Food served in the dining hall at the Everglades Correctional Institution and many others across the Florida Department of Corrections is purposefully bland. Like food in a retirement home, it is so inoffensively plain that no one could possibly be put off by its profound ordinariness.

Except, that is, for people like me, who like flavor and texture. Lacking flavor and texture, we need to spice things up, and hot sauce is the missing link. The problem? Hot sauce is not available in prison — at least not in the fully constituted sense.

What we do have, however, is time, ramen, pickles and condiments. And that’s enough to make a passable hot sauce.

In recent years, salt and pepper shakers — as well as hot sauce bottles — have been removed from the tables in Florida prison dining halls. Instead, we receive single-serve salt packets at most meals. Condiments, including ketchup, mayonnaise, soy sauce, mustard and barbecue sauce, are available for sale at the canteen.

But, along with a number of other desirable items, hot sauce is not for sale. I don’t want anything fancy like Cholula or Tabasco or Sriracha — OK, I do want Sriracha — but I’d settle for the cheap Crystal brand.

Still, the lack of ingredients in the dining hall and canteen has never stopped innovative dorm chefs from ginning up their own sauces. I know people inside who have concocted honey mustard (lacking honey because honey is generally not available), barbecue sauce (lacking brown sugar and hickory smoke because neither is available), and, yes, even hot sauce.

The hot sauce I describe below can be made for pennies (or potentially nothing) by the especially crafty incarcerated resident. Here’s how: Many people throw out unused or half-used ramen seasoning packets. Some people throw out the vinegar from their purchased pickles. Two sugar packets are given to us each morning with breakfast. If you can’t find a friend willing to share, you might have to pay for the ketchup and garlic powder.

PRISON HOT SAUCE

• Chili pepper seeds from 50 spicy vegetable, chili, or Texas beef ramen soup seasoning packets
• Vinegar from a Van Holten pickle in a pouch
• A few packets of Heinz ketchup
• Garlic powder, to taste
• Sugar from the dining hall, to taste
  (Note: I recommend throwing away the rest of the seasoning packets and the pickle itself because of the high salt content.)

In a small cup, soak the chili seeds in just enough vinegar to cover them. This might take a day or two, so cover the cup.

Pour off the seasoned vinegar but retain the chili seeds. Crush the seeds in a plastic bag using your combination lock until you’ve made a paste.

Scoop the paste into a bowl. Mix the chili vinegar back in. Add ketchup. Add garlic and sugar to taste.

Don’t let this sit around too long because it might ferment. Consume within a few days.

So that’s hot sauce, and it’s pretty good. Some Florida county jail prisoners developed their jail-grown hot sauce some years back and successfully sold it. I don’t think anyone is going to come along and buy a million dollars worth of my hot sauce — or will they?