If you think Nando’s Extra Extra Hot Sauce is child’s play then you’ll probably be interested in the new chilli sauce in town that promises to pack a punch and then some.
Steve’s Scientific Venom Chilli Sauce has been engineered to mimic the bite of a spider, the venom of which leaves its victims with ‘muscle spasms and burning pain’.
The spicy creation was concocted by Steven Trim, the managing director and founder of Kent-based Venomtech, and food marketer Stefano Cuomo.
‘It was about two years ago when we had that first light bulb moment,’ Trim said. ‘I laughed it off at the time and said it was hilarious to do. Nobody has been foolish enough to try the venom.
‘But we kept bringing it up when we bumped into each other over the year. We finally hit on the idea of doing a synthetic inspired sauce.’
The venom in question belongs to the Trinidad Chevron tarantula, a large spider that can measure as much as 14cm across the legs.
But before people eager to try start to worry—there isn’t actually any real venom in the sauce.
The Food Standards Agency told the creators that testing the safety of the venom would cost as much as £20,000. So as a workaround, Venomtech created a synthetic version in their lab.
‘It’s as best as we can manage without actually tasting the venom. It’s a similar heat component that the venom would cause.’
They explained how their research led them to learn that the Trinidad Chevron spider’s venom activates the same receptors as chilli peppers.
‘We focus on studying venoms and how they work in biology for drug discovery and through this research we became aware that the Trinidad Chevron venom actually works on the same receptors as Capsicum.’
He told the New York Post they have about 300 spiders in their lab to help with their daily work, adding: ‘It’s not there as a scare factor, it’s there because it’s the essence of the science of what we’ve made here.’
If you want to set your spidey-senses tingling, you can buy the Venom Chilli Sauce for £6.50 here.