£PrepSheet

Sweet chilli sauce: what it costs to put on the plate

This one comes straight out of a working chef's kitchen book, not a cookbook: a kilo of sugar, a litre of water and a litre of red wine vinegar reduced by half, then the diced chilli, red pepper and garlic dropped in and finished with fish sauce and black pepper. Makes about 1.5 litres, costed here as thirty 50 ml pots from wholesale prices dated 7 September 2026.

Ingredients per portion£0.16
Batch of 30£4.82
Sell at 30% food cost£0.64 inc VAT (£0.54 ex)

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Ingredients and cost, 30 portions

IngredientPack pricePack sizeUsedCost
Caster sugar£21.4912000 g1000 g£1.79
Water£0.001000 ml1000 ml£0.00
Red wine vinegar£1.491000 ml1000 ml£1.49
Long red chillies£14.993000 g60 g£0.30
Red peppers£13.995000 g320 g£0.90
Garlic£3.491000 g25 g£0.09
Fish sauce£2.29725 ml45 ml£0.14
Ground black pepper£15.991000 g7 g£0.11
Batch total£4.82
Per portion (÷ 30)£0.16

Cost per line is pack price × (amount used ÷ pack size), the same sum the tool runs. Change one pack price and every line that uses it moves.

Method

  1. Put the sugar, water and vinegar in a wide pan and reduce by half.
  2. Finely dice the red peppers, chillies (seeds in) and garlic.
  3. Add the diced vegetables to the reduced liquid and boil briefly, a minute or two, so they soften but keep their colour.
  4. Take off the heat, stir in the fish sauce and the ground black pepper.
  5. Bottle hot into sterilised bottles or a lidded container; label and date. Keeps chilled for weeks.

Costing notes

Under a fiver for a litre and a half, and the sugar and vinegar are two-thirds of it. Four chillies are costed at 60 g and two peppers at 320 g; weigh yours and change the row. The tap water line is there so the recipe reads as written, costed at zero. A 50 ml pot is the portion here; if you sell it as a dip, that pot is the whole ingredient cost of the side.

Where the prices came from

JJ Foodservice collection prices as shown on its public search pages on 7 September 2026 (delivery prices run about £1-2 a case higher). The site does not label VAT on most lines: raw food is zero-rated in the UK, while oil, vanilla and alcohol carry standard-rate VAT. Where JJ had no line that day, a Tesco retail price is used and marked. Your supplier's price is the one that matters: open the recipe and type it in.

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