Some stories about the products we review, feature, or even appreciate are ones truly worth telling. Today, kudos go out to Tanya Lazenby of Kevin, MT for her dedication to the memory of her father who apparently made some really #*@&$! good BBQ sauce. Perhaps someday we’ll be able to try some of Cecil’s Secret Sauce for ourselves. It’s now made by the folks at Huckleberry People, but we can’t find it on their website. For now check out the article at:

From a scrap of paper, carefully locked away, daughter pays tribute to late father by bringing his barbecue creation to market

Way to go, Tanya! We here at the HZOB salute you.

It’s taken a little time for me to get to this tasting…but for this review, I had to take the Beaver on the road! CJ himself gifted us with this bottle. I took the bottle to work with me a couple of times, and it took some taste-tests to convince the adoring crowds that I hadn’t actually brought a bottle of Goldschlager to work. After a few sips, the “controversy” was quickly put to rest.

First impression: In a flask-shaped bottle, this hot sauce is almost completely clear, with tiny gold flakes sitting at the bottom. The aroma is very peach-like, which is beholden to the Georgia roots of its creator, Crazy Jerry. It’s consistency is very liquid-like and only slighty syrupy, and pours from the bottle like water.

Taste: It is actually fairly sweet, with a very dominant peach flavor. The habanero heat hits the back of your throat a few seconds after passing your tonsils. The one thing I noticed is that it’s definitely an extract sorta habanero taste, as the taste profile is a bit different than your average habanero sauce. Not bad, mind you, just noticeable.

What foods would it be best with? Alternate uses? The label suggests that you should add this sauce to an ice cream or dessert, and that’s a good suggestion…since I found it added a great spicy peach flavor to a vanilla milkshake. Limiting usage to dessert is probably selling this sauce short, though. Your mileage may vary.

Ingredients: water, sugar, citric acid, vinegar, natural and artificial peach flavors, habanero pepper extract, natural stabilizer and 24 karat food grade gold flakes

Overall recommendation: This sauce is different than other so-called “fruity” hot sauces, as its flavor is delightfully lacking in actual peach fruit. That said, this sauce’s status as one destined only for the collectible shelf is endangered by its great taste. It’s almost a little too thin to be called a sauce, but its peachy habanero-ness just begs you to try it in something…anything. Just don’t let people think that you’re pouring Goldschlager on your hot fudge sundae….

Great salsa always seems to end up in the least likely of places, showing the public that spicy food is destined to take over the universe. Take this story about University of Minnesota student Nick Beste,

‘U’ Student Turns Love Of Salsa Into Side Job

Amelia Santaniello Reporting

(WCCO) University of Minnesota student, Nick Beste, is making money selling his favorite salsa called Village Hot Sauce.

“It’s not real chunky. It’s not real watery. It’s kind of that fine texture that is good on tacos,” Beste said.

Click to see the whole article

Proof positive that a great salsa recipe and a little wise investing can even bathe Minnesota in salsa. Good luck, Nick!

Great article about HZOB fave Uncle Brutha (with picture) and his newly opened Uncle Brutha’s Hot Sauce Emporium on Capitol Hill there in our nation’s capitol. It looks like UB is selling not only his own stock of fine hot sauces, but regional and nationally known selections as well. If we were still living in the Baltimore area, we’d make a day trip to visit him for ourselves!! As for now, you can read about it in this Washington Post online article.

Enchiladas are one of those quintessential Mexican foods that just made to have hot sauce and/or chile peppers added to it. In this article from St. Paul Pioneer Press, they agree with us and give a nice recipe that gives a base for your next home enchilada adventure. Who knew that enchiladas were so big in Minnesota?

Oh yeah, always go heavy on the cilantro. You would be hard-pressed to add too much.

First impression: Now I fully realize that this sauce was made as a sort of collectible bottle, signed and numbered, to have sales of it benefit the American Cancer Society. That aside, I couldn’t help but wonder how the contents of the bottle tasted. Since we acquired three bottles at the time, I decided that bottle #28 was going to make the ultimate sacrifice and get used on everything we could find to pour it upon. A great many seeds were seen floating within the bottle, so I imagined that the contents were probably fairly spicy. A whiff of the open bottle caught distinct scents of serrano and garlic. (This sauce appears to be the Danny Cash Stays Cool Pepper Sauce from the folks over at Danny Cash.)

Taste: During the first pour, I was unprepared at how watery this sauce is. Like as liquid-y as many of your vinegar-based Louisiana-style sauces such as Tabasco and Trappey’s. Tasting a little bit from my fingertip, it has a fairly pronounced serrano bite to it with a strong garlicky aftertaste. Seeing the word habanero made me worry about some lingering heat, but this is actually fairly mild given some other hot sauces of the same ilk. The hint of habanero flavor adds to the taste profile without overwhelming your senses. It has more salinity than expected, but the overall flavor makes you forget about that almost instantly.

What foods would it be best with? Alternate uses? Like was hinted above, it’s liquidity makes it ideal for uses in dishes such as soups, stews, burgoos, etc. It was tried with chili and gumbo, and the serrano flavor was a nice plus. It would also give some added schwerve to any boring salsa by giving it a little spicy kick. It was also great poured right over scrambled eggs as well.

Ingredients: habanero & serrano peppers, garlic, vinegar, limes, and salt

Overall recommendation: This sauce is mild enough for pretty broad use in your kitchen or anywhere else you want to take it. Not everyone wants to open a collectible bottle of hot sauce, but this one will probably not make you regret it if you do. I still think it’s too watery, but its dominant garlic & lime flavor combined with the nice flavor bite of the serrano gives you plenty of opportunity to try this with a variety of dishes. Don’t get scared when you see the word habanero on the label, though. This one’s safe for general consumption by chileheads of all ages & heat tolerances.

Just like you wouldn’t want to confuse Coke with Pepsi, let’s not confuse your habanero peppers with your Scotch Bonnet peppers. From this article from the Jamaica Gleaner news:

The Scotch bonnet pepper (Capsicum chinense)

Scotch bonnet is a variety of chilli or chilli pepper, similar to, and of the same species as, the habanero. It is said to be the hottest pepper in the world. It is found mainly in the Caribbean islands. It is said that Scotch bonnet got its name from its shape that is similar to that of an old-fashioned Scottish bonnet. It is also said that they are the hottest peppers in the world. And it has a heat rating of 150,000 to 325,000 Scoville Units ( a method to measure the heat level in chilli pepper developed by a chemist, Wilbur Scoville in 1912)

The Scotch bonnet is often confused with the habanero, as they are closely related. They are a pale yellow-green maturing to yellow, orange or red and have bell-shaped squashed-looking ribbed pods. Scotch bonnets have a somewhat smoky apple-cherry and tomato flavour (if you are able to discern a flavour under all of that fiery heat). Scotch bonnets are grown mostly in Jamaica and Belize.

In Barbados they are called ‘bonnie peppers’ and they are a key ingredient in Lottie’s Barbadian hot pepper sauces, while in Jamaica they are used in jerk chicken or pork and a favourite in curried goat. The whole green ones are usually added to rice and peas to add a rich flavour to it that most Jamaican has come to love. Though they are used in a large quantity in curried goat, eaten raw they are may cause dizziness, numbness of hands and cheeks, and severe heartburn.

Dizziness? Has anyone out there ever gotten dizzy from eating Scotch bonnet peppers? We can attest to the severe heartburn and even some tingling of the hands (when unwise enough to touch ‘em with bare hands), but it would be stretching it to say that dizziness has been a part of the tasting profile. In the right sauce or recipe, many “bonnies” sacrifice themselves for some tasty Jerk dishes. Sounds good to us!!

Betcha didn’t know that they can cook up spicy corn bread in them thar hills. Well, neither did we. Some enterprising young ladies from West Virginia have created some hot pepper butter and hot pepper relish that they use to give some schwerve to the Southwestern delicacy that is corn bread. You can see the recipe at:

Mexican Corn Bread

Not sure what a “green chili shootout” is, but it does sound like something that we’d enjoy…even if it’s only to bring back several jars of good hot pepper relish. Yummy!

Are you in the northern V.A./D.C. metro area? If so, Tijuana Flats just opened their latest restaurant there. If you like hot sauce, this is the place for you. Check it out.

I have been invited to tickle your intellectual fancies with my writing style or is that stylish writings? Being somewhat of a self-indulgent narcissist, I have agreed. Although, I fear that you will have to occasionally put up with some of my ramblings.

For those of you who don’t know me. I am a Chilihead. I love all hot peppers, with the exception of the Fatalli (it tastes rude). My favourite peppers to date are the red Jalapeno and the Red Savina Habanero. I love them fresh. I love the rich sweet flavour of the pepper. It is the best thing in the world for enhancing the flavours of food — Regardless of the food.

I first started eating peppers, unbeknownst to me, in Trinidadian curries and jerks. When I first moved to Montreal, two of my roommates were Trinidadian. Their parents owned the house where I was living. The older of the two brothers, was the house cook — an excellent cook, I might add. Unfortunately, he had a very limited repertoire; all he cooked was trinidadian. More often than not, we ate rice, plantains, fish or chicken and beans. I don’t suppose I need to mention that whatever we ate was curried, and that curry was HOT!

The roommate was quite sticky about his kitchen and as such, he was the only one allowed to use it for anything other than making coffee. As such I had two options; learn to eat hot and spicy or eat out! It was fortunate for me that I fell in love with curry the first time I ever tasted it, because as a poor starving student, I really couldn’t afford to eat out.

These days, I eat hot peppers all the time. I’d probably sprinkle them on my cornflakes if I found the right pepper. I like them with lunch, with supper, even with dessert. I carry hot sauce with me wherever I go and it really frustrates me if I forget to bring one.

My husband and my co-owner of Brooks Pepperfire Foods is a Peppermaster and a Fusion Chef. He is a genius with food and capable of working with the hottest peppers, so, again, I have two options, eat hot and spicy or eat out. But this time, I eat in because I want to, not because I can’t afford not to!

I’ve got one motto in life; when in doubt, add more peppers. And, as mottos go, it seems to work.

Me out.

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