Rochester Hot Sauce
Channel: Cooking with Midnight Bacon
Date: 30/01/2019

Rochester Hot Sauce

Rochester, NY is home to a dish called the Garbage Plate. Most natives love it, it’s a decadent pile of food consisting of burgers or hot dogs (red or white!), macaroni salad, and home fries, covered with this meat-based sauce. It’s a combination of American chili and Greek/Macedonian meat sauce, possibly saltsa kima. As I mention in the video, it was created by Greek immigrants, just like Cincinnati Chili and countless other meat sauces used on hot dogs & pasta throughout the country. It’s spicy, a touch sweet, tangy, and rich. I love it covering everything on my Garbage Plate! Here I’ll show you how it’s made based on a recipe I got from the head cook of a restaurant I worked at several years ago. I’ve made a couple small tweaks, but the nuts & bolts of an authentic hot sauce are definitely here. I hope you give it a try!


  2  pints of water (1 quart/32 oz.)
  2  lbs. ground beef
  1 onion, small dice
  3-4 cloves garlic, minced
  1-2 Tbsp. Worcestershire sauce
  2  Tbsp. paprika
  1 tsp. cinnamon
  1/4 tsp. nutmeg
  1/4 tsp. cumin
  [Instead of the previous 3 ingredients, I used a big tablespoon of baharat, a warm spice blend from the Greece & Macedonia region that has those spices, and may have been the inspiration for this]
  1/2 tsp. chili powder
  1-2 tsp. cayenne
  1 Tbsp. garlic powder
  1-2 bay leaves
  1/4 cup ketchup
  1-2 Tbsp. beef base/bouillon
  1 Tbsp. soy sauce
  1 Tbsp. Asian fish sauce (I like Red Boat the best!) [optional]
  2 Tbsp. Frank's Red Hot (or more if you want!)
  Kosher salt & freshly ground black pepper to taste