Firecast Podcast Episode #77 – Hot Sauce Industry History Chat with Chip Hearn of Peppers and CaJohn Hard of CaJohn’s Fiery Foods

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Episode #77 – Hot Sauce Industry History Chat with Chip Hearn of Peppers and CaJohn Hard of CaJohn’s Fiery Foods

In the second part of his coverage of the NYC Hot Sauce Expo, Scott chat with Hot Sauce Hall of Fame Nominees Chip Hearn of Peppers and John “CaJohn” Hard of CaJohn’s Fiery Foods, as they talk about the history of the fiery foods industry. Ken Alexander also discusses whether or not to refrigerate hot sauces, and Scott has sage advice on his to get rid of mosquitoes around camp sites.

Links mentioned in the episode:

The Firecast is Sponsored in Part By:

  • Chilehead Tees – Are you a heat freak? Whether you love hot sauce, chile peppers, buffalo wings, BBQ, bacon, or anything dealing with fiery & spicy foods, this is the place to get t-shirts and swag to show off your obsession.
  • Sucklebusters – Texas BBQ Rubs, BBQ Sauces & Texas GunPowder! SuckleBusters is preferred by competition BBQ Cooks, and has won numerous awards including back-to-back 1st Place sauce wins at the American Royal – the World series of BBQ competitions.
  • Dr. BBQ’s Low & Slow BBQ at Home Online Barbecue Class

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Eastern North Carolina Sauce Recipe

eastern-carolina-sauce-recipe-bbq-hot-pepperIn eastern North Carolina, this type of spiced vinegar sauce offsets the richness of smoked, BBQ pork.

Makes 2 Cups

Ingredients

1 cup distilled white vinegar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 tbsp. sugar
1 tbsp. crushed red chile flakes
1 tbsp. hot sauce
1 tbsp. kosher salt
1 tsp. ground black pepper
½ tsp. paprika

Directions

Combine vinegars, sugar, chile flakes, hot sauce, salt, pepper, and paprika in a storage container.

 

Review – Ricante Hot Sauces

Ricante Hot SaucesHailing from the egregiously-underrated hotbed of spicy pepper sauce activity in the great country of Costa Rica, Ricante Hot Sauces is a family-owned company started by Ricky Ricante by using fresh chiles from his backyard. He combined them with fruits such as mangos (a staple of many sweet hot sauces) to create what would become his flagship product, OG Mango Caliente.

Later, Ricante Hot Sauces would branch out not only in their native Costa Rica, but also in Southern California, North Eastern Ohio, Virgina, South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois and other select markets throughout the UNited STates. Armed with four other sauces, Fire Melons, Manzana Encendida, Pine Dulce and Chipotle Bueno (all of which I will review today for you today), Ricante aims to become one of the bigger players in the international fiery foods industry.

I’ll first go through the five sauces, list off the ingredients, and give you my initial impressions of them…

Homemade Blueberry BBQ Sauce Recipe

blueberry-bbq-sauce-recipe

This awesome, mega-delicious homemade blueberry BBQ sauce recipe is one you have to try is you love your barbecue sauce to be on the slightly fruity and sweet side. I would include myself in that group, but it had better be an extremely balanced and tasty sweet BBQ sauce and not overpowering in the fruitiness department.

Thankfully, this blueberry BBQ sauce is wonderful, and has a little something for everyone – sweetness from the blueberries and brown sugar, tartness from the red wine vinegar and balsamic vinegar, smokiness from the chipotle chiles, spiciness from the habanero, and full body and rich savoriness from the rest of the ingredients.

Mmmm-mmmm! Time to make some good stuff!

Ingredients…

The Firecast Podcast Episode #76 – Sam & Tina McCanless of Zane & Zack’s World Famous Honey Co.

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Episode #76 – Sam & Tina McCanless of Zane & Zack’s World Famous Honey Co.

The Washington state-based owners of Zane and Zack’s, Sam and Tina McCanless, join Scott and talk about what it’s like to combine honey and hot sauces, and also discuss a timely Ted Nugent-autographed guitar raffle that will benefit a wounded U.S. soldier, Sergeant Frank Hegr. Ken reviews two products, and Scott tries out The Pepper Pantry‘s Hot Peppers In Oil.

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Rudy Reviews Chile Spot Ghost Pepper Honey Roasted Almonds

Chile-Spot-Ghost-Honey-Roasted-AlmondsRudy Reviews is back with an offbeat review today. Why is this offbeat you may be asking, well today I’m reporting on a non-sauce review. Today I’ll be looking at almonds from Chile Spot. The Chile Spot is the creation of a gentleman named Jeff Porter from Downingtown, Pennsylvania. Jeff established his company in 2005 but his love for everything spicy began long before that while living in the finger lakes area of the state of New York. Jeff started out creating wing rubs and sauces as well as other sauces. He teamed up with fellow chileheads in the area and with some convincing, Jeff decided to take his passion to the next level.

The Chile Spot totes an impressive line of products which include: relish, hot sauce, jam, jelly, caramel corn among a variety of other items. Jeff gave me a little bit of a teaser in that he’s in the process of creating a whole milk cheddar cheese that has Moruga Scorpion in it. The Chile Spot will be at the New York City Hot Sauce Expo in April selling their products. Today I will be sampling their Ghost Pepper Honey Roasted Almonds

Review – Fix Hot Sauce Sriracha Sauce

fix-hot-sauce-sriracha-sauceEnough about how much sriracha is today’s big hot sauce trend. I know it is, you know it is, so enough gushing about how it’s taken the world by storm. Instead, let’s take a look at some of the artisan sauce makers and see what dazzling new directions they can take with the Thailand genre that goes by the name “sriracha”.

I was contacted by Alex Loukas of the Fix Hot Sauce Team based in Seattle, Washington, to cover their emerging sriracha product of the same name. According to their website, this is their story:

“Our Fix journey started in Vietnam, where we saw and tasted the difference of authentic, farm-fresh, and non-processed goodness. Our minds were blown. From then, we made it our mission to bottle the premium flavors of South Asia and bring it back home.

We used to be interested in average bowls of pho served with your average hot sauce. We want more. And you deserve more. Fix was born to bring the best damn hot sauce to America.”

Not only were they making the claim to have the best hot sauce, but I was also dying to know if I could ever truly love a sriracha sauce, so with my review of Fix Hot Sauce, it was a “double challenge accepted”. Read on to see what I thought…

Firecast Podcast Episode #75 – Steve Seabury Discusses the NYC and CA Hot Sauce Expos, and Hot Sauce Hall of Fame

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Episode #75 – Steve Seabury Discusses the NYC and CA Hot Sauce Expos, and Hot Sauce Hall of Fame

High River Sauces Head Honcho Steve Seabury discusses a couple of fiery foods events he is producing, the 3rd Annual New York City Hot Sauce Expo and the brand new California Hot Sauce Expo, along with the new Hot Sauce Hall of Fame coinciding withe NYC show.

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Review – Paulman Acre Strawbanero Lightning Smoked Pepper Sauce

paulman-acre-strawbanero-lightning-hot-sauce-1Rudy Reviews is back and more than ready to get saucidellic with the second of three sauces from Paulman Acre. For the sake of running a long introduction and repeating myself, you can go to the link for my review for “Pinalava Sunshine, where you can familiarize yourself with Paulman Acre.

I’m really into the labels of Paulman Acre sauces. I’m not much for labels because let’s face it, taste is king but these bottles are sharp….

Men and Women Like Spicy Foods for Different Reasons, Science Explains

men-and-women-eat-spicy-food-for-different-reasonsGuess which gender bought that giant bottle of Frank’s RedHot for social approval?
by Carl Williot

Your food choices say a lot about your personality. If you don’t eat meat, then you may be pretty concerned about animal welfare. If you eat protein bars for most meals, then you’re probably serious about the gym. And if you really like spicy foods…?

Well, that depends.

A new study has uncovered how gender and societal expectations may play a role in shaping your spicy food preferences. Earlier this month, researchers from Penn State published findings in the journal Food Quality and Preference that uncovered differences for “the liking and consumption of spicy foods” between men and women.

Specifically, women tend to enjoy the actual sensation it gives them, while men are more influenced by…

Firecast Podcast Episode #74 – Help Cathy and Steve Zielinski Fight Cancer

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Episode #74 – Help Cathy and Steve Zielinski Fight Cancer

In this short but special episode, Scott and Ken urge everyone to help out our friends Steve and Cathy Kielinski of Crazy Steve’s Pickles and Salsas as Cathy has been diagnosed with breast cancer.

How you can help:

If you’re a chilehead, a barbecuer, or just a general foodie, please consider helping out these fine folks. Let’s show Steve and Cathy that we are among the best and most supportive communities anywhere and that we take care of our own. Thank you!

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Firecast Podcast Episode #73 – Chat with DivaQ Danielle Dimovski of BBQ Crawl

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Episode #73 – Barbecue Chat with DivaQ Danielle Dimovski of BBQ Crawl

One of the First Ladies of the BBQ competition world, Danielle Dimovski, AKA DivaQ, joins Scott via Skype and talks about her smoker and grill preferences, outdoor cooking pet peeves and favorite flavor combos, and also discusses her TV career as host on the Travel Channel’s BBQ Crawl and contestant and barbecue judge on Destination America’s BBQ Pitmasters.

Ken Alexander joins Scott in his Fiery World segment to engage in a lengthy conversation on the Sriracha hot sauce craze. Scott reviews the Sam and Oliver Sauce Company’s Cinder Habanero Hot Sauce.

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Review – Arthur Wayne Haba Haba “Dime” Hot Sauce Review

Arthur Wayne Haba Haba Dime Hot Sauce ReviewRudy Reviews is back with a sauce that has a motto of “If It’s Not Hot, It’s Not Right!” Today’s review is for Haba Haba “Dime” Hot Sauce made by Arthur Wayne Hot Sauce L.L.C., located in Missoula, MT. Started in 2014 by Arthur Schubert. Arthur started crafting his sauce back in 2007 after he peered into his refrigerator, noticed the amount of different sauces and said to himself (and me) “whoa, I can make sauce.” I assumed that the dime in the name of his offering was because he feels like it’s a “10” but in fact he gave the name because it took him ten times experimenting with his recipe until he was satisfied with the result.

Arthur Wayne L.L.C. currently has two sauces available in their range and will be adding three new sauces in 2015 – a scorpion pineapple, a mild jalapeno, and a huckleberry ghost pepper. On their website they have even offered to make a sauce for any occasion that you may have which I think is pretty neat. I’m not sure if custom labels are made but it’s still a nice service they offer…