thought it was sacrilege, but after several tries, we realised that by using a milder chilli, the result is very harmonious. And now we've got a truffle hot sauce that's a real hit!
When we work on a concept, we come up with an idea, like for la belle-iloise, where we said to ourselves: "Hey, we're going to make the hottest sardines in France" , and we came to you because you have the best sardines!
In the same way, for our latest sauce launch, BIG PEAT , we said to ourselves: " Look, we're going to make a sauce that 'scotches'! ", and we went to get the best whiskeys in Scotland, from Douglas Laing, a fabulous whiskey maker, and we cooked up a sauce with 100% Scottish temperament, which is exceptional on barbecues, grills etc... (*)
(*) Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your health, consume in moderation.
Your sauces are made in France, with French chillies grown in open fields, without chemical treatment, harvested by hand when fully ripe between July and October: responsible manufacturing is important?
Of course it's important! We want our business to be harmonious and as profitable as possible all round, both environmentally speaking and socially and humanely, for our customers as well as for our suppliers.
We work with local raw materials, which we preserve without energy. Our chillies are grown mainly in the South-West, along the Garonne, and also a little in Brittany at Saint-Paul-de-Léon and in the South-East, in Provence, less than 500km from our factory in Loire-et-cher.
As soon as we can buy an ingredient in France, we do. Even if we pay more for it, we prefer to have people working around us, as close as possible, and so avoid unnecessary travel.
The barrel-fermentation process we've developed also allows us to preserve the chillies without the need for electricity or cold storage, and our containers are mainly glass, with no plastic.
We're also committed to the 1% for the Planet , donating 1% of our sales to environmental associations such as the Surfrider foundation, which cleans the oceans, and local agricultural rehabilitation projects.
Do you have a favourite sauce that you're particularly proud of?
Yes, LA BLACKBELETTE , our 100% Breton hot sauce with seaweed and black jalapego peppers from Finistère. A few years ago we had the idea of making the first Breton HOT sauce. I found a producer in Finistère who agreed to grow chillies for us near Saint-Pol-de-Léon, and we found wakame and dulse near Lesconil, from the same seaweed supplier that la belle-iloise works with.
I'm very proud of this sauce because it offers a unique combination of land and sea, ideal for those who love the taste and smell of Brittany...
What does Quiberon mean to you?
Quiberon is a bit of a paradise for me. I've been coming here for 47 years, I spent my first holiday here when I was 6 months old and I've got so many memories here: from playing in the sand on the big beach with my grandmother to kayaking around the Pointe du Conguel or surfing the waves at Port Bara, not forgetting the days on the boat when we ate sardines la belle-iloise in the open sea, in front of the Pointe des Poulains on Belle-île... There are so many memories!
What I love about Quiberon is that it's a raw, wild land, with unique scents emanating from nature and the seaside: aniseed, seaweed, iodine... It's exceptional, and you feel good here!
I've got quite a few friends in the area, and I have to say that the Breton people are extremely welcoming! They're a people of travellers and I think they're very open to the world, very open to meeting new people and drinking little canons... (laughs ) And all that makes for some very good mates! (*)
(*) Alcohol abuse is dangerous for your health, consume in moderation.
What does humour mean to you? Does it come in all your sauces?
Yes, we like humour in all its guises, because that's how we are at Martin: we want good stuff, and fun! Our main product is hot sauce, so by definition we have a product that has a lot of energy, that gives you emotion, that warms you up... So right from the start we've put in humour, mischief, fun, daring: everything we can to make sure it reflects both our personality and the hot sauces we make!
What's it like working as a family?
Working as a family allows you to make progress very quickly, because you say things to each other in a direct and frank way. And when there are disagreements, or minor irritations because one of us is in a bad mood or the other has a slump, we understand, we support each other, and the next day it's over, because it's family! We all love each other, we all work in the same direction, there's trust and that's why it's so simple!
What does eating well mean to you, making a good meal?
That's a huge question... To sum up, I'd say that eating well means combining health and pleasure. There are dishes that are exceptional in terms of taste, but bad for the body, and, conversely, there are foods that are good for your health but really not that great in terms of taste... So it's all about mastering what your body needs to satiate itself, no more and no less, while at the same time enjoying the flavours, textures and cravings... so that eating well doesn't have to be a constraint!
A good meal brings together good recipes, good food, perhaps some good wine, a beautiful table, well decorated, and above all people you like, friends or family! Under those conditions, you can spend days at the table: you start at lunchtime, and by the time you finish, it's late in the evening - those are the best moments of your life for me.
2025 has just begun, what's on the Sauces Martin agenda for the year?
This year, we're planning to travel to South America to unearth rare chillies that grow in breathtaking natural environments. We're going there in experimental mode, to explore new territories, unearth new varieties and introduce the French to previously unknown chilli flavours... There's a lot more on the agenda, but if I reveal any of it I'll be told off by the others!
You can find all the Sauces Martin on www.m-martin.fr / and follow them on the social networks @sauces_martin!
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