Ed Sheeran is looking to spice up your diet, but don't worry, he's not looking to make it too spicy.
As a noted condiment enthusiast who famously has a bottle of ketchup tattooed on his arm, the pop singer has teamed up with Kraft Heinz to launch their new hot sauce, Tingly Ted's. Following up their previous Edchup collaboration, Heinz has enlisted the talents of the self-proclaimed sauce expert to help craft a sauce that will tingle your tastebuds but won't leave you scrambling for a glass of milk to cool down.
Inspired by Sheeran's childhood nickname, the new sauce comes in both Tingly and Xtra Tingly varieties, aiming to be a more versatile, milder variety of hot sauce with mass appeal. Described as being akin to a warming hug for your tastebuds, the hot sauce features a flavor profile that includes lemon notes with a smoky flavor, red jalapeños, capsicum chilies and a mix of herbs and spices.
Looking to stand out in the already crowded hot sauce field currently dominated by an escalating Scoville arms race, Sheeran and Heinz aren't looking to win the hotness wars but rather create the Swiss army knife of hot sauces that's perfect for everything from fries to falafel. "Except for bananas," Sheeran did note, which leads us to believe that at some point the "Shape of You" singer has tried it, raising a whole culinary can of worms we'd rather not get into.
“Before Tingly Ted’s I used a different hot sauce for every meal and for every dish. But there wasn’t one hot sauce that goes with everything, whether you’re eating in the middle of the day or the middle of the night," Sheeran said in a press release. "I wanted a game-changing hot sauce that does the lot – the ketchup of hot sauces. It didn’t exist, so I decided to make my own. And that’s how Tingly Ted’s was born.”
Sheeran went on to explain that, "I travel a lot, so having a bottle in my suitcase wherever I go that can spice up any and every meal seemed like a good idea. I knew I didn’t wanna do a watery hot sauce, as they usually all get relegated to the same shelf of other random hot sauces. I wanted to make a sauce that took the same pride of place as ketchup."
Tingly Ted's is currently available for pre-order and will start shipping out March 1, appearing on shelves later this year.
Photo courtesy of Kraft Heinz