(published on behalf of Mason R., who is busy “on assigment” and won’t be writing again for a while….)

Welcome to The Capsicum Romance!

Are you interested in a particular hot sauce/chili? I’ll let you know what I know. Are you interested in making spicy dishes, and ways to add a new zing to old favorites? Those will be here too. The Capsicum Romance is my platform to the world of chiliheads where I will review products, share recipes and experiences, and discuss all things hot.

To give you a little insight into my world, I’m still relatively new to the chili world. I’ve always loved hot and spicy food, and I was first able to exercise my taste freedom like most people, after moving out of my parent’s house. The last nine years have been a taste exploration. This is my forum for information exchange; another opinion for you to consider when deciding on your next purchase, somewhere where you can get a dinner idea, and sometimes a fact source. Aside from my professional training as an organic chemist, I have tapped a pool of knowledge from friends who come from all over the world, and I plan on sharing that knowledge as well. If you wish to contact me, you may leave me a private message for DreamTheaterVT at www.thehotpepper.com or via email vtchili@vt.edu

The boring part is over. Time for the fun to begin, and I’ll start with the dinner I made for myself tonight.

One of my favorite meals growing up was sloppy joes. Sloppy joes are a near perfect food for hot sauce because you can spice up your meal without making it an overpowering flavor, unless that is what you want. Furthermore, nearly any hot sauce can be used, giving you as many variations as there are hot sauces available. Do you have a hot sauce that is too vinegary for normal use? Just simmer it longer to evaporate it off. Have a hot sauce too hot for your taste? A little will go a long way here. And, as I learned tonight, it can help mask a mistake. Chopped fresh chilies work great as well in this dish. Lately, I’ve been using Predator hot sauce on my sloppy joes. I like Predator out of the bottle, but I think its flavor really compliments the brown sugar and onion. As I stated earlier, it can also cover up a mistake. I added too much garlic originally, but after adding my hot sauce, the garlic taste was no longer overbearing. Below is the recipe I usually follow for making my hot sloppy joes. Please note that I don’t measure anything, so I’ll try to describe how much I use. One of the pleasures of the eyeball method is that my meal is always a little different.

1 lb. Ground beef
1/4 cup chopped onion
1 tsp crushed garlic
Ketchup
Yellow Mustard
3 (or more) teaspoons brown sugar (add a little molasses for a darker color joe)
Onion powder & garlic powder to taste
1 chopped chili without ribs/seeds (substitute or add a quarter of a green pepper)
Worcestershire sauce
Hot Sauce of choice

Brown the beef, and grain the fat. Lower the heat to a low setting, and add the onion, garlic, and fresh chili and cook until onion is softened. Add enough ketchup so that you can make a thick mixture upon stirring, and then add some mustard. Your ketchup to mustard ratio should be about 3:1 to 4:1. Then add the brown sugar, and sprinkle some onion and garlic powder. Add a dash or two of the Worcestershire sauce. Simmer for 3-5 minutes and taste. Feel free to add more sugar, onion, garlic, or woozy sauce to suit your taste. When you have the taste where you want it, add the hot sauce (will vary on your taste and choice of sauce), and simmer an additional 5 minutes. Serve on bun.

I’ve tried a few hot sauces with this. Predator works great, as do other very hot sauces. Joe Perry’s Boneyard Brew is another good one, as well as Jamaican Hell Fire, Blair’s Death Sauce, Tabasco’s Chipotle (the only Tabasco product I use), and Scorned Woman. There are tons of other sauces I plan on using with this. If you try a sauce and it is a good fit, I’d love to hear about it.

Keep it spicy

Mason

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