Me & My Factory
It all started with chillies
Before Cool Chile Company started manufacturing tortillas, it processed and packed chillies and various chilli sauces, rubs and pastes, the firm’s chief operating officer Kelly Peck told us during our exclusive tour of the north-west London facility.
Sauce production is more labour-intensive than tortilla production, Peck said.
“For mole, which is a traditional Mexican sauce, we have to toast our chillies, soak them and purée them,” she said.
“We add the purée to other ingredients and toast them together. Water and vinegar is added and then the mixture is cooked out and puréed again.”
The hardest part of the process is toasting the chillies without burning and creating chilli fumes, she added.
Making the sauce can be very pungent, but it’s also aromatic; it’s kind of like Marmite and people either love it or hate it, Peck said.