TWO HOT MAMAS SALSA

Austin, Texas: A city awash in a sea of salsa. Salsa, the Spanish word for sauce, has come to mean something of a spicy, often chunky dip, usually for dipping tortilla chips in. Here in Austin patrons at Tex-Mex eateries expect it…hell, demand it to be brought to the table minutes after being seated. If a bowl of fresh salsa and chips are not forthcoming then it surely bodes poorly for the dinning experience to come.

This town consumes hundreds of gallons of salsa each day. Couple that with the fact that we host the world’s largest Hot Sauce Festival each summer, you begin to grasp the vastness of the salsa universe in Austin. Everybody here makes the stuff. Some grocery stores have whole aisles of salsa. If ever the term “flooded marketplace” was apt, it’s the salsa market in Austin Texas.

So, say you want to make your own salsa and sell it. How in the world are you going to stand out? Well, a good way would be to nearly sweep the Austin Hot sauce Festival’s People’s Choice awards. And that’s exactly what Two Hot Mamas did. Well, not a complete sweep but first place in the green variety , second place in the red variety and both second and third place in “special variety” for their sour cream-based dips. That’s some serious bragging rights.

I was recently fortunate enough to sample all the spicy wares of the TWO HOT MAMAS SALSA CO. Reviews of each item will follow below but I was very curious to know more about these two ladies and how they broke into the salsa market like gangbusters. They were kind enough to answer a few questions. What nice ladies!

CH.- Tell me a little about how you two met and discovered you had a mutual interest in spicy endeavors.

2HM.-

Paula and I met at our church (Lake Travis United Methodist) and I made her breakfast tacos (with our now Chile Verde) for her birthday one Sunday. She mentioned to me that she also had a great salsa (now our Salsa Roja). We decided to let our little ones play and began to learn how to “home can” and also played around with other recipes.

CH.- Do either of you have culinary backgrounds or did you learn how to make salsa on your own? Family recipes?

2HM.-

Paula nor I have culinary backgrounds. We’ve both been making our own recipes (no family recipes) for some years now. I actually grew up watching Grandpa eat peppers straight from the garden and enjoyed Grandma’s pico de gallo almost daily.

CH.- What led you to the big step of “going commercial”?

2HM.-

Our Creamy Cilantro Salsa Dip was actually picked up by Central Market ( gourmet grocery chain- ed.) right away (this almost never happens) and we realized very quickly that we could not keep up with the orders. We interviewed a couple of manufacturers and distributors and went from there.

CH.- Your dips are marketed “fresh” i.e. refrigerated. Has the logistics of marketing refrigerated product s been a hassle?

2HM.-

Our dips are based with sour cream, therefore must be refrigerated at all times and also hold a shorter “shelf life”. It was only because this recipe (Creamy Cilantro) was so unique and that the Central Market buy was so quick that we just went for it knowing we’d have a shorter turn-around, but things are going great. As for the salsas, we use no preservatives and no flavor enhancers (fresh-only). However, we do have our manufacturer heat them to a certain degree thus allowing their own acidity to be utilized when sealing them in the jars and therefore creating the preservation until opened. And then of course, they must also remain refrigerated until fully consumed (which is usually over the weekend).

CH.- Has the fact that your dips have to be refrigerated limited your distribution?

2HM.-

Yes. We’ve actually been approved to come in to the HEB ( big Texas grocery chain-ed) market, but there is only one distributor (approved by HEB) that can distribute “refrigerated products” and at this point in time, we’re still the “small pea in the pod”. We’ve actually submitted our products to two distributor’s but nothing yet.

CH.- You two really cleaned up at the Austin Hot Sauce Festival last year in the People’s Choice Awards…have you been attending that event for long?

2HM.-

2005 was only the 2nd year for us to enter as a “commercial bottler”. In 2004, we placed 2nd in the red category, 2nd in the green category, and 2nd in the specialty variety category. Those were the only ones we entered in 2004. I guess you saw the results for 2005….1st place in the green category, 2nd in red, and we double placed in the special variety category with the Creamy Cilantro in 2nd and our new Creamy Chipotle in 3rd. They most likely bumped each other out of 1st. We had never sampled our Chipotle dip before that day. We’ll be there next year with our salsas blazing.

CH.- The creamy cilantro dip was amazing. Do you plan to expand your product line further?

2HM.-

We do plan on expanding our dips further and have a new recipe we’ll hopefully be bringing out at this year’s Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival. That would mean three entries in one category. We’ll see what happens. We would also like to have a “red sauce” to enter, but no specific recipe just yet. We have just received samples from our manufacturer for our Creamy Cilantro Salsa Dip without the MSG and are confident this product will be well received in the near future. Maybe we can also do a “low fat” dip as well.

CH.- Glad to hear you are going to drop the MSG! Thanks for the interview!

REVIEWS:

Salsa Roja ( Red Sauce)

A smooth, not too chunky texture that reminded me of “Pace” picante sauce but with a rich tomato flavor. The heat builds nicely powered by habaneros which are the last ingredient on the list .

Flavor 5/10
Heat 6/10

Chile Verde ( Green Sauce)

The real standout. A delicious tomatillo-based sauce that has a lot of flavors. Red onions and fired with serano chile. I tasted notes of orange. An exceptional version of a classic tomatillo salsa verde.

Flavor 8/10
Heat 5/10

Mambo Combo

Just a mix of the green and red. Not bad but nothing more than the sum of it’s parts. A nice choice for the indecisive .

Flavor 6/10
Heat 6/10

Creamy Cilantro Salsa Dip.

A sour cream based dip with a great fresh cilantro flavor. Addictive! One of the best off the shelf dips I’ve ever had. I couldn’t stop eating this stuff. Fired up with serrano peppers. I’m not crazy about seeing MSG on the label, though. Hopefully that ingredient will be dropped in the near future.

This stuff was actually HOT! As a matter of fact, it was too hot for my wife. It does, however, come in a mild variety.

Flavor 9/10
Heat 7/10

Creamy chipotle dip.

The newest product. Another sour cream dip with a very nice smokey chipotle flavor. Not sure what’s in this one because it’s so new it didn’t come with a label. It was good…a nice dipping sauce that I gobbled up with glee but not as good as the cilnatro dip.

Flavor 7/10
Heat 6/10

Overall

I like how these products are actually HOT. So many salsas just let me down but the nice thing about TWO HOT MAMAS is that the “HOT” in their name actually means
Picante!

[Also, see this other online article from the AUSTINist as well.]

Popularity: 36% [?]
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