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Jack Link's Cholula Hot Sauce-Flavored Beef Jerky
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Seems like every time you turn around these days there's a new hot sauce-flavored snack product. It just goes to show you the widespread acceptance of spiciness into the mainstream.
The results thus far have been so-so. There have been a few chips and snacks with substantial taste and heat, while others are lamentably terrible.
Which brings us to the latest spicy munchable- a pairing of two well-known brands: Cholula and Jack Links. I've regraded Cholula as one of my most beloved hot sauces of all time, despite it being a mass-produced fiery foods product. Jack Link's makes some acceptable jerky, enough to satisfy my palette as a beef jerky connoisseur. So there may be good things available under the name Jack Link's Cholula Hot Sauce-flavored Beef Jerky.
This new product is available in a 3.25-ounce resealable bag and has a suggested retail price of $5.99. The flavors include a combination of often-used term "secret spices,"" pequin and arbol peppers.
"The combination of these premium brands and iconic flavors resonate well with our consumers and are a natural fit in quality and reputation," stated Kevin Papacek, Jack Link's Beef Jerky Brand Manager of Innovation. "Jack Link's new Cholula hot sauce beef jerky provides consumers with convenience, satiety, protein and guilt-free snacking, all wrapped up in the flavor and heat of Cholula's hot sauce."
The UCP Heartland Inaugural St. Louis Wing Ding
If you want to find out who the King of Wings is in the St. Louis, Missouri metro area, come on down to the UCP Heartland Inaugural Wing Ding!
I've been asked to be a judge for this hot event, in which local restaurants duke it out in an all-out contest for the title of the "Best Chicken Wings" in two categories: Best National Chain and Tastiest Wing by a Local Restaurant.
The UCP Heartland Inaugural Wing Ding will be held at at the Crestwood Court in the old Crestwood Plaza on Thursday, August 25, 2011 from 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM.
The general public can get all-you-can-eat samples of all the entrants' wings AND get two free beverages (beer or soda) for only $25 per person. All proceeds...
2011 Weekend of Fire Vendor List
It's less than two months away from the 5th Annual Jungle Jim's Weekend of Fire! Of course, the most noticeable change from previous years' events is the fact that the Weekend of Fire has moved from August to October. This was done to facilitate the expanded outdoor food vendors because it's more likely that more pleasant weather will occur in October than in the hot n' humid dog days of summer.
Like last year, there are spicy eating contests (look to both I Love It Spicy and this blog in the near future for a list of events), a big turnout from the chilehead blogging contengent and great sauces and flavor enhancers from vendors.
Below is the vendor list as of right now. This can (and probably will) change quite a bit before the WOF show kicks off on October 1st....
Five Things I Hate About Foodie Blogs
There a million blogs out there in cyberspace, each with its own focus, level of quality and amount of work put into it. Anyone can slap one together thanks to Wordpress and a seemingly limitless supply of free templates out there. While I admire most anyone with a passion and a panache for writing, there are some of the things that drive me up a wall when it comes to general foodie blogs...
The hoity-toity food porn pics
Too many foodie bloggers have succumb to the trend of posting up artsy-fartsy "food porn" pics. These photographs showcase dishes that looked like they took...
Chileheads, Set Your DVRs!
More national exposure for one of our own! A photo of Vic Clinco's incredible 3000-plus bottle (and growing) hot sauce collection will be shown on NBC's Today Show this coming Monday, August 8, 2011 at approximately 8:55am Eastern/7:55am Central. So set your DVRs, VCRs, or Betamax machines now so you don't miss it!
Super-Hot Chiles: The New Scoville Numbers
Below are the preliminary Scoville Heat Unit measurements for various super-hot chile peppers that grower Jim Duffy and capsaicin expert Marlin Bensinger tested late last year. Many of these were done both individually by Bensinger and after he submitted some chile pods to an independent, third-party lab, Analytical Food Labs in Grand Prairie, Texas.
As always, please keep in mind that the Scoville Heat Units listed are just estimates at best. Scoville units for each chile pepper may vary greatly due to the seed lineage, season, climate, soil, and other conditions in which the they are grown. In the case of the "newer" super-hot chiles such as the Trinidad Scorpion "Butch T" strain, organizations like the Chile Pepper Institute will grow the chiles for several more growing seasons in order to test for a more accurate average SHU rating.
The Cholula Song! Hot Sauce of Happiness Video
A happy couple enjoy the simple life at home with Cholula hot sauce and their cat, Jingles.
My Take on Heat Seekers
It's been slammed on Facebook and panned by James Wreck of Eat More Heat. People have asked me what I think of Heat Seekers, which originally aired on the Cooking Channel and are now being replayed on Food Network. I've finally gotten around to watching my DVRed copies; and as of this writing I've viewed the Chicago and Seattle episodes, so my opinions are based on how those two installments turned out.
Here's a short synopsis of the program: two chefs, Aaron Sanchez or Roger Mooking, travel to a major U.S. city each episode and visit three pre-determined different eating establishments, known for at least one super-spicy dish, where they will partake in eating a spicy food challenge of some sort at each one.
My quick take is that Heat Seekers is boring, seems forced, and is a slap in the face to every chile-loving individual from Miami to Moline. What did I specifically find at fault about it? Read on...
James Wreck on Fox 26 in Houston Restaurant Feature Segment
James Wreck of Eat More Heat recently did a segment for in his home town of Houston, Texas on Fox 26 TV featuring the El Xuco Xicana Mexican restaurant. As long as I've known him, James has had gifted communication and hosting skills, and I think he did a pretty good job with this piece:
What's Your Top 10 Favorite Hot Sauces?
It's time for yet another list, but this time out it's going to be quite the undertaking! To help out, I've asked several of my chilehead and industry friends to join in this gargantuan task. What's the topic? It's everyone's top 10 favorite sauces of all time!
To some heat fanatics, it can be as easy as pie, and many already had a good idea in their noggin of what their top spicy items already were. For others, such as myself, it's like trying to pick two or three favorite children out of a room crammed full of youngsters. It hurts like crazy, but the list had to be whittled down to a mere 10 (or 11 in a few cases...) choices.
What qualifies to be put on a favorites list? They must be amongst our top ten liquid "flavor enhancers" of most any classification, purpose or usage; they can be a hot sauce, BBQ sauce, salsa, condiment, marinade, cooking sauce, wing sauce and more. It is simply what the person considers to be the creme de la creme of spicy-type sauces. A qualifying sauce needs to have been commercially available at one point, but it does not matter if it's still in production or currently defunct...
Review - Rooftop BBQ Competition Style Sauce
Just like the hot sauce field, barbecue sauces number in the tens of thousands and can be baffling to sort through. Everyone from food conglomerates to chefs to backyard grillers to competition teams have thrown down the metaphorical gauntlets and offer their own product for home consumption.
The subject of this review comes from a BBQ competition team that calls themselves Rooftop Barbeque. As their website explains, "[Our name] comes from the book of Acts, in chapter 10. Peter, the apostle, was sitting on a rooftop while people were cooking dinner below him. He fell asleep and saw a vision in his dreams with a large sheet coming down from heaven filled with all kinds of unclean animals.
And a voice came to him, 'Rise, Peter; kill and eat.''
So now we can eat pork... mmmm, pork."
I love it! Now I'm going to tell you if I love their product, Rooftop BBQ Sauce, as well....
Review - Bronco Bob's Chipotle Sauces
Here's a pair of chipotle-themed sauces that come in large (15.75 oz, to be exact) bottles, and are also dark, thick and stocky, so visions of BBQ finishing glazes jittered through my head. As the bottle labels proclaim, Bronco Bob's can be used "for grilling, dipping and appetizers"; that suggestion coupled with the fact that anything but run of the mill ingredients are listed right in the sauce names can clue you in that these strive to be unique and special.
In ways, Bronco Bob's Roasted Raspberry Chipotle Sauce and Smoked Bacon Chipotle Sauce achieve that goal as well as being highly flavorful, and earn big points in my book...
How It's Made: Hot Sauce
If you're a fan of the Science Channel program How It's Made and you missed the episode of how hot sauce is made, here's the first three minutes of the segment. It features Tabasco Pepper Sauce as made by the McIlhenny Co. on Avery Island, Louisiana and follows the process from pepper picking up through fermentation and mixing of the sauce:
Never Neglect Good Design
Are you ignoring one of the principal components of any successful product, service, or application? I'm talking about good design. The following is a brief introduction on recognizing bad design is and what to do to test for it...
Review Bites - Alaskan Umami Sauce, Heatseekers Hot Embers & Smokey Jolokia Steak Sauce, and HBD 1542
There is no specific theme to this installment of Review Bites, as all four of the spicy products covered are very different from one another. I review the thick and pungent Sweet & Spicy Hot Alaskan Umami Sauce; the delightful and brow-wiping hot Heatseekers Chilli Smokey Jolokia Original Steak Sauce; the tongue-singing Heatseekers Chilli Hot Embers habanero and bhut jolokia spice mix; and final of their super-hot pepper series, Heartbreaking Dawns 1542 Chocolate Habanero Sauce. For those of you who read these introductions before you dive into the reviews, I'll just spoil the surprise for you and state that I recommend all of these flavor enhancers to a certain degree. Merely read on to find out the details on each one...
