Greetings again readers, from the great state of salsa…er, I mean Texas. Sometimes I get the two confused. They are becoming synonymous to me.

There’s seldom a day that goes by I don’t consume some salsa. I’ve been trying to lose weight by eating lots of salads at night instead of heavy meals. My favorite salad dressing right now is a mixture of non-fat yogurt and salsa. Zero fat and great taste…and, it’s good for you.

Salsa is good for you. You can feel good about eating it. Beanie’s is a salsa you can feel good about twice. Or three times if you like, but at least twice because a portion of the profits go to support Project Sunshine, a charity that helps out kids. That’s super cool in my book.

That’s all well and good but what you want to know is… does it taste good. The answer is yes, but it’s not what I have come to expect in a salsa. Beanie wants her salsa to complement food, not overpower it. She removes the tomato skins to produce a subtle tasting product. It reminded me of something, but I wasn’t sure what. More on that later.

I wanted to ask Beanie a few questions about her experiences and her company, so, through the magic of email, here’s a mini interview:

CH: Was it scary making the leap from homemade salsa to a business venture?

Beanie: Was it ever. I have no experience in business. Thank God that my husband does. I am the cook and he is the business guy. It took a lot of encouragement from my husband and friends for me to get started, they really cheered me on because they love the taste of my salsa.

CH: Tell me a little more about AMK Enterprises. What other products do they ( you?) make besides Beanie’s Salsa.

AMK Enterprises is a small minority, woman owned family business based in Houston. Our mission is to provide the freshest quality food products for our customers to enjoy with family and friends. We also believe it is our obligation to support and help improve the communities in which we do business. We are committed to donate a portion of our profits to local charities. Beanies Homemade salsa is our first child. We are working on some other ideas as I type this.

How did you get involved with Project Sunshine? How does giving a percentage of your profits to a charity make your business more ( or less) successful?

We were looking for an up and coming charity that needed help. We figured that we could grow together. The whole concept of giving was modeled for me as a child by my Mom and Dad. They are the most generous people I know. I believe that the secret to life is the giving of oneself to help another. If I can make one person’s life a little easier, that’s success in my book. In other words, success is NOT measured in the amount of money we make, but in the number of people we can help along the way. We really struggled with the decision to tell people that their purchase supports charities. We are not patting ourselves on the back. We would do it regardless, but we figured the more we sell, the more we could give. If this helps us to do that then it’s all good.

It is all good. How good? Well…..

Beanie sent me one of each of her products; HOT and Mild. I started with the mild, on tortilla chips.

The sauce has the look of canned crushed tomatoes, and I suspect that’s what they use from the ingredient listing: (Notice the parenthesis after tomatoes)

INGREDIENTS: tomatoes (tomatoes, tomatoes juice, salt, calcium chloride, citric acid) onions, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, salt, spice, sugar

The taste was mild…yet deep. I tasted garlic and celery in the profile, and I think the sugar helps to smooth out the taste profile. Strange that garlic isn’t listed as an ingredient, but there’s the ubiquitous “spices”. I guess some folks like to play their cards close to their vests…and the FDA allows it.

Heat? This is a mild salsa so just the tiniest little tingle which was barely detectable to my scorched taste buds.

On to the HOT….

This one had more noticeable bits of jalapenos and chile seeds in it, a hopeful sign to me. It had the same “crushed tomatoes” look to it other than that.

The ingredient labels on both jars were identical so I have to assume this is pretty much the same salsa with just more jalapenos, which is an improvement…to me anyway.

The heat here is what I would call “mild” and someone with a “yankee tongue” might call “hot”. It did build after a few chip-fulls and I scarfed up quite a bit of it..nearly half the jar. After about 30 seconds I had a mild warm sensation that was quite enjoyable.

Here’s how they stack up for me:

Beanie’s Mild

Heat 1/10
Taste 6/10

Beanie’s Hot

Heat 5/10
Taste 6/10

After the initial tasting I had about half a jar of the Hot and a quarter jar of the mild (my wife likes the mild) left over. The crushed tomato look gave me an idea. Tex-Mex pasta!

I chopped some onions and crushed some garlic. I put some olive oil in a skillet on medium heat.

After seasoning with salt and pepper and sautéing for a few minutes, I added the remaining Beanie’s salsa.

I let this cook down a bit, for maybe 10 minutes…and that’s really all I did.

I poured this sauce over some vermicelli and topped it with a little Romano cheese and one each chopped jalapeño and serrano .

I have to tell you, this was some of the best pasta I’ve had in a long while…and my wife’s Italian, and so that’s saying something! I hope she doesn’t read this!

Here’s a tip my wife taught me. After you cook the pasta, drain it and put it back in the pot. Pour some olive oil over it and add a little salt, you’ll be glad you did!

Beanie has a couple other recipes on her site, one of which is for a meat loaf that I might just have to try. Check ‘em out!

We weren’t able to attend the Fiery Foods Show this year out in NM, but lots of people sure did. While there were quite a few new & old chilheads, there were definitely some in attendance who were not. Here’s some excerpts from a cool article about the Show from the azfamily.com site where the self-proclaimed tendermouth had a blast navigating the floor and met up with a few familiar faces/companies to us here at the HZOB….

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By Who: A panel of sauce tasting experts with over 40 years combined experience tasting sauces from all over the world. Six firefighters at Station 111 in Indianapolis. This panel has tested literally hundreds of sauces and salsas submitted by folks from as far away as England and Australia. As firefighters, their opinion is brutally honest and frank- most firefighters do not have the time or patience for anything else.

Scoring: Points are awareded on a 10 point system with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. The number in parenthesis indicates the number of scoreres agreeing on a particular point.

Synopsis: The sauce received a mostly positive review. Lowest marks were for heat (mediocre scores) and the highest marks were for flavor and aroma (high to very high). Overall score: 6.8

Appearance: Sauce is a dark brown color, with obvious pieces of chile visible (4 reviewers). Sauce appears fairly thick and seems to hold together well inside of the bottle. Pours in a controlable fashion. Score: 8

Consistency: Decent consistency, about what you’d expect from a sauce that looks intended for meats. Tried on chicken with good results. Score: 7

Aroma: Very nice aroma with a pronounced chipotle smoked aroma. Smoke tends to score very well with firefighters for some strange reason Score: 9

Taste: Strong with a pronounced smokey note. Chipotle is readily discernable as is a hint of sweetness. Mostly scored well with the reviewers (4). Some thought the strength of the sauce would limit the uses (3). Score: 7

Heat: This sauce was on the upper edges of most of the reviewers tolerance (4). It has a sneaky kind of heat (most likely from the chinense- suspected to be habanero) that built up at the end of the taste. It is not for your average joe, every day use. The heat lingered as well, burning mostly mid-range. Score: 4

Uses: It worked well on chicken, putting it on at the start of the cooking which helped to drive off some of the heat. Complimented meats well, though not viewed as appropriate for all dishes (fish) because of the intense smoke flavor. Score 6

Overall: The sauce scored fairly well. It is hard to go wrong with chipotle, and the chinense used to give it some heat did not overpower the smokey flavor of the chipotles. A mostly well designed sauce that would need only minor modifications for every day use.

Some dishes are married well to spicier fare, and fish tacos is one of those. One of our favorite dishes to make at home, we recommend using the mahi mahi instead of the tilapia filet, as it gives a meatier taste. We saw the recipe below as a tasty, yet healthy, option for making a snazzy dinner that you can jazz up with your fave hot sauce or salsa.

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Nando’s sauces are pretty tasty, so we give this new product the benefit of the doubt until we try it. If you grind it, isn’t it a spice rather than a sauce? If someone tries this, please let us know how it is…

Irvine, CA - Mar 28, 2006 (PRN): Nando’s is launching an award winning “BEST New Product 2006 - Fiery Foods Challenge” Peri-Peri Grinder into the hot sauce market.

Nando’s Inc. imports an exotic range of Peri-Peri chilli sauces, marinades, grilling and cooking sauces from the southern tip of Africa. Peri-Peri, which is a pepper that can only be found in southern Africa, has gained immense success in such markets as the United Kingdom, Australia, Middle East, Asia and South Africa and is becoming a new chilli niche in the US spice market.

With every twist of the 5.5” glass grinder, spice lovers can enjoy a freshly ground dry version of the Original Nando’s Peri-Peri sauce. Available in Lemon & Herb, Medium and Hot, the Peri-Peri Grinder is MSG and GMO free.

“This is the only grinder in the market that doesn’t revolve around pepper or salt but hot sauce,” explains Nando’s USA CEO Clive Rock. “The Nando’s Peri-Peri Grinder allows “hot sauce” to now be freshly ground and ex Peri-Peri enced at the table or while cooking.”

The Peri-Peri Grinder adds taste to salads, soups, vegetables, meats, fish, pizza, and especially chicken.

For a list of stores carrying Nando’s products or for any further information, please visit whttp://ww.nandosusa.com or call Clive Rock @ 949 722 0230 ext 4

For more information, contact:

Clive Rock
CEO
Nando’s Chickenland, Inc.
T:888-625-2657
F:949-722-0102
Email: clive@nandosusa.com
Website: http://www.nandosusa.com

Shamelessly swiped from Slow Burn.

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One of the great things about tasting people’s homemade recipes and talking to them about their creative juices in making their own sauce is the diversity by which some will craft their capsaicin-laced creations. A question for those makes to answer is: what is your ‘base’ sauce and do you use that to build your others? Here’s some basic recipes, courtesy of the great folks at the Hot Sauce HQ:

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In addition to selling a wonderful variety of hot sauces and salsas, CaJohn’s Fiery Foods also has some other condiments worth mentioning to the chilehead public. The Hungarian Hot Wax mustard is probably the mildest of the fiery mustards available, but we decided to start mild and work our way up the heat scale. Since we like spicy mustards, it potentially gave us a lot more varieties to try along the way.

First impression: In both appearance and aroma, it comes across as an uninspiring yellow mustard. However, the slight visible chunkiness hints that there is more than meets the eye with this mustard.

Taste: Unlike some mustards wich can give you that mustard-y pucker when you taste it, this one has a peppery twang to it that makes it tasty enough to eat straight off a fork. The heat is minimal…perhaps a 1 or 2 out of 10 on the scale, depending on your tolerance.

What foods would it be best with? Alternate uses? Since this mustard isn’t too spicy for most, this mustard is pretty suitable for just about everyone who likes mustard and wants just a hint of heat in their condiment. I particularly liked this to add some shwerve to my chilehead egg scramble. This would make a great substitution for regular mustard for deviled eggs and I can’t think of a sandwich that wouldn’t be made better by a heaping spoonful of this spread over it.

Ingredients: prepared premium mustard (vinegar, water, #1 grade mustard seed, salt, turmeric, paprika, spices), Hungarian peppers

Overall recommendation: A mild yet delightfully tasty mustard with great potential and utility. While it won’t set your tongue on fire, it will certainly delight the chilehead crowd who values taste more than heat.

Joe’s hometown is Bradenton, FL, mostly known as the spring training home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, home to Tropicana orange juice, and the sprawling expanse of senior citizens. Well, it now has a place that we chileheads might want to visit for dinner. Check out this review from the Bradenton Herald:

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Our next homemade hot sauce review comes from our very own Chuk Hell. Chuk is a proud Austin-ite and virtual renaissance man, and this sauce is but one of several he creates on a regular basis. Chuk may consider this a “B” sauce, but our esteemed reviewer, CaJohn, thinks otherwise.

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