Wajos Patatas Bravas Sauce. Bell pepper, garlic and olive oil, red, spicy and hot – the salsa for roasted potatoes, tapas and steak.

Wajos Patatas Bravas Sauce is a red sauce made from 24 percent bell peppers, 9.5 percent bell pepper paste, rapeseed oil, olive oil, garlic, brandy vinegar and spices, 245 ml from Dohr on the Moselle. Not ketchup, not a sweet barbecue sauce, not tomato sugo, but a spicy-hot bell pepper salsa with little sugar, just as it belongs with potato wedges in Spain. Contains mustard and whey protein.

Patatas Bravas Sauce from Wajos is the reason why we have potato wedges on a baking sheet on Fridays. The day was long, there are potatoes, a piece of cheese, a few olives in the fridge – and this bottle. Potatoes in wedges, oil, salt, 35 minutes in the oven, the sauce in a bowl, and the tapas evening at the kitchen table is ready. We order this bottle often, and we suspect that most people started out in a similar way: with potatoes and the question of what goes well with them.

Bell pepper and garlic up front, heat in the background, hardly any sweetness

The sauce is brick-red and creamy rather than smooth like ketchup. First you taste bell pepper – a third of the bottle is bell pepper and bell pepper paste –, then garlic, then a heat that lingers in the throat but is manageable. Brandy vinegar and lemon juice provide a fresh acidity, olive oil and rapeseed oil provide roundedness. With just under five grams of sugar per 100 milliliters, it is significantly less sweet than most barbecue sauces – that is the difference you notice on the second spoonful.

To be honest, it must be said: the heat comes from spices that Wajos lists collectively, and the sauce contains mustard, whey protein concentrate and an emulsifier that holds the oil and bell pepper together. It is therefore not suitable for vegans. And with 26 grams of fat per 100 milliliters, it is an oil-based sauce rather than a light salsa – but that means it stays on the potato.

For those looking for a mild sauce for children, the Bravas sauce is not suitable – in that case, the Mango Bell Pepper Sauce from Wajos with its sweetness is the friendlier choice. Anyone who wants it even hotter will find the next level up in the Patatas Bravas Hot Dip spice blend.

With potato wedges, tapas, steak and on bread

The classic is Patatas Bravas itself. Cut potatoes into wedges, roast them in the oven with olive oil and salt until they are crispy on the outside, and add the sauce over or next to them. In Spain, a dollop of aioli is often added – red and white side by side, that is the classic tapas plate look. At home, the red sauce alone is enough, with a piece of white bread for dipping.

At the grill, it is the sauce for those who have had enough of ketchup: for steak, bratwurst, chicken skewers, and grilled vegetables. A tablespoon on a burger replaces ketchup and mustard together. On a sandwich with cheese and arugula or on a wrap with chicken, it is the spread that provides the heat.

Warm, it works as a base: two tablespoons in a tomato sauce for pasta, in a chili, in a potato soup or in a pan with chorizo and chickpeas. On scrambled eggs or in a shakshuka, it provides bell pepper and heat, and you don't need to chop any bell peppers. And over oven vegetables with feta, shortly before serving, it is the dressing that turns a baking sheet into a meal.

The sauce is not suitable as a dip for fondue with many mild side dishes or anywhere a sweet sauce is expected – it is savory and spicy instead of rounded. And long cooking time doesn't suit it: the fresh bell pepper and garlic note is lost. Add it at the end rather than at the beginning. Once opened, it belongs in the refrigerator.

Our tip: Stir one tablespoon of Patatas Bravas sauce into three tablespoons of mayonnaise – the quick dip for fries that falls somewhere between aioli and bravas.

A Spanish salsa from a sauce kitchen on the Moselle

Wajos is a gourmet manufactory in Dohr near Cochem on the Moselle, founded on the heritage of a winemaking family. The name stands for Walter Josef Oster from Ediger-Eller, where the Osters have been making wine for 15 generations. Starting from his liqueur manufactory in the 1980s, his son Peter Oster and Ulf Schwichtenberg built up the Wajos brand from the 2000s onwards – with the first store in 2008 in Trier and today over 80 employees in Dohr.

At Wajos, the sauces have their own shelf: grill and seasoning sauces ranging from Barbecue and Café de Paris to Patatas Bravas, produced like most of the roughly 900 items in Dohr and tested in their own laboratory there. The Bravas sauce shows what the company understands by "working in controlled small batches": bell pepper and bell pepper paste as the main ingredient, olive oil alongside rapeseed oil, and only enough sugar to maintain the heat.

The sauce for tapas evenings and for people who find ketchup too sweet

The Patatas Bravas Sauce is the bottle for everyone who is tired of ketchup. When grilling and having baked potatoes, it should be something savory. It fits into every barbecue package and every tapas evening as a gift – together with the Patatas Bravas Dip spice blend for the potatoes themselves or the Aioli Dip for the white next to the red. All sauces and dips are on our Wajos page.

Unopened, the bottle should be stored in a dry place protected from light; once opened, keep it in the refrigerator; 245 ml is enough for six to eight baking sheets of potato wedges. It is not suitable for anyone who has trouble with heat or must avoid mustard and milk – both are on the ingredient list, and the heat is the whole point.

Bell pepper, garlic and olive oil, red and spicy – the Bravas sauce from the Moselle that turns a baking sheet of potatoes into a tapas evening.