With tailgating season right upon us, here is a great recipe to get you started! Courtesy of my good friends at Stubb’s BBQ, here is a winner of an appetizer platter: Smokey Stuffed Jalapenos with Bacon.
Ingredients
Cooking Instructions
I wish creating a new podcast episode would be as easy as pushing a button.
I get messages and emails every week about it. People want to know, “Scott, are you going to start up with Firecast Podcast episodes again?” The short answer is, I don’t know.
The long answer is that there is still quite a bit more I want to accomplish with having a fiery foods and BBQ podcast. I have slam-dunk ideas swimming around in my head, such as special guests to bring on to interview, more compelling conversation topics with my co-hort Ken Alexander, and concepts and subject I’m itching to cover.
The “problem” is…well, it’s messy and complicated.
I could very easily place blame on things that are going on in my life. Adjusting to a new job, spending more time with my woman and my boys, and a plethora of other little things honestly have taken more of my time.
But it would be unfair to make them all instant scapegoats. To be fair, I would also have to point the finger right back on little old me. If I really wanted to, I’m sure that I could “make” more time. Yet a certain level of apathy and lack of drive exists. I just don’t have the desire and motivation right now to sit down in my home office and recording room and crank out and edit a fresh few episodes.
Ever wonder what condiment Americans are searching for more than any other? The answer is probably not a surprise to some of you.
It is Sriracha.
Sriracha chile pepper sauce, with the biggest-selling brand being the famous Huy Fong Foods “Rooster Sauce,” has certainly taken the culinary world by storm over the past couple of years. Therefore, it’s been on the minds of a lot of people, warranting searches on Google in a majority of the States.
Below is a handy infographic created by Fix Hot Sauce that shows that the trend towards Sriracha has grown in the past five years.
NOTE: Unfortunately, b0th the aforementioned Fix Hot Sauce and Business Insider Australia are taking this information and are erroneously reporting that Sriracha is “America’s Favorite Condiment.” Simple logic can tell you that Google searches do not equal sales. I mean, milk is in almost every U.S. home, but when is the last time you’ve done an internet search on milk? It is my hope that Fix Hot Sauce and Business Insider Australia both clarify this and correct their claims.
Becoming addicted to fiery foods can become incredibly easy. For a lot of us, one taste of delicious heat, and we’re hooked! For others, the fascination with chile peppers and hot sauce is a gradual process. So how do you know if you have a true obsession with spicy foods? Here are 14 signs you are a true-blue chilehead:
Every year, the preeminent chicken wing event is the St. Louis, MO metro area is, of course, the UCP Heartland Wing Ding. The 2016 event was held last night, and I was lucky enough to be one of the celebrity judges for the contest.
16 different St. Louis area restaurants not only sold their wings to the general public who paid to get into the foodie event, but also entered in one or more wings for consideration in the contest. The judging was split up into three categories: Best Traditional Style (with the flavor profile being based in the classic cayenne pepper sauce and melted butter, and can be grilled, smoked, fried and/or breaded), Best Specialty Style (anything goes!), and Best Dry Rub Style (non-sauced but with a seasoning covering the outside, and can be grilled, smoked, fried and/or breaded). There was a mind-numbing 38 individual entries across all three categories; although judges didn’t need to consume 38 entire wings, we were required to take a bite of each one.
Judging was subjective to the preferences of each judge, and included such criteria as appearance, texture, flavor, and juiciness…
Researchers at New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute have discovered that super-hot chile peppers, those with more than one million Scoville Heat Units, are built differently than other peppers. Unlike regular chile peppers, super-hot peppers make the most of the interior space they have available, which can lead to some serious heat.
“What we were interested in finding was why super-hot chile peppers are able to get that hot,” said Dr. Paul Bosland, an NMSU Regents Professor and director of the university’s Chile Pepper Institute.
According to Bosland, it has been known that a chile pepper’s heat comes from the chemical compound capsaicin, and that capsaicinoids are found in yellow-colored sacs called vesicles. In most chile peppers, the capsaicinoid vesicles are attached to the fruit’s placenta, where the seeds are located.
With super-hot peppers, those sacs are also found on the fruit wall, and in larger quantities. This gives the pepper far more surface area to pack in capsaicinoid vesicles and to turn up the heat. Peter Cooke, with the NMSU Core University Research Resources Laboratory, was able to make the capsaicinoid sacs fluoresce in both jalapeno peppers and Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers and then examined the fruit with university’s electron microscope…
What is the true cost of a healthy lifestyle? Does it cost more to go out to eat or stay home and make dinner? The answer may surprise you.
Now I will continue to go out to dinner and enjoy what a restaurant can offer, but purchasing food at home can be both cheaper and healthier for you. Here’s a handy infographic on food costs in the U.S. and the true cost of a healthy lifestyle.
Average Daily Food Cost In The U.S.
Milk, regular (0.25 liter): $0.23
Loaf of Fresh White Bread: $125g
Local Cheese (0.10kg): $1.07
Chicken Breasts Boneless, Skinless (0.15kg): $1.32
Banana (.25kg): $0.40
Oranges (0.30kg): $1.21
Onion (0.10kg): $0.26
Rice, white (0.10kg): $0.37
Eggs (2.4): $0.55
Beef Round (0.15kg)…
Gourmet Food and Music Festival Postponed Until 2017
Houston, TX | August 1, 2016:
SauceFest LLC (“SauceFest”) regrets to announce that the gourmet food and music festival’s inaugural run has been postponed until the fall of 2017. The event was originally scheduled to take place October 22-23, 2016 on the streets of East Downtown Houston. The festival is now tentatively scheduled for October 2017.
To ensure that SauceFest 2017 brings the heat, iBurn® is working with Houston’s own Pegstar Concerts to deliver a music lineup that only Pegstar can deliver. The 2-day festival will also feature gourmet food products with heat levels ranging from mild to the world’s hottest, craft beer and liquor brands, local restaurants, cooking demonstrations, and eating…
If you’ve ever sat and admired a perfect restaurant relleno before digging in, or sent up a quiet “thank-you” when you found some New Mexico certified green chile on the shelf in a coastal grocery store, you probably know how important the Mexican food industry is to American consumers. In fact, Mexican cuisine is second only to Italian in its familiarity and frequency of eating, according to research from the National Restaurant Association.
But you might not realize that the spicy staple of the most popular northern Mexican dishes – the chile pepper – owes much of its widespread popularity to the early work of one of New Mexico State University’s pioneering researchers, horticulturist Fabian Garcia.
“Really, Fabian Garcia is the father of the Mexican food industry in the United States as we know it,” said Paul Bosland, director of NMSU’s award-winning Chile Pepper Institute and a Regents Professor of horticulture. “Until his early research, chile peppers were a regional kitchen garden plant. His creation of the New Mexican pod type changed the food landscape of the United States forever…”
(St. Louis, MO) Local restaurants will compete to see who has the “best chicken wings” in St. Louis at the 6th Annual Wing Ding St. Louis. This year’s event will be from 6:00 pm until 9:00 pm, August 11, 2016, at Queeny Park (Greensfelder Arena), (at 550 Weidman Road, Ballwin, MO 63011). The Wing Ding is sponsored by Schlafly, CARF International, 105.7 The Point, Coca-Cola, Ices Plain and Fancy and Nothing Bundt Cakes.
The next time you bite off more than you can handle in regard to a hot chile pepper, your best bet is to drink some milk. That’s according to research conducted by New Mexico State University’s Chile Pepper Institute.
“Capsaicin is the chemical compound found in chile peppers that makes them taste hot,” said Paul Bosland, an NMSU Regents Professor and director of the Chile Pepper Institute. “It turns out that milk has a protein in it [called casein] that replaces the capsaicin on the receptors on your tongue. It’s really the quickest way to alleviate the burning feeling.”
Bosland said when capsaicin attaches to receptors in your mouth, it sends the same signal to your brain as it would if you had touched something hot. That’s why some people also begin to sweat when they eat hot peppers. Milk, and other dairy products like sour cream or even ice cream, will help to put out that fire.
So, does anything else work…
There is nothing on God’s green earth that quite compares to a perfectly-cooked beef steak or grilled or smoked chicken. But my favorite grilled or barbecued animal of choice? It is perhaps the pig.
Pork is undeniably one of the most commonly consumed meats in the world. My preference for swine is due to the meat being sweet and juicy, almost to the point of being deliciously unctuous. I also love pig because there is simply so much you can do with it and types of meat they offer. I mean, you can get ribs, pulled pork, ham, St. Louis-style pork steaks, sausage, bacon…? What’s not to love?
Where do you start? There are seemingly endless cuts that can be found, some better known than others, even if you only include what’s found at your neighborhood grocer…
What is Texas caviar? Well, unlike it’s namesake, it has nothing whatsoever to do with fish eggs, thankfully!
Texas caviar is a salad of beans, corn, black-eyed peas, and other ingredients, often eaten as a dip accompaniment to tortilla chips. You can also think of it like an jacked-up black bean and corn salsa. Texas caviar is good any time as a snack, part of an appetizer or a party food.
Here is a Texas caviar recipe that will add some life to your feeding frenzy…
I love me some nacho cheese. The ooey, gooey, liquid nacho queso sauce you commonly find in fast food Mexican restaurants, at concession stands and snack bars, and on your grocery store shelves are a guilty pleasure of mine, but I recently found that you can create a much better nacho cheese product at home.
So here is my nacho sheese sauce recipe. The consistency of this queso will be a tiny bit more “stringy” and “stretchy” like melted cheddar and be “gloppy”, yet still have attributes of being smooth and pourable and will be very similar to a store-bought processed nacho cheese sauce.
It’s great with old fashioned tortilla chips and jalapenos, but it’s also fantastic on Taco Tuesdays or even on fried potato slices (for what I call “Potchos”). Just as long as you have plenty of pre-shredded cheddar or a block of cheddar on hand, this nacho cheese sauce recipe should be pretty easy to make any time as it includes very common ingredients.
Enjoy!
July is National Grilling Month, and it’s is the perfect time for backyard cooks to fire up 2016’s hottest Bar-B-Q trends. Barbecue expert Rocky Stubblefield of Austin, Texas-based Stubb’s Legendary Bar-B-Q offers tips for these top trends to try now: