Podgradci: from one chilli to thirty varieties

Đed Niko is usually the name of whoever is sitting in the kitchen. Here it is the name of a farm in Podgradci, some ten kilometres from Gradiška, and everything sold under that label today comes from one garden and one small kitchen next to it.

How it started

The first chilli was Carolina Reaper, grown in 2017 — the hottest variety in the world at the time. Grandfather Niko tasted it and said “and it is not that hot”. The name came out of that sentence, and every sauce since came out of that chilli. About thirty varieties are grown now, and the idea has not changed: choose the chilli first, then find the sauce for it.

Three bottles, one recipe

The Carolina Reaper sauce exists in three versions — mild, hot and extremely hot. The only difference between them is the amount of powder in the same base of tomato, onion and basil. That makes these the only three bottles in the range you can put next to each other and see what is really going on.

What goes in the bottle

Nothing except what the brand grows or buys from nearby suppliers: chillies, onion, basil, marjoram, oregano, aronia, quince. Apart from chillies, vegetables and herbs — vinegar, salt, honey and sometimes brown sugar. No artificial colours, aromas or thickeners, and that is not a claim on a label but a limit that the poorer material sets for itself.

Around 2,880 boxes

The Six Pack is six small 20 ml bottles, and the Fuego Box is where you pick four things from the range. They imagined 2,880 combinations, and a box can be three sauces and one blend — because sometimes the person packing decides.

Naša Kuća visits the workshops that make what they sell. We tried the Habanero sauce, the Asado sauce and the extremely hot Original from this range ourselves.