Written by Lori Rozsa

FELDA — Some like it hot, and Buddy Taylor knows it.

After years of fine-tuning and taste-testing and fiddling around with a pinch of this and a dash of that, Taylor finally hit on the right combination of aged cayenne peppers, garlic, vinegar and “other spices”. He christened his concoction Gator Hammock Gator Sauce and recently joined dozens of other Floridians in the quest for shelf space in kitchens, restaurants and grocery stores.

From the Keys to the northern reaches of the peninsula and everywhere in between, cooks who think they’ve hit on the right recipe for everything from chicken wing sauce to pepper jelly are marketing their savory food enhancers.

There are probably hundreds of locally produced sauces and spices and juices made by mom-and-pop businesses, according to the state Department of Commerce. But they don’t have an accurate count.

Like Taylor, the hopeful cooks all want to crack the market some day and be right up there next to Heinz and the other big names.

“It seems to kind of taste different to everybody. I kept at it until everybody said it tasted good,” Taylor said while “saucing” a rack of ribs with his tangy homemade mixture.

Since he first started bottling it in the back of his general store in Felda last year, he has sold 2,000 bottles of the fiery-looking orange sauce.

“It’s got a good bite to it. People seem to their like sauces hot. I know I do,” the 35-year-old Taylor said. “But it’s not so hot that you can’t eat it.”

Up the road from Felda — named for Taylor’s great grandparents, Felix and Ida, who ran the first post office here — is the home of Everglades Seasoning. For 15 years, the white cylinder with the green heron and cabbage palms drawn on it has meant down-home flavor to cooks in Hendry County.

“We put it on steaks, pork, salads, salads, gator tail, even popcorn,” said Seth Howard, a LaBelle native who with three other local men owns the company. “It goes good on everything but cornflakes.”

They sell thousands of cans a month. Like other made-in-Florida specialties, it’s popular in other states.

“We just sent orders to Pittsburgh and Oklahoma today,” Howard said. “And a guy from Dallas stopped by to pick up a bunch to take back to Texas.”

Everglades Seasoning is made from salt, pepper, garlic salt, onion salt, sugar and the mysterious “other spices.” They’re coming out with a low-sodium version soon. It was first marketed by Bill Gertsman of LaBelle, who dreamed up the recipe when he was an Army mess cook in the South Pacific during World War II, Howard said. Now the special compound is mixed in 15,000-pound blenders in New Jersey, where most of the spices originate. Then it’s shipped and bottled in LaBelle.

In Hastings, a farm town near Palatka in North Florida, Marie Mathis has turned her mother’s recipe for County Line Special Datil Pepper Sauce into a datil pepper jelly.

“You can eat it on crackers with cream cheese,” Mathis said. “As for the sauce, you can put that on seafood, in beans, on hot dogs. Some people think they can’t handle it, so they dilute it with ketchup.”

A lot of people can’t take the heat from Rickey’s World Famous Sauce either, said Bill Mitchell, owner of the Hollywood restaurant. Rickey’s is hot sauce at its most basic pure cayenne pepper and vinegar.

“We’re selling it all over the country,” Mitchell said of the sauce, created by his wife. “It’s outgrowing my restaurant business.”

Mitchell even has a contract with the state Department of Corrections to supply the prison system with hot sauce.

“We have to put in plastic bottles for them,” Mitchell said. “They don’t want the prisoners making weapons out of hot sauce bottles.”