Author: Scott Roberts

10/13/2009 – Meeting today’s tough economic challenges was the central theme for the 2009 Tabasco® Brand Hottest Chef Contest – and the prize for the one hot menu item that wouldn’t break the budget was a $10,000 check.

Stephen Pribish, sous chef for Overbrook Golf Club in Villanova, Pennsylvania, won the $10,000 grand prize for his “Oven Roasted Pork Tenderloin with 7 Vegetable Couscous and Tabasco Green Chimichurri,” which featured two different pepper sauce flavors: Tabasco brand Green Jalapeño Pepper Sauce and Tabasco brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce.

Jared Cushman, a chef-in-training at International Culinary Schools at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida, took the competition’s student category prize of $2,500 for his “Chipotle Duck Breast Risotto” entrée. Contestants were asked to submit entrée recipes for any daypart of the menu – breakfast, lunch, or dinner.

“The winners in both the professional and student categories did an excellent job of incorporating our pepper sauce flavors into recipes that could be profitable items on any menu, which was the focal point of this contest,” says Paul McIlhenny, president and CEO of McIlhenny Company. “The foodservice industry is particularly challenged in today’s economic climate to meet consumer demand for uncompromising…

After James Beck of EatMoreHeat.com posted that an Illinois real estate agent won this year’s ICS World’s Championship Chili Cookoff, I scoured the interwebs for more details on the event. Of course, I scrounged up some info at the Official ICS Chili Cookoff site, but I also came upon a semi-related opinion piece featuring the Ten Commandments of Chili Cookoffs at the Wilmington Star News website. Although I didn’t necessarily agree with everything, I found it interesting nonetheless. Below is an excerpt:

Ten Commandments for a Chili Cookoff
by Paul Stephen

The StarNews turned into a battleground today as 11 of our employees vied for the in-house chili king crown as a fundraiser for United Way. In addition to scraping up over $100, a few finer points in competitive chili cooking came to light. Obviously, chili is a subjective dish, all beef and peppers in Texas, cinnamon and pasta up in Cincinnati. That being said, the judges (other StarNews coworkers) overwhelmingly favored the classic bowl of red. So without further ado, here are my 10 Chili Cookoff Commandments.

1. Chili is, above all else, about beef and chilies. Skip the ground and cube up some chuck roast. Otherwise unremarkable chili can become a star with a nice chunk of meat, and chuck roast can often cost less than ground beef. Likewise on the chilies. Use a mixture, maybe a few fresh jalapeños, a canned chipotle or two and a half dozen or so dried anchos soaked and run through a blender. Leave the McCormick Chili Powder on the shelf. You can do a lot better on your own with a little instinct and intuition…

(NaturalNews) The late, famed herbalist Dr. John Christopher was nicknamed “Dr. Cayenne” because he was constantly recommending the healing powers of cayenne, the substance found in chile peppers that produces a sensation of heat. He especially advocated using it for cardiovascular health and even made the claim that doses of cayenne could stop heart attacks in progress. Now science has come up with proof cayenne does have a remarkable ability to help the heart. University of Cincinnati (UC) scientists have found that capsaicin, the main component of cayenne and other chile pepeprs, may literally stop a heart attack in its tracks when applied topically.

New research just published in the journal Circulation concludes that a common, over-the-counter pain salve containing capsaicin rubbed on the skin during a heart attack could serve as a cardiac-protectant – reducing or even preventing damage to the heart. The researchers found an amazing 85 percent…

With a name like “Fuego Rojo” (Spanish for “red fire”) one might expect a delicious hot pepper sauce that would be used to coat your enchiladas or spice up some pork tamalitos. Instead, it’s a unique sweet chile glaze made by Jake Albert’s Specialty Foods of Ontario. Company founder Jay Calvert (his business’ moniker is a play on his first and last names) recently shipped me a bottle of the stuff to get my thoughts on it…

Here’s a weird one – a coffee mug with a built-in cookie compartment under the main beverage storage area. Clever idea or not? Would you actually buy something like this?

I’m going to feature one particular t-shirt every month from Chilehead Tees. The one for October 2009 with be the Official U.S. Chile Czar T-Shirt.

Tired of all the czars polluting the current presidential administration – including the Automotive Czar, Stimulus Czar, Green Jobs Czar, Health Reform Czar and others? Well here is one czar office we can actually go for – the Chile Czar! And who better to be appointed to this position than YOU? This funny shirt sports the “official” U.S. Chile Czar seal, which features a bald eagle holding in its claws a chile pepper ristra and a banner saying “Ex Chile Igne Amicitia”, which loosely translates in English to “Peace through chile fire”. Show everyone who’s boss by ordering this tee today. It’s available in vibrant dark colors, light colors and gray, and white.

Crazy Uncle Jester’s Inferno World makes some good spicy stuff, but I was really let down with their last product I reviewed, the Spontaneous Combustion Hot Sauce. I found the unpalatable taste of chile extract in it was simply to dominant and covered up any other ingredient that might have otherwise produced a redeeming flavor. I honestly could not recommend that sauce except for some very light additive work, such as putting a drop or two into a bowl of chili or soup.

I’m gratified that Crazy Uncle Jester’s Blazing Hot Mustard has come to the rescue. This versatile condiment has snagged a Second Place award in the Mustard category at the 2009 Fiery Food Challenge and is very deserving of this honor.

Blazing Hot promotes itself on the label as a “Sweet Hot Habanero Dipping Mustard”, yet there’s more to it’s kick than just habs – in fact, habanero peppers the last ingredient listed – and it’s far more than simply a liquid to dip pretzels or chicken nuggets into…

Teacher Gets Community Service, Probation

MIAMI – A teacher convicted of child abuse after her students drank a soda laced with hot sauce will not be going to prison.

Sylvia Tagle was found guilty of one count of child abuse after, prosecutors said, she intentionally allowed children at Bob Graham Educational Center to drink the spicy soda in order to teach them a lesson about not taking her drink.

While that charge came with a possibility of five years in prison, Tagle was sentenced Wednesday to two years of probation and 100 hours of community service, after which the conviction will be…

Do you like hot sauce on your pizza? I certainly do, even if Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce is one of my least favorite choices. Despite that fact, I found this oddball Tabasco commercial featuring creepy, singing pepperonis kind of interesting:

Here’s the question for this month: do you currently own a smoker of any type, that you use for smoking meats and other foods?

Courtesy the Silver City [New Mexico]Sun-News [Note – I did correct a typo or two]:

Holy Jolokia sauce packs heat, flavor
By Victor R. Martinez / For the Sun-News

LAS CRUCES – The heat level of chile peppers is technically determined by geneticists in white lab coats.

But the real measure of how hot a pepper is comes from the reaction of the person biting into one.

And depending on the Scoville units of the pepper, reactions vary from a red face to pouring tears coming down your cheeks.

Some peppers high on the Scoville chart can leave chileheads sucking air over their tongue, coughing and in extreme cases swollen eyes.

One such pepper, the Bhut Jolokia or the Ghost Chile – the world’s hottest pepper – has a Scoville heat rating of one million units. In comparison, Tabasco Sauce has a heat rating of 1,500 Scoville units, and the habanero has a rating of 100,000 – 350,000. The bhut jolokia is supposed to be 200 times hotter than a jalapeno pepper.

The Chile Pepper Institute at New Mexico State University and CaJohn’s Fiery Foods have joined forces to create Holy Jolokia hot sauce made from the Bhut Jolokia…

The highly underrated datil pepper is commonly known for two things. One, it is similar both in terms of heat level and fruity flavor to most habaneros (the later of which is my favorite of the super-hot peppers). Two, most of the datil peppers in the world are grown in the St. Augustine, Florida area – in fact, the town holds its own Datil Pepper Festival every year. Wayne King of the small eastern Tennessee burg of Blountville also grows these types of chiles and uses them as the base ingredients for a plethora of condiments and jams under the name of Datil Sensation. He recently sent me a large sampling of these products for me to test and review, the first of which is called Datilicious Salsa…

From the Silver City Sun-News from Silver City, NM:

SILVER CITY — There is a lot of green in the tractor display at the Cliff/Gila Grant County Fair this year, and some of it has carried over to the ice cream stand where green chile ice cream is being made using a green 1924 John Deere “Hit-n-Miss” engine to power two antique ice cream makers. Proceeds from sale of the ice cream at the fair benefit the Silver City Museum.

Silver City residents Norman and Deleen Ruebush call their novel ice cream business “Ice Cream for Any Occasion.” It grew out of their shared passion for antique tractors, which they collect and restore. The John Deere-powered ice cream machines are mounted on a covered trailer and make an interesting conversation piece as they churn out perfectly edible ice cream.

The green chile ice cream is a relatively new addition to the business.

“We decided to go to the Hatch Chile Festival Memorial Day Weekend,” Norm Ruebush explained.

In honor of the occasion, he and his wife created ice cream featuring the hot peppers that are the centerpiece of the Hatch festival…

Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry was recently interviewed, and he talked about the future of his Boneyard Hot Sauce line: