Swap Out Worcestershire Sauce For This Spicier Alternative

Worcestershire sauce — few people know how to pronounce it correctly, but there sure are quite a lot of fans of its tangy, funky, and umami-rich flavors. It's at the heart of countless tasty recipes, from Caesar salads to meatloaf and Bloody Marys. As great as it is, however, if you need some spice in your food, Worcestershire's light tinge of heat probably wouldn't do. If you need something livelier with a bit more of a spice to it, we've got just the thing: Pickapeppa sauce.

Having been around since the 1920s, Pickapeppa sauce shares a lot of things with Worcestershire, most noticeable the lovely combination of savory, sour, sweet, and spicy you get on your palate when you have a taste. This is because Pickapeppa is made using essentially the same process as Worcestershire, just with different ingredients. Instead of fermented anchovies, you get Pickapeppa from a complex mixture of sugar, cane vinegar, and a bunch of other flavor-giving ingredients like tomatoes, mangoes, thyme, and most importantly, chilli peppers. It's because of this last ingredient that Pickapeppa is marked by its far more potent heat than Worcestershire, making it the perfect choice if you'd like a little more zing to your food than what Worcestershire could give.

All of these ingredients are mixed, simmered together within a copper pot, then put into oak barrels and fermented before they're bottled. This final fermentation is why, if you love Worcestershire's fermented umami flavor, you're guaranteed to also love Pickapeppa.

Since the two condiments are so close together in terms of flavors, every recipe that makes use of Worcestershire sauce is a great "tester recipe" for your brand-new bottle of Pickapeppa. For instance, the next time you're making a classic green bean casserole, feel free to swap the teaspoon of Worcestershire sauce in this recipe with the same amount of Pickapeppa to add more pep to the flavor.

Of course, Pickapeppa can also pick up the slack for Worcestershire in dressings. Take a good Russian dressing as an example. You can easily give this sweet-and-tangy dressing a bit of spice with Pickapeppa. As explained by our very own recipe developer, Miriam Hahn, Russian dressing makes for a superb spread for a grilled veggie sandwich (Pickapeppa is vegan, so no need to swap anything!)

We saved the best for last: Pickapeppa will be a powerful addition (or rather, a swap) to a Bloody Mary. Mostly known for its potent spice, this Caribbean condiment will lend its own heat to the drink and give you a brunch-time sipper to remember. It's not the best-known ingredient out there, but Pickapeppa sure is great at a lot of stuff!