I am about to impart on you, my faithful and brave readers, a recipe that was made a few months ago. It began with the North Market Fiery Foods Show where, in his infinite brilliance, Chad Lowcock of Race City Sauce Works introduced me to his El Ajo De Los Diablos Red Chile & Garlic Tapenade.

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After a month of voting, we can finally announce a winner for “The Hot Zone Online takes hot sauce on a world tour” contest. We saw an interesting pattern in the voting. Peppermaster got out to a strong start and dominated the voting for the first two weeks or so. Then, the legions of Heartbreaking Dawns came out and blew by Peppermaster to take a commanding lead of their own. Late in the process, the army of Benito’s Hot Sauce followers came out and made a valiant effort to supplant the leaderboard. After a pitched battle over the last weekend in which the vote-leader changed hands multiple times, the winner emerged as:
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The Barnesville Lamar County Chamber of Commerce hosts the Annual BBQ and Blues Festival in downtown Barnesville, GA on the fourth weekend in April.  The event is sanctioned by the Florida BBQ Association and hosts some of the nation’s best blues acts.  This year’s event dates will take place on April 27th‐28th, 2012

BBQ & Blues spices up the atmosphere downtown each year.  Whether you are dancing with the neighbors down the street or winning best in show at the classic car cruise‐in, you are going to have a great time. On Friday night you will enjoy the sound of good music, classic cars on display, delicious food, and a kid’s park!  On Saturday taste 24 cook team’s brisket and relax under the shade trees to good music while the kids play. Saturday evening is where the weekend ends with great bands, a GA Music Legend is honored and a musically inclined high school student is given a college scholarship.  You never know what special music guest may show up!

BBQ & Blues is loaded with good family fun, southern hospitality, and all in the downtown of our charming city.  For more information about the festival, please call the Barnesville‐Lamar County Chamber of Commerce at 770‐358‐5884 or visit the official website at www.bbqandblues.org.

In addition, there are special BBQ & Blues packages if you want to have the extra-special experience all while contributing to a worthy cause. To find out more about these, email Jessica Eanes at the Barnesville-Lamar County Chamber of Commerce.

This event’s info can also be found on Facebook at Barnesville BBQ and Blues Festival.

The Hot Sauce Bible: Revised Old & New Testament by Dave DeWitt, Chuck Evans and Scott Roberts

The authors are seeking worldwide manufacturers who make spicy sauces & salsas with chile peppers as their primary occupation to submit their story for a book abut the history of the hot sauce manufacturing industry, to be published at a later date. The book will supplement pepper sauce and salsa manufacturing and is a follow-up to original The Hot Sauce Bible (1996) Crossing Press, which went out-of-print in 2001. The Hot Sauce Bible: New Testament will provide a history of the industry from 1996 to present, coupled with a revised Old Testament for a historical record of hot sauce and salsa manufacturing as has been pieced together by Chuck Evans.

Co-packer manufacturers are welcome to submit information for inclusion as long as the co-packer has their own in-house labeled product line.

Hobbyists, week-end chileheads, and manufacturers making products at home or part-time do not meet the criteria for inclusion as manufacturers.
Private Label products are excluded under all circumstances.

Please provide in an attachment concise (several paragraphs to 1 page unless more needed), neatly written with spell-check…all copy to be written in the submitter’s own words.

1. History of Business-how you started, # of years in actual production, what influenced you to produce spicy condiments.
2. Product line brand name
3. Product Uniqueness in the marketplace
4. Specific sauces that are favorites and/or products that have an interesting story.
5. A favorite photo of: your booth at a show with your company logo, a tasteful costume with you in it, a portrait of the company owners or founders, product(s) you make that you associate your company with, or a photo of inside your facility.
6. YOUR RECIPE(s) – maximum of 3 recipes please (one you do not mind sharing) of a great-tasting spicy or fiery hot sauce, salsa, marinade, sambal, curry, etc. utilizing 1 or more chile peppers. The recipe will be released in the HSB so it must list exact ingredients, specific instructions, cooking times, and finished quantity of sauce made with the recipe. Serving suggestions where applicable.
7. Business Address, phone, website, email
8. IMPORTANT: Type your name, type your signature (type s/s and then type your name) of submitted information, and date.

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Sometimes I love this whole reviewing thing more than others. Today is one of those days. Sweet and hot treats have waxed and waned over the years. They were popular back at the 2001 Fiery Foods Show and then they dissipated for a while and now they seem to be popular again. I happen to think this is a good thing. I think products like these, especially ones that are not horrendously hot, appeal to markets that wouldn’t normally try hot and spicy foods. Take for example the film Chocolat (2000) where a chocolatier creates wonderful chocolate truffles with a pinch of chili powder, which I firmly believe was the reason for the craze immediately after that. In the film, these chocolates create feelings in people that make them feel sensual. Generally speaking, and perhaps a bit stereotypically, women are more drawn to chocolate products. Thus, this is the demographic to which spicy chocolate expands. This can expand even further to some men who wouldn’t normally try hot and spicy foods either. That said, appealing to different markets is not everything. We chileheads still want something following our hot and spicy meals that resembles a dessert catered to our liking. Enter in, Jersey Devil Chocolates – Dark chocolate, chili and cranberries.

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OK, thanks to the some of the feedback from recent comments and from the Chileheads Facebook group, we can now list the companies who were nominated to have a sauce go on a delightful European adventure this upcoming May. The candidates are:

CaJohns Fiery Foods

Wicked Cactus Sauce

DEFCON Sauces

Peppermaster

Race City Sauce Works

Heartbreaking Dawns

Benito’s Hot Sauce

Rules:

Votes are tallied in one of two ways. Either leave your vote in the comments section of this post, or email us via our Contact Form and state your preference. One vote allowed per person, and no ballot-box stuffing from different IP addresses or email accounts. As the above picture suggests, there will be no hanging chads that affect the voting either.

The voting will go on until tax day, April 15, 2012. Thanks for participating and stay tuned for the results!

Once upon a time (actually back in 1999-2000,) Linda and I both lived in Europe for our work. Belgium, to be exact. Being the chileheads that we are (and were,) we routinely bemoaned the fact that we did not have ready access to good hot sauces while we lived there. What little we had were ones that we had taken with us. Once they were gone, it took some doing to replenish the supply.

So why does this matter now?

It doesn’t, save for the fact that we are making a triumphant return to the European continent this upcoming May for vacation. We will be making our way back to the Netherlands to spend time in Amsterdam, and will make a trip to a country we’ve not yet visited, being Spain, to spend a few days in and around Barcelona. We’ll also touch down in England on the way back, so we’ll be visiting no less than three countries during our seven-day jaunt overseas.

So, we’re gonna be taking a bottle of hot sauce with us to join us on a world tour. Which one? Well, this is where we need some help from our readers. We are going to ask for nominations/votes for a sauce that we’ll take with us to be pictured in several places overseas to show just what an adventure that hot sauce will have. We’ll take a bottle of a bottle of our own if we have it, but a manufacturer who nominates a sauce of their own can make it eligible to be voted upon for this trip. The catch? If a manufacturer nominates one of their sauces, and it WINS the vote, then they have to be willing to donate it to us so we can pack it along with our other trip swag.

So, whose sauce shall it be? Nominations are accepted for a particular company/manufacturer only at this time. Exact sauce to be determined later.

No, this isn’t a clever post about how men and women’s taste vary, though they may in some subtle ways. This is about sauces that were tried back during the Jungle Jim’s show. We had the opportunity during that time to try several amateur products during that show. Spicy food makers would bring samples to the blogger table to review. This is a review of two of those sauces.

One sauce is simply called Woman Sauce and the other, obviously, is called Man Sauce. They both have distinctive flavors and cater to different palates, but I want to be clear that neither are limited to your gender.

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Since the publication of the original post on this topic, reaction has been swift and polarizing. While trying to bring up constructive criticism to a segment of the industry for which issues have been long discussed in private, one of the companies that we reported as an example has seen fit to accuse this blog of making false statements…being that they make all their own products themselves with their own recipes or use a a co-packer to accomplish the same. So, with all journalistic intent, we responded to Pepper Palace with every intent of them providing specific information that would debunk our claim. In fact, this offer was made on more than one occasion, and the conversation went from being on-topic about this most recent post to personal statements about this blog and its place within the hot & spicy food industry. Our conversation has been with Craig Migawa, CEO of Pepper Palace. So that it can be noted what was said, here is much of that conversation which all comes from email conversations not posted in the Comments section of that post:

Pepper Palace: “If you need further information on Pepper Palace, please request it at craigm@pepperpalace.Posting information without being properly informed can jeopardize the integrity of your blog.”

Hot Zone Online: “If there is any dispute with what is written on this blog, we welcome the opportunity to clarify or correct it for the sake of our readers. In fact, we would publish it as a “part 2″ to the most recent posting.

As such, would you be willing to answer a series of questions regarding the manufacturing, creation, and labeling of the Pepper Palace products? This would be done in writing via email to reduce the risk of miscommunication through a phone call. We would then publish the conversation in its entirety as part of the post.”

PP: “Thanks for the offer. However, I would investigate my writings prior to making them public. Your being so terribly misinformed has inspired me to update the “About Us” section at pepperpalace.com. Please advise all your readers to check it out.”

HZO: “In light of your strongly-worded rebuke of the article, one would have thought that you would relish going on the record to give the readers more updated information rather than merely adjusting your website.

There will be a follow up to the article, I’m sure, but along with asking readers to check out an external source for more information, it will have to be noted that you declined the offer to go “on the record” to answer questions to clarify any information, or misinformation, that currently exists.

I know you’re “busy” with your production facilities, including processing all that horseradish, so we’ll not pursue this issue any further. If you change your mind and would like to reconsider providing some information, please do not hesitate to contact us.”

PP: “This blog is the record? Don’t flatter yourself. Include all your advertisers hard production work as well.”

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The Super Bowl even gets the major hot sauce companies to get their competition on…

Rival Hot Sauce Makers in a Duel for Attention
By STUART ELLIOTT
Published: January 29, 2012

“SOME like it hot,” Tony Curtis told Marilyn Monroe in the 1959 movie of the same name, referring to music. Since then, Americans have grown to like something else — food — even hotter, as evidenced by the popularization of spicy fare like Buffalo chicken wings, made with cayenne pepper hot sauce.

Now, a hot sauce war has broken out in time for the Super Bowl, perhaps the most snack-centric day of the year. According to a survey from the Retail Advertising and Marketing Association, consumers who plan to watch Super Bowl XLVI on Sunday will spend $11 billion on food and other goodies, compared with the $10.1 billion they said they would spend before Super Bowl XLV last year.

One hot sauce warrior is the McIlhenny Company, which is introducing a seventh flavor in its Tabasco line, Tabasco Buffalo Style hot sauce, joining varieties like the original, known as Tabasco pepper sauce, and chipotle pepper sauce.

The new flavor is celebrated in a campaign by Ogilvy West in Los Angeles as “from the people who perfected hot sauce,” offering “classic Buffalo flavor with just the right amount of heat.”

As those ads begin, Tabasco’s principal rival, Frank’s RedHot sauce, is expanding to national television a sassy campaign, previously in print and on radio, that carries the theme “I put that — — on everything.” ( The campaign, with a budget estimated at $15 million, is created by Euro RSCG New York.

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