Featured Supplier: Muti

27/06/2024

How It Began

My grandmother lived on the coast of Kwazulu-Natal in South Africa, which is on the Indian Ocean and has a subtropical climate, perfect for growing tropical fruit like guavas, bananas, avocados and, you guessed it, chillies.

As a three-year-old wandering about her garden I was attracted to this bush of vivid red jewels hanging at just the right height for me to reach and handle. During my tactile play, my eyes started to itch and so I scratched them. And then... all hell broke loose!

I stumbled into the house screaming my head off, tears streaming down my blotchy face, scaring the bejesus out of my parents. You see, they thought I had been attacked by a rinkhals, a type of snake that when provoked sprays blinding venom into the face of its assailant.

They lay me on the dining room table and proceeded to pour milk into my eyes - they got the reason I was in so much pain wrong, but they got the antidote spot on.

Fast-forward six years and I found myself on holiday in Botswana on the banks of the mighty Chobe river. Armed with rods and a box of tackle, me and my siblings would fish for river bream & what we caught we would take to the matriarch of an Indian family who we were sharing camp with.

In return for providing her with fish for her family she would cook for us the most amazing meals. Fish curry, pickled fish, fish braai, fish sosaties, fried fish - all so delicious and all featuring chillies in one form or another.

And so, as my tolerance to chillies grew during this incredible six-week holiday, I went from being terrified of chillies, to being completely addicted to them, and I’ve never looked back.

Passion for Chillies

Ever since then I have added chillies to almost everything I have ever eaten. I’m mad about them because they add a whole new dimension of feeling to food.

I strengthened my love for flavour and food experience by completing a six-year apprenticeship in a fine dining restaurant, the height of which was holding the position of saucier - the person responsible for all the sauces, stocks, gravies, marinades, dressings, and soups in the restaurant.

I know how to pair ingredients that complement each other, how to wrest the flavours and aromas from the produce and how to achieve the desired viscosity and texture, and always naturally, without using artificial ingredients or aggressive procedures.

This is my passion, my art, my raison d’etre. I love it and more than anything I love making products for other people to love too.

When it comes to commercial hot sauces that are designed to remain stable in a bottle for months on end there is, in my opinion, one problem. Vinegar.

I do love good vinegars and respect the intricate art of making them, but adding vinegar to hot sauces is done less for flavour and taste characteristics and more for preservation.

Vinegar lowers the pH value of sauces, creating an environment in which it is difficult for food-spoiling bacteria to grow, giving the sauces a long shelf-life. In order to achieve this PH, the sauce usually needs to contain around 25% vinegar, though many producers use much more than this.

The problem is this amount of vinegar overpowers all the other flavour compounds and all subtlety and nuance of flavour is lost. You get acidity and heat and only the strongest flavours capable of standing up to the harshness of vinegar.

Enter Muti

I got into fermentation as a way to create hot sauce without the need to use vinegar. Fermentation is an ancient traditional method of preserving fresh food through the winter months when little fruit or veg is available.

It is a process in which the naturally occurring beneficial bacteria found on all fruit and vegetables are utilised to both preserve and acidify. This is done simply by adding salt to the ingredients, massaging it in and encouraging the liquid element of the fruit and veg to be drawn out and create a liquid saline environment in which the beneficial bacteria flourish and any bad bacteria that may be present wither away and die.

Let it lie for a bit and the LAB (lactic acid producing bacteria) consume the sugars of the fruit and veg and convert them to lactic acid.

Preservation and acidity without the harsh flavour or aroma of vinegar.

Once the desired acidity is reached I cook and blend the sauces. This stops the fermentation and allows them to remain stable in the bottle for long enough to make them a viable shelf product.

However, cooking also kills all the beneficial bacteria and in this day and age when our guts are crying out for some living food to help deal with the never-ending availability of UPF, this isn’t ideal.

Enter Muti Live Ferments

These are products which undergo the same fermentation process, but which are not cooked or pasteurised at the end of it. This means they are teeming with living beneficial bacteria which numerous studies have shown improve gut health, strengthen the immune system, help control weight, aid better sleep, and even help with mental health.

They also happen to be addictively delicious.

The research is clear, just about everyone should be eating live fermented food regularly. This would make a dramatic positive change to our overall health and wellbeing and it is my mission to make products that will encourage more people to start eating live fermented foods on a regular basis.

I have just gotten started on this mission. The products so far have become very popular among a relatively small group of people, but the group is growing, as will the product range. Expect to see new flavours, new styles, products kids will go for, and products that carry more of the beneficial bacteria and less of the cost to consumers. Live fermented foods shouldn’t be a luxury, they should be a necessity and it is my mission to make that a reality.