Here are my ratings for the product reviews on tonight’s BBQ Central Radio Show with Greg Rempe (which aired 1/27/15):
Deaf Man’s BBQ Sauce Smoky Sweet
16 oz. – $4.95
http://www.deafmansbbq.com/
Rating: 2 out of 5
Bobby Brown Foods Boston Blend Rub
6 oz. – $8.29
http://bobbybrownfoods.com/
Rating: 3 out of 5
Absolutely Perfect BBQ Sauce
19.4oz. – $6.99
http://
Rating: 4 out of 5
You can now vote for who is going to enter the very first year of the Hot Sauce Hall of Fame!
The upcoming 3rd Annual New York City Hot Sauce Expo is hosting and presenting the official Hot Sauce Hall of Fame. The Hot Sauce Hall of Fame will induct 5 people that all have been instrumental in the fiery foods industry through the years. The induction ceremony will be presented live on the main stage at the NYC Hot Sauce Expo.
To be eligible for the nominating or voting process…
Rudy Reviews is back with another sauce to report on. Today I will be reviewing a sauce that came to me from the kind folks at Paulman Acre Smoked Pepper Sauces. Paulman Acre is located in Oceanside, California and is the creation of a gentleman by the name of Tim Paulman. The company started a Kickstarter campaign, and with much success they went into full operation in November of 2014.
Tim informed me that before starting his company, he made his living as a computer scientist for 20 years. He wasn’t content on spending the rest of his life in front of a computer screen; and after spending six years worth of whet, Tim is now confident in his products enough to offer them to the masses. Growing up in Appalachia, Tim told me that farming and food processing is a part of everyday life for most people to a certain degree so it only made sense to him to shy away from his computer career and step into the sauce industry. So today I will be giving my take on a sauce he named “Pinalava Sunshine.”
I received an informational packet with the package and something I found interesting was that they included a “Small Batch Facts” section. In it, it states that for every 60 pounds of peppers the Paulman Acre company uses, 10 pounds of sweet peppers and 5 pounds of habanero peppers are added and in time they achieve 25 gallons of product.
Tim also told me that he doesn’t like to refer to his offerings as “hot sauce” but rather “smoked pepper sauce.” Let’s see what’s in this rather attractive looking bottle, yeah?
Below are the winners of the Fiery Food Challenge straight from ZestFest 2015 in Irving, Texas. A massive thanks to CaJohn Hard of CaJohn’s Fiery Foods for sending these!
I will be working on reformatting &cleaning these up and adding links to these as the night transpires. Congratulations to all of the winners!
Barbecue Sauce: Mild – Consumer Ready 1. High River Sauces – Rattler BBQ Sauce 2. Woody’s Bar-B-Q Sauce – Woody’s Hickory Mild B-B-Q Sauce 3. Southern Belles BBQ – Original Belle
Barbecue Sauce: Medium – Consumer Ready 1. AmberFyre Foods – Manhattan Black Cherry Bourbon BBQ 2. CRC BBQ Enterprises LLC – Riley’s Triple R Sauce 3. Full Boar BBQ – Full Boar BBQ Sweet & Spicy BBQ Sauce
Barbecue Sauce: Hot – Consumer Ready 1. Pepper Smack LLC – Pepper Smack Pepper Q 2. Full Boar BBQ – Full Boar BBQ Sweet & Spicy BBQ Sauce 3. Southern Belles BBQ – Southern Heat…
Although the personal friendship between Al “Buddah” Goldenberg (of I Love It Spicy) and I hit a huge snag in 2013 (for personal reasons which I won’t get into here), he will always be a brother to me and I look forward to the day that we can be close again.
Also around that time frame, Al’s YouTube channel for I Love It Spicy unfortunately had gotten hacked, and three years of videos were deleted, which numbered in the hundreds. I know the loss of those were absolutely devastating to him, and I felt his frustration, anger and sadness.
Many of those videos that were wiped out had been recorded and uploaded by me for the ILIS website, as I was one of the many reviewers and contributors. I have a boatload of these video files scattered across untold DVD-R and hard drive backups from the past 5+ years. One day I may take a weekend to go through and collect all of them together for future uploading, just for old time’s sake.
But a trio of these older review videos had gotten unearthed when I recently searched a 1TB external drive for a logo file for an unrelated project. Of course, in traditional “stop what I’m working on to instead do something counter-productive” style, I had to pause to watch all of them. After doing so, it became a no-brainer to upload them to my channel for your pleasure…
Listen Instantly!
Click Above to Listen to This Episode Now!
Episode #72 – Chile Pepper Myths and Science, Featuring Dr. Gillian Dagan of ABC Research Laboratories
In this special extra spicy hot, capsaicin-injected episode, Scott chats with Dr. Gillian Dagan of ABC Research Laboratories, and discusses topics such as what a food lab does and the rundown on HPLC testing to determine where things fall on the Scoville Heat Scale.
Scott also dispels several chile pepper and hot sauce-related myths, and reviews both Chili Hellion Smoked Habanero Powder and the NatureBox snack service.
Links mentioned in the episode:
The Firecast is Sponsored in Part By:
Other Links mentioned in the episode:
Listen Instantly!
Click Above to Listen to This Episode Now!
Download this episode | 
Subscribe via iTunes | 
Subscribe via RSS Feed
There’s no doubt that Sriracha is the hottest trend in hot sauce nowadays. There is simply something incendiary about this style of spicy condiment that has garnered a ravenous following among foodies, chileheads and hipsters alike.
Sriracha, as a general type of sauce, is named after where is is believed to have originated in the coastal city of Si Racha, in the Chonburi Province of eastern Thailand. It is a thick, sweet, garlicky-pungent chile sauce that typically has a base of fermented red chile peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt. Although sales-wise it’s still not as popular as the more traditional, runny, Louisiana-style pepper sauces (typified by heavyweights McIlhenny Co.’s TABASCO Pepper Sauce, Frank’s RedHot Sauce, Texas Pete, Bruce Foods Corporation’s Louisiana Brand Sauce, and Baumer Foods’ Crystal Hot Sauce), Sriracha is rapidly picking up steam, and is in an estimated 9% of all U.S. households.
By far the most popular producer of Sriracha sauces is Huy Fong Foods, Inc., based in Irwindale, California, in a state-of-the-art 650,000 square-foot facility, which owner David Tran completely designed himself. And although there are numerous direct competitors, including scores of small, craft hot sauce makers all vying for their slice of the Sriracha pie, it is Tran’s “Rooster Sauce” (its informal nickname because of a picture of a rooster on each clear plastic bottle) gets almost all the attention and adoration in the fiery foods world.
Tran, an immigrant from communist Vietnam, started making his Huy Fong sauces in 1980 along Spring Street in Los Angeles’ Chinatown district. After a move to a 68,000-square-foot factory in Rosemead, California in 1987, sales for his signature product started to take off, growing steadily throughout the 1990s and ’00s. By 2010, Huy Fong Foods opened their Irwindale factory, and their Sriracha Sauce (which Tran pronounces “see-RAH-cha”) became a household name, all with zero advertising; quite a triumphant “word of mouth” American success story.
In honor of Huy Fong Foods launching the brand new redesign of their website (just within a day of this writing), David Tran was kind enough to let me ask him some questions…
Here is comes. After several years of a baffling absence, I’ve finally decided to make public my very own, “top-secret”, personal, Roberts-family chili recipe. This is the delicious, spicy, hearty, chunky, “go-to” chili that I developed several years ago, and it is the chili I make on a regular basis throughout the year.
Well, just to clarify, there’s probably nothing too secretive about my ultimate, number one, primary chili recipe. I haven’t been trying to hide it for any particular reason. I just…I don’t know! I have no idea why I’ve never gotten around to posting it until now!
Well, this stuff is worth the wait. This killer chili recipe is an all-purpose crowd-pleaser that’s good for any time, whether you need a hot, steaming bowl of chili love on a cold evening, or you need a hot dog topper for a spring or summer afternoon…
Here is a short but sweet video of the process Huy Fong Foods, the most popular maker of Sriracha-style condiments, goes through to create their spicy “Rooster Sauce”, courtesy of Hypebeast. Here is their explanation of it:
“In our latest edition of Hypebeast Process, CEO and founder of Huy Fong Foods, David Tran, walks us through the whole process of the iconic condiment’s lifespan, from inception of idea to execution of product. David started the company in 1980 by hand packing the infamous sauce by hand with a miniature spoon, sourcing only the freshest ingredients to be sure that the element of spice was just right. Now, 35 years later, the only thing that has changed is the process of manufacture, with the quality and origin of Sriracha chillies remaining the same. Quality control is of utmost importance to David with an idealistic business projection to make the sauce spicier in the future. Every detail is painstakingly monitored, even down to the ingenious packaging whereby the color of the lid serves a significant purpose. David Tran says Sriracha can be used on any food so squeeze some onto your breakfast/lunch/dinner and enjoy the video…”
Listen Instantly!
Click Above to Listen to This Episode Now!
Episode #71 – Best Product of the Year Winners Born to Hula, Plus Ken’s Favourite Products of 2014
Scott chats with New Jersey-based Born to Hula Hot Sauce owners Ed and Amy Bucholtz, who make what Scott picked as best spicy food product of 2014 in their Reaper of Sorrow Carolina Reaper Hot Sauce.
In his regular segment, Ken Alexander offers his choices for best fiery foods products of the year.
Links mentioned in the episode:
Ken’s Picks for Best Products of the Year:
Scott’s Picks for Best Products of the Year:
The Firecast is Sponsored in Part By:
Other Links mentioned in the episode:
Listen Instantly!
Click Above to Listen to This Episode Now!
Download this episode | Subscribe via iTunes | Subscribe via RSS Feed
Hey everyone, Rudy Reviews is back with a hot sauce review! Today I’ll be reporting on a sauce from Boulder Hot Sauce Company called “Harry’s Habanero.” Boulder Hot Sauce Company is located in Boulder, CO (who would have thought?) and is operated by a gentleman named Harry Robertson who makes all of the sauces by hand and are made with 100% fresh ingredients that contain no fillers or congealers. On their website, he proclaims that sweet carrots act as the natural thickener for this sauce. Harry also makes another sauce which he named “Smokey Serrano.”
Ingredients:
Purified Water, Vinegar, Habanero Peppers, Fresh Poblano Peppers, Fresh Onions, Fresh Carrots, Red Ripe Serrano Peppers, Fresh Garlic, and Salt…
Whatever kind of foodie you are, which include being a chilehead, BBQer, hot sauce fan, chile pepper grower & eater, chef or cook, sauce & product manufacturer, and more…I want to know about you!
Please take a few minutes to fill out the following survey so that I can serve you better as a blogger, a podcaster, a writer and as an influencer in the fiery foods & BBQ industries. I promise that your information will be kept confidential and will not be sold to any third parties. Thanks!
If you know me, you know that I despise all ethnic and racial stereotypes. (Except Vulcans. I don’t care what you tell me, they’re all green-blooded, pointy-eared bores!)
One such misconception is about Hispanics. They frequently hear, “you’re Latino! You must LOVE hot sauce!” This spicy video, courtesy of FLAMA, proves that age old stereotype is not true:
Listen Instantly!
Click Above to Listen to This Episode Now!
Episode #70 – Scott Picks the Best Products of the Year for 2014 in Hot Sauces, BBQ Sauces, Spicy Foods and More
In this special end of the year episode, Scott gives his choices for the top fiery foods and BBQ products for the year 2014, including the best hot sauce, BBQ sauce, BBQ rub/seasoning, spicy sweet product, salsa, spicy snack, condiment, best burn and overall best product.
In his Ken’s Fiery World segment, blogger and reviewer Ken Alexander reviews seasonings and flavor enhancers from Blazin’ Bob’s Hot Pepper and Half Crocked Chef, and Scott offers a tip on how to properly heat up store-bought hard taco shells.
Product Links mentioned in the episode:
Other Links mentioned in the episode:
Listen Instantly!
Click Above to Listen to This Episode Now!
Download this episode | Subscribe via iTunes | Subscribe via RSS Feed
Ingredients:
2 Large Baked Potatoes
3 Slices of bacon
2 Chicken Breasts
1 Quart of Chicken Stock
Fresh Mozzarella Cheese
1 Large Egg
Salt & Pepper
Hot Sauce (All-Purpose, or your favorite kind)
Directions:
Slow cook the chicken breasts for 4+ hours in chicken stock and set aside to cool. Bake the potatoes and set aside to cool. Peel the skin from the potatoes and grate. Mix the grated potato with 1 egg, salt and pepper and a bit of oil. Press into a cupcake tin and make a well in the center. Bake at 400°F until the edges begin to brown. Set aside to cool and remove from tin carefully.