It’s been awhile since Passow did his mega-review on the products from California Habanero Blends, but we’re happy to see them in the news again. Check out this article from the ChicoER.com about Tim Sharkey and his fine products from California Habanero Blends:

Hot sauce creator fed up with “blah”
By LAURA URSENY - Business Editor
Article Launched: 05/11/2008 12:36:56 AM PDT

Tim Sharkey grew up in Vallejo in a family that loved to cook. His grandmother was a miracle maker with Spanish dishes, and he developed an appreciation for food with pluck.

But as the recipient of too many bottles of gifted hot sauce that were “just bad,” Sharkey took to the kitchen to concoct a respectable sauce.

He spent weeks stirring, adding, testing, coming up with a line of sauces for use in cooking, grilling and shaking on.

Sharkey has coaxed the best — not the bad kind of bite — from habanero chilies and other ingredients with his line of sauces, sold under the name California Habanero Blends.

“They’re really not too spicy. Just right.”

Click here to read the rest of the source article from the ChicoER.com

We have already announced that our good friend, Mark, over at The Chile Man.org has brought out his second batch of Naga Snake Bite. I just recently received a bottle of his Private Reserve with 10 whole naga pods contained in the sauce. I’ve already reviewed his first batch with 5 pods and this tastes almost exactly the same. So this won’t be a full review, just a little mention of what I feel is the difference between the two and also to plug a great sauce.

Naga Snake Bite: Private Reserve Ingredients: Onions, carrots, tomatoes, vinegar, Naga Morich, red chillies, ginger, sugar, Red Bell Peppers, garlic, olive oil, salt.

One thing I noticed is that he has taken my advice about the label not being centered on the bottle and has now centered it which definitely improves the look . That along with the gold banded shrink wrap makes this stand out on your “Self of Doom”. I also noticed that Mark’s added one new ingredient, sugar. The sauce does taste much sweeter but not in the way where it negatively effects the taste. The sugar actually pairs with the fruity taste of the Naga quite well.

Speaking of Naga, this 10 pod version really packs it in! The taste is so much more exquisite and really shows off the fruity taste if the Nagas. Here’s the real question, “Is there a heat improvement?”. I described the first batch’s heat as being akin to a snake bite, fast and hard. This sauce is no different.

The heat is much more harder biting and when used in the large quantities that I use it in, boy does it stick with you. Once again, the Naga’s trademark of numbing the section of tongue where it touches is quite prevalent here. This is what a sauce should be, mind blowing heat mixed with a fantastic taste. Perfection has be improved upon.

Taste: 9.7, Heat: 10

Oh, the pleasure of being a science geek! If anyone is interested in the chemistry of capsaicin, then you’ll love this article from a recent online article in the Science Daily:

Chemists Measure Chilli Sauce Hotness With Nanotubes

ScienceDaily (May 8, 2008) — If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen and into the lab – chemists can now use carbon nanotubes to judge the heat of chilli sauces. The technology might soon be available commercially as a cheap, disposable sensor for use in the food industry.

Richard Compton and his team at Oxford University, UK, have developed a sensitive technique to measure the levels of capsaicinoids, the substances that make chillies hot, in samples of chilli sauce. They report their findings in the Royal Society of Chemistry journal The Analyst.

The current industry procedure is to use a panel of taste-testers, and is highly subjective. Compton’s new method unambiguously determines the precise amount of capsaicinoids, and is not only quicker and cheaper than taste-testers but more reliable for purposes of food standards; tests could be rapidly carried out on the production line.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

A few weeks ago, we had written about an article which talked about Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap in Chicago and their dedication to spicy fare. Well, the debate rages on…this time about the merits of spicy chicken wings. Check out this cool article from HALife.com which revisits Jake Melnick’s as well as other topics:

A hot debate takes wing

By Peter Rowe
Copley News Service

There are two sides to the Buffalo chicken wings debate.

“There’s nothing better,” said author and restaurateur Kevin Roberts about enjoying a big plate of Buffalo wings. “But it’s all about the flavor. You don’t want it so hot that you can’t taste the food.”

In the heated argument over hot sauces, Roberts represents one side. Don’t call his side unmanly, though - at least not in Roberts’ hearing. His new hangout, East Village Tavern & Bowl in San Diego, is a testosterone-enriched haven for sports fans.

Besides, Roberts has a point. Thermonuclear sauces incinerate everything in their path, including the food’s flavors. That’s no fun.

Or is it?

On the other side of the hot sauce issue is Robin Rosenberg, chef de cuisine at Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap in Chicago. Before ripping into Rosenberg’s wings, diners must sign a waiver: “These wings are gonna be really H-O-T, and I hereby declare that the terms of this waiver and release have been completely read, and I totally get and voluntarily accept that I have no right to whine about anything that happens to my mouth after I accept the challenge.

“I am psyched. I am proud. I am ready.

“So bring ‘em on!”

Time to pick a side.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Well, we finally manage to upload our photos of the 2008 Cinco D’Ohio show and it is now available for viewing:

Cinco D’Ohio 2008 slideshow

Many of the pictures were good, some were not. All are available for viewing/digestion. It was awesome fun both being a judge for all the competitions as well as just enjoying the show. Enjoy the pics!

We will have our own pictorial rendition of the goings on from this past weekend’s Cinco D’Ohio event at the North Market, but in the meantime we’d like to offer up some pictures courtesy of Donavan Stanley at the Mommy It Burns Blog. Check it out:

Geckofiend’s 2008 Cinco D’Ohio photo album

Donavan was victorious for the amateur hot sauce contest, and we were lucky enough to get some samples of his sauce for our very own consumption. Yes, we will be reviewing those at some point soon. Stay tuned!!

Just in time for Cinco de Mayo comes this article from the Lake Oswego Review which re-hashes the subject of chile pepper hotness. A review for most chileheads, but informational nonetheless:

How hot is that red-hot chile pepper anyway?

By Barb Randall

Ole! Cinco de Mayo fiestas will be happening this week, with prodigue el banquete (lavish banquets) filled with zippy salsas, rich moles and the vibrant flavors common to Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisines. We can credit at least some of the cuisines flavors to chiles.

Most of us have a tale or two about unexpected encounters with chiles. Stories about dishes so hot they caused tears to roll down cheeks, smoke to billow out of ears and flames to erupt from mouths. The images are comical, but frankly, except by tasting, how can you tell how hot a chili might be?

Pharmacologist Wilber Scoville was intrigued by that very question and in 1912, he set out to determine the different heat levels of a wide variety of chiles. His experimentation led to the invention of the Scoville Organoleptic Test, the first systematic laboratory approach for measuring a chile’s pungency or heat.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Chuck Evans gifted us with this jar of salsa goodness back at the 2008 North Market Fiery Foods Festival, so we decided to crack this jar of Raspberry Lime Salsa open right ahead of this coming weekend’s Cinco D’Ohio festival just to get a taste (no pun intended) of some of the stuff which will be available there at the show. Now I will admit to not being the biggest fan of fruit salsas in general or even to chipotle, so I hoped to give this a more fair & balanced take on it. For one thing, it’s hard to go wrong with this list of ingredients:

Ingredients: tomatoes, tomato puree, onions, red raspberries in syrup, chile peppers, Smokey Chipotle (R) pepper sauce, lime juice, lemon juice, vinegar, herbs and spices

Now this is the kind of list we like to see in the products we try…nothing but real ingredients without any chemical-sounding names of ingredients. Here’s the description of the salsa from Chuck’s website:

Chuck’s very original mild red raspberry salsa is spiked with fresh lime juice along with a hint of smokey chipotle providing layers of flavor. Serve over a block of cream cheese; top off a char-grilled pork chop; or drizzle over vanilla ice cream. Provecho!

Taste: We didn’t do anything fancy-shmancy with this salsa, but rather just ate it straight out of the jar with some tortilla chips. Given the recipe suggestions above, we wanted to try it au natural to see how it would do unadulterated by other stuff. The result? This was a surprisingly good salsa that Joe had to be restrained from finishing all in one sitting! The salsa base is a little on the thin side, but has big chunks of tomatoes and raspberries to whet your appetite. The heat is indeed on the mild side as the label suggests, perhaps 3/10 for heat, but the incredible taste will make you forget that it’s not all that hot & spicy. Great combination of chipotle flavor as well, which isn’t too smoky or sweet with the fruit in the salsa. It has a smooth flavor that really balances the peppery flavor with the combination of raspberry and lime.

Although we didn’t try it ourselves, take Chuck’s hints about the cream cheese and pork chops. This salsa would be amazing with those. You could certainly do this with ice cream or just about any dessert, and we think this would be great drizzled over cheesecake. Yum!

Overall recommendation: For those of you who think that fruit salsas are too sweet or may not truly be in to the flavor of chipotle…then this is the salsa for you. It’s definitely on the milder side of the chilehead spectrum, but it has enough heat to keep you interested at least. While you can find lots of uses in cooking for this salsa, it really is good straight out of the jar. We’d love to see a spicier version of this someday, but for now we’ll be licking the insides of the jar until we need to get some more. Try some for yourself and see what you think. Enjoy!

It can be a rarity indeed when we crank out a review truly quickly, so we allow a little inspiration to take hold of us when we have the chance. Such is the case with this new Honey BBQ sauce from the mad geniuses at Torchbearer Sauces. This is the first new product we’ve tried from Torchbearer in quite a while, but we have always enjoyed their products in the past…so we had no inclination that this sauce would be any different. It’s the first bottle that strays from their non-woozie eight ounce bottle that’s been a standard issue for their stuff, and comes in a huge-mongous sixteen ounce bottle.

Ingredients: tomato paste, water, honey, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, molasses, worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, chili pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, lemon juice, oregano

Kudos to the gang for sticking to all-natural ingredients. An automatic thumbs-up from us for that!

We’ve seen this story in a couple of other media outlets, but this article on the Fast Food Maven blog sums it up better than any of the other sources. We here at the Hot Zone Online sorta doubt this new hot sauce would hurt a single molecule on the taste buds of most chileheads, but it’s great to think that Del Taco has finally seen the light about making some better hot sauce for their tacos. Read:

Del Taco debuts blazing hot Del Inferno
April 28th, 2008

Today, Southern California’s iconic taco chain, Del Taco, debuts its first new hot sauce in 15 years.

The blazing hot item is dubbed Del Inferno and is three times hotter than any hot sauces served at rival chains, Del Taco said. (Del Taco’s two other offerings are mild sauce and Del Scorcho.)

So, how does Del Taco know Inferno sizzles past its rivals?

The Mexican fast-food chain had Del Inferno tested against its competitors by Certified Laboratories. The New York-based food analysis company tested the competing sauces using the infamous Scoville scale, which measures the hotness or piquancy of a chili pepper.

Del Taco didn’t give the results, or list the names of the rival hot sauces that Del Inferno beat. But rest assured, Del Inferno is one hot mama, according to the chain’s marketing reps.

“There’s no doubt about it, Del Inferno will set your scalp ablaze,” said Mimi Somerman, chief marketing officer at Del Taco.

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