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Bella Salt and Sauce aims to elevate the everyday

Twelve years ago, Niwot resident Jilly Gossett came across a basic sauce recipe. She began to tinker and tweaked the recipe to make it her own. One day, her husband said, “This sauce is outrageous! You have to start giving this as gifts.”

She did, and the list got longer and longer each year. One year, as she was giving a jar to the pastor at her church, he grabbed it excitedly and exclaimed,”Oh, good! Jilly’s little jar of crack!”

While she thought it was a little ridiculous that her pastor was referring to her chocolate sauce as an addictive drug, she knew she was on to something. At a family visit one year, her sister handed her a fancy chocolate truffle to bite into, then ran to the kitchen, took a jar of Jilly’s sauce that she’d left behind as a gift, and put a spoonful in Gossett’s mouth. The comparison was clear--she had something amazing in that sauce.

“We started out just using it as a sauce for waffle sundaes,” Gossett said, “and now there are three sauces in the line.” Gossett’s original creation, Mexi-Mocha Truffle Sauce, has the consistency of a truffle and a little spicy surprise at the end. Gossett calls it “chocolate with a side of sass.”

Her sauce line also includes Asian Star Sauce, which she created after she was experimenting with chocolate lava cake and added some Chinese Five Spice on a whim.

“It’s very different,” said Gossett. “Some people eat and and swoon, and for others, it’s just not their thing.”

And Nutty Warrior was inspired by Gossett’s young friend, Sam, whom she knew when she lived in Portland.

“Sam had Ewing’s sarcoma (a rare pediatric cancer) and his mother took him to Scotland to meet relatives. It was there that he developed a taste for coffee with heavy cream and Scotch. I created a sauce in his honor with dark chocolate, coffee and Scotch. Sam liked peanuts, but as an ode to the Pacific Northwest where he lived, I make the sauce with hazelnuts. He fought hard, he was an amazing young man, and 10 percent of all sales of Nutty Warrior go the Sam Day Foundation, which funds research for rare pediatric cancers.”

Gossett has been around food since her college days, when she began catering for her family during a visit and caught the bug. She also is the owner of the catering company, Jilly Caters, Too.

“After working in restaurants for so long,” she joked, “I couldn’t wait another table if I had six kids that were naked and starving,” adding, “but I love catering. It’s really hard and physical, but I’m so invested in the outcome of my client’s event. I really want them to have a successful event, and to feel like a guest at their own party.”

Gossett grew up in Michigan, but lived in Colorado when she was in her twenties and her thirties. She hopes it is where she gets to stay from now on.

“It really is the best state,” she said.

As for the addictive nature of her sauces, Gossett assures that they are “very satisfying. You know how you’re on the couch at the end of the day, and you just want a little something? That’s a spoonful of the sauce. It does the trick.”

Gossett’s daughter, Quinn, designed the labels for the entire product line, which is called Bella Salt and Sauce. The goodies and condiments can be found online, as well as at Cured in Boulder, Cave Girl in Prospect and of course, the Niwot Market.

“Alison and Bert are the best,” she said. “The day I got my products into the Niwot Market, I came home and cried, I was so happy.”

For more information, visit www.bellasaltandsauce.com.

 

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