Author: Scott Roberts

Here’s Round Two of analyzing the new Louisiana Gold Hot Sauce line. In the previous episode, I considered Red to be so-so with a pungent vinegar & salt pairing, and Green to lack heat but still have a delicious flavor. Now up to the plate is Louisiana Gold Wasabi Hot Sauce.

Now this is something I was both very eager and hesitant to test out. This is Bruce Foods’ (Louisiana Hot Sauce’s parent company) very first wasabi-infused food offering so the curiosity level was high in that regard. You don’t see the “big boys” – Louisiana, plus Tabasco, Frank’s, Crystal, et al. – exactly diluging the market with wasabi products, and Louisiana Hot Sauce…

As all chileheads know, capsaicin is the chemical compound found in chile peppers that makes them taste hot. This sweet tee showcases a capsaicin molecule on the front along with the actual chemical formula (C18 H27 NO3).

Okay, so you’ve seen capsaicin molecule t-shirts elsewhere before. What makes this one different from the others is that it sports an ultra cool Scoville Scale chart of hot chile peppers on the back. Coming or going people will know you’re hardcore about your passion for heat…

Zane & Zack’s World Famous Honey Co., makers of some of the finest sweet and spicy products this side of the Equator, are doing their part for Haiti relief by offering an “I Dream of Hot Sauce” bottle up for auction on eBay! Packaged in a gorgeous 1973 Jim Beam “I Dream of Jeannie” bottle, the top is covered in gold and silver wax and the bottle is numbered and signed by the whole Zane & Zack’s crew. There are only 25 in existance with several numbers left to choose from.

ALL proceeds from this sale will be donated to World Concern where 94% of each dollar goes directly to help the victims of Haiti’s earthquake. Zane & Zack’s will also pay for shipping in hopes of raising more money to help all of the victims in this horrible disaster.

PLEASE BE AS GENEROUS AS YOU CAN!

Auction Link: click here.

Do you listen to the Celebrity Grill Podcast? Well, I’m honored to be the featured guest on this week’s show! It was a lot of fun and I chat with host DM about grilling various kinds of meat, veggies, plus a little about hot sauce.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes here or on the Celebrity Grill website. The podcast is very informative and JM is a great host who is extremely passionate about backyard grilling, so if you’re into that sort of thing be sure to subscribe!

Different is good. Well, more specifically, different can be desirable if a sauce recipe is inspired and smacks down artificially-created walls and conventions even if the item isn’t necessarily a 5 out of 5 stars on taste.

On this subject, Chef Hymie Grande’ (real name Jamie Faitelson) is someone who has got to applauded for his exploratory spirit. He seems like someone who is bored with tedium in foods and will jump at the chance to interject the bizarre and the unconventional. While I love regular barbecue sauces, I was genuinely excited to see his take on the genre of condiments.

The Chef also has additional “separate from the rest of the pack” clout going for him even more because Cascabel Express Barbecue Glaze (and his other two condiments) are first BBQ sauces to carry the American Diabetes Association mark on the bottles’ labels, as they meet the stringent ADA specifications. Cascabel Express is also vegan-friendly, all natural, and contain no high-fructose corn syrup or processed sugar.

With all of these attributes, if Chef Hymie Grande’ could pull this off as a delicious taste-bud pleaser, he would have one hell of a unique product on his hands. Unfortunately, I think this sauce misses the mark on flavor. It does it just barely, but it still misses enough for me not to give this a raving thumbs up…

St. Louis finally gets an ICS-sanctioned chili cook-off next Saturday, January 30th, 2010! It will be held at the Heart of Saint Charles Banquet Center and will run from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Here is the general information provided by STLChili.com:

Come and taste all the chili you can handle at the Saint Louis Fire and Ice Chili Cook-off. The cook-off will include decorated booths following our 2010 theme, Fire and Ice. Live music will keep your toes tapping while vendors and public are eligible for Awards and Prizes! Soda, water, tea and Budweiser beverages will be available for purchase to wash down the scrumptious chili! Bring your friends and family to help decide who has the best chili of Saint Louis, Missouri!

For More Information…

Attempting to cleanly categorize Twodogs Unleashed Sweet Hidden Heat Salishes may very well be a futile exercise. It has elements of products that many chileheads may currently have sitting in their refrigerator doors, such as mustards, salsas, relishes, dips, glazes and spreads. It’s like a thick sweet and sour sauce with a mustardy kick and chile-derived heat. Salish (a combination of “salsa” and “relish”) is strange stuff but it works on many levels. You’ll have to try it to get the full gist of what I’m saying.

I wanted to know a little more about the man behind the product, Kevin Benz, so I contacted him to ask him a few questions. I found out that he, like many populating the spicy foods industry, has a day job but is passionate about his “second” career – making, selling and promoting his salish. He does this locally around his hometown in northern Illinois and nationwide on his Twodogs Unleashed website…

I’d previously sampled Danny Cash‘s unique Naga Sabi Bomb sauce. A healthy spoonful had been enough to impress me with its power as a dual naga/bhut jolokia and wasabi hot sauce, even if I wasn’t crazy about the taste. Alas, sometimes first impressions can be deceiving. Often, a sauce or condiment will need a “proper context”, e.g. used with certain foods, to obtain its true flavor and usefulness. Danny had told me that Naga Sabi was amazing on sushi and even guacamole, so I knew that this sauce required to be put on some grub to give it a fair assessment…

BERLIN – Officials in Germany say eight teenagers were hospitalized after a test of courage in which they drank a chile pepper sauce more than 200 times hotter than normal. The Red Cross in the southern city of Augsburg says that 10 boys, aged 13 and 14, year drank the sauce Wednesday morning, apparently in school.

The German news agency DAPD quoted the Red Cross as saying the boys complained of feeling sick, and eight were taken to a hospital. They were to be kept in overnight for observation.

The Red Cross said that on the Scoville scale, which measures the hotness of sauce, the sauce measured 535,000 – compared to 2,500 for normal Tabasco Sauce.

Christmas is well and truly over, the snow has gone, the kids are back in school, it is now time to make good on the New Year’s resolutions, like learning to write better articles, losing weight, etc…

My last letter from the UK came out just before Christmas, most of our UK vendors had just moments to go before they would not be able to ship and more orders and where running as fast as they could to ship all the orders, all reports from the front reported good sales well up on last year, but there was little hot news in the last few days.

Now as we move into 2010 we have heard from a couple of our larger UK suppliers that they are close to moving to larger premises and their business continues to grow…

Here’s an update on the Delaware-based chilehead event first mentioned by John Dilley of Defcon Sauces. In John’s words:

“PEPPERS AT THE BEACH EVENT, MAY 15 – 16, 2010

“Greetings. As the year begins, I know everyone is picking and choosing which events they may or may not attend with their products. Well, for about the past month, I have been in contact with the legendary Chip Hearn at Peppers in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I had received a number of requests from both customers and other manufacturers that we should have some sort of gathering there, considering they…

This review originally appeared on the English Chilli Company website. I’ve reposted it here for the benefot of those outside of the UK who may not have seen it.

If you’ve never tried Marie Sharp’s Hot Habanero Pepper Sauce, you’re really missing out on something special. This Belize-produced condiment has gotten me hooked on carrot-based hot sauces…