I feel about Marie Sharp's the way that the NRA feels about guns: you will pry my Marie Sharp's from my cold, dead hands.

I discovered the ecstasy-for-the-tastebuds joys of Marie Sharp's hot sauce in Belize, where I saw a couple of American college kids buying up pallets of the stuff to take back home. I hadn't tasted it by then, so I presumed such erratic behaviour was some university prank in the making.

Oh sweet Marie Sharp, how wrong I was.

Just one taste of the Belize's own ambrosia and I could see why those college kids wanted a pallet of it. Only then I couldn't understand why they'd stopped at taking just one pallet.

Marie Sharp's hot sauce – and there are several of them, including a grapefruit-flavoured one and a cactus-based one – makes almost every meal better. And in Central America, where the food often tended to be a stranger to herbs and spices, it was a sweet, sweet way to pep up a plate of rice and beans.

Once I got home from Central America it called to me, and I recently splashed out on a bottle. In Belize, it's a dollar a bottle or so. To buy it in the UK, you'll not get much change out of £5.

Luckily, t's almost as good in this continent as it is on the other side of the world - while for a fiver it's not something I'd by everyday, I still don't feel hard done by.

In short, Marie Sharp's hot sauce is vegan, it's made with normal ingredients (veggies, chillis and vinegar) and it's just plain gorgeous.

Try it. You'll not be disappointed.