Nothing says Halloween like getting a new Reserve from Blair in the mail! This year’s Halloween Reserve is in the new “big” style with the cool orange wax, and will make a great new add to our collection. But wait, there’s more…

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There is a great void in the hot sauce world. Somewhere between the heat of the jalapeno/chipotle and that of the habanero, there seems to be a dearth of sauces that can offer the flavor and medium heat that will appeal to a majority of people. (That is, unless your company is McIlhenny.) Another thing happening is a resurgence of fruity hot sauces, and many of them just aren’t all that good. Fruit in hot sauce can be really good, but you have to do it just right so that you don’t end up with glorified fruit juice with a pinch of Frank’s Red Hot in it or something.

So, from out of the Pacific northwest comes Tropical Mischief Habanero Hot Sauce, courtesy of the nice people at Mischief Makers Sauce Company. As far as we know, the Mischief Makers are Ryan and & Sonia Davis. This sauce is Sonia’s creation, and we were able to pick up a pair of bottles while we were at ZestFest to bring home with us. Now, these were signed bottles meant to be collectible…but we just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try this sauce out, so we made the decision to crack open one of the bottles and start pouring it on, and in, every bit of food and drink we thought it might enhance. The results? Keep reading and find out! The ingredients list looks like this:

Ingredients: papaya, guava, pineapple, banana, passion fruit, white vinegar, habanero peppers, passion and guava fruit juice, lemon juice, salt, citric acid, ascorbic acid (Vitamin C), and beet powder (for color)

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The label for this fine sauce reads:

Chuk Hell’s Smokin’ Hot Sauce
Smoked Habanero Sauce with Tequila

I was lucky enough to get a jar of this sauce right before we left for ZestFest in September, but hadn’t been able to sit down and put thoughts to paper (or in this case, computer screen) about it. Had I known how much I would like this, time would certainly have been made before now to write this review. The sauce arrived in one of those small jars exactly like the ones we used for our homemade sauce, and it’s just the right amount for a starting batch of hot sauce. Looking at the ingredients list, I saw this:

Ingredients: habaneros, garlic, onion, lime juice, carrots, tequila, honey, apple cider vinegar, salt, black pepper

Not a bad one among the bunch, really. If you’ve read my reviews before, you know that I really dig tequila…so I wanted to see what sort of magic Chuk was able to create using my favorite liquor. Looking at the sauce from the open jar, I saw this:

It’s a smooth, well-mixed sauce with an appealing color and an even more appealing aroma. Although you mostly catch the smoky habanero scent, there is also a distinct element of the garlic & onion as well. The consistency is awesome as well. Unlike some sauces that simply pour right off your spoon and/or food, this has some serious viscosity and clings nicely to anything you slather it upon.

I carried this sauce back and forth to work with me for no less than 3 weeks, trying it on a variety of different foods from the mundane to the mildly interesting. Everything from chili to burger condiment to a french fry dip to a topping for baked/fried/roasted chicken, this sauce performed admirably. A nice aspect of this sauce is that it’s as good ON food as it is mixed IN food, and this expands its utility greatly.

As for taste, there’s a lot to like. The smokiness of the habaneros is well done, and adds an element of taste that many habanero sauces lack. Amid the smoky heat of the habs is the complimentary taste of the garlic, lime, and onion…which are balanced well enough that none dominates over the other. It does taste like there’s a lot of tequila in the sauce, which makes both the heat and flavor linger longer on your tongue and palate than it might otherwise do. The honey in the sauce tempers the heat ever-so-slightly which gives just that hint of sweetness and doesn’t make the sauce too “sticky” as a consequence.

Overall recommendation: If this sauce was poured into a regular 5-ounce woozie, you’d never suspect that this sauce was a homemade one. Yes, it’s that good. It rates highly with me for taste, consistency, and heat…which I would say the heat is about an 8/10 if used in anything more than the most sparing of amounts. It’s smoky like a good chipotle sauce, but with amazing habanero & garlic taste that seems to go well with many kinds of food. If you manage to try some of this, you won’t be sorry. I know that I’d buy some in a heartbeat if I saw it on a store shelf. Hear that, Chuk? I’d buy some. An amazing sauce.

Ingredients: Habanero peppers, tomatoes, onion, carrots, garlic, cilantro, vinegar, pasilla peppers, lime juice, mesquite smoked flavoring, salt, pepper, oregano, xanthan gum, sodium benzoate, potassium sorbate.

John Cuda over at Barra Cudda Enterprises was gracious enough to send me a sample bottle of their new hot sauce, entitled Stairway To Hell. Since BCE is an agency specializing in tribute bands, it only makes sense that their sauce be a tribute as well. The label is a take off of one of Led Zeplin’s signature imagery of a Greek man holding a lantern, but in this version he is holding the hot sauce.

The sauce is thick and a little bit chunky which is always nice. Having tried this on many dishes, I find it goes best on antique Chinaware. I also tried it on many different types of food and got interesting results. For a sauce with so many ingredients, the flavor differences are subtle. The smokey, mesquite taste (derived from the smoked flavorings and the pasilla peppers) is right up front along with the lime juice, while the tomato flavor hangs out in the background with his habanero friend.

I found the flavor was squashed a little when I added the sauce to burritos and salsa. The real trick with this sauce is to apply it ON things, rather than MIX it with things in order to get its full flavor. It has officially become my “cold pizza” sauce. Seriously delicious when added on top of leftover pizza.

For a habanero sauce, this is not as hot as I was expecting. It gets you in the back of the throat and then dissipates. All in all, this is a pretty good sauce and would make an excellent gift for ANY Led Zeppelin fan.

Taste:7, Heat: 6

I was having a phone conversation with one of my new chilehead compatriots last night, and we talked about some similar desires about having our own hot & spicy food business. For me, it’s a hot sauce shop. Not an online retailership, mind you, but a real brick & mortar business where I could mingle with other chileheads coming in to shop & shmooze…and to be able to spread the chilehead gospel to the uninformed & inexperienced masses.

One curious thought I had was, how many of us collectors & hot sauce aficionados have similar aspirations???

We can’t be the only ones out there who think about stuff like this…right? Their are fanciful plans in place for us to do something, but who knows when that will be.

Plans? Thoughts? Ideas? Anyone?

Up until now, we here at the HZOB haven’t had too much to say about BBQ sauce. The fact is, that we’ve been generally so disenchanted with anything store-bought which has been essentially glorified ketchup with smoke flavoring that we’ve avoided the topic altogether. Even BBQ sauces that have claimed to be spicy have sorely lacked any true chilehead appeal and usually just have a modicum of cayenne pepper in them to make them spicy enough to attempt to please the non-chilehead crowd.

OK, beloved chileheads…wake up and smell the BBQ sauce. You now have a BBQ sauce that you can be proud of for your very own. What sauce is this, you ask? It’s Smokin-Hot Stuff by E.Z. Earl, courtesy of Branding Iron Foods.

E.Z. Earl himself gave us a shout and asked us if we might want to try some of his sauces and see what we thought of them. Given a chance to dispel our notions about BBQ sauces and to make some good food on our grill was all the motivation we needed, so we eagerly said yes and waited for the box to arrive at our doorstep.

Looking at the bottle, we scanned the ingredients list and saw this:

Ingredients: pure white vinegar, filtered water, diced tomatoes in juice, English-Style Worcester sauce (no anchovies), secret blend of 12 natural herbs & spices, Oregon clover honey, concentrated lemon juice, x-hot horseradish, salt, natural hickory smoke, precooked food starch, hot chili extract, natural Xanthan (as stabilizer)

We took a look at the sauce and saw a fairly standard did a few initial taste tests. Consistency-wise, the sauce is pretty much as you might expect from a BBQ sauce. It’s red, fairly thick (compared to many sauces we use, anyway), and appears to be a pretty evenly mixed sauce. A gentle whiff at the top of the jar also reveals a very BBQ-ish scent (hickory smoke) but with a distinctive chile pepper overtone as well. The thought that this might finally be a sauce that would be hot & spicy enough to really enjoy made us pour out a dollop of sauce right onto our hands which we quickly jammed in our mouths to taste.

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We have our cabinet o’ sauces where we keep quite a few, open & unopened, hot sauces and other goodies that are pretty stable at room temperature. However, we’re also greeted with a wide variety of stuff that’s been hanging out in our fridge getting used a little at a time. Here’s some of the goodies we have and still use:

Torchbearer #42 - Slaughter Sauce
Torchbearer #37 - Tarnation Sauce
CaJohn’s Select Puree - Fatalii
CaJohn’s Select Puree - Habanero
CaJohn’s Select Puree - Chipotle
Crazy Jerry’s Mustard Gas
Scotty B’s Oblivion Hot Sauce prototype
Raspberries in Heat by Peppermaster
Dr. Gonzo’s Supermash
Flat Lime Medium Cilantro Salsa by Big Dawg Salsa

The question for our lovin’ public is…what sorts of stuff is hanging around in your fridge? Fess up and let everybody know what you’re using, even if it’s not your all-time faves.

I just received word that a show has aired on the BBC in England that announced the results of an HPLC test done on Naga Dorset peppers grown by BBC “Gardeners’ World”. The group took to the airwaves on Friday to announce the results live.

According to Joy and Michael’s Website, the peppers grown by Gardeners’ World scored a whopping 1,598,227. Joy and Michael have been low-key about the results of the test because they are unsure that the tests were performed correctly but expect further results from their own peppers in short order.

The results of the test as published on the BBC Gardeners’ World website read as follows:

Gardeners’ World’s hottest chillies

SHU - Scovile Heat Units

I have to say that at this point, it’s relatively easy to state that the World’s Hottest available chili peppers is still a C. Chinense, but I think until someone comes up with something close to this incredible heat level, the Dorset Naga stands a very good chance of competing for the Guinness Book of World Records’ title very soon.

For those interested in growing these chilies, you can contact Peppers by Post. According to their website, the seeds will be available for sale beginning in 2007. And yes, you can get them shipped to the US.

T

Just to have a little roll-call, here is a short bio on each of this blog’s writers:

Joe Levinson is a resident of Columbus, OH after spending many years living in both Kentucky and Florida. His undergraduate degree is from the University of Kentucky, and he’s a maniacal, rabid fan of UK basketball. Joe is a doctor and graduated with his D.O. degree from the Pikeville College School of Osteopathic Medicine in 2005, and currently in residency in Anesthesiology. Joe has been collecting hot sauces for over 13 years, but his love of hot & spicy food goes back to his formidable younger days when he used to pollute his mother’s cooking with cayenne pepper and hot sauce…then blame it on his brothers. He married Linda in 2000 and they have two sons, Ari and Joshua. A little crazy about hot sauce, he’s been known to do silly things like eat raw habaneros and taste too much extract sauce at any given time. Joe is one of the main writers for this blog.

Linda Levinson is Joe’s spouse, also lives in Columbus, OH, and is was born & lived for many years in the greater Chicago-land area. Linda also lived for many years in Austin, Texas before moving to northern Virginia in 1998 where she met Joe, then living in Baltimore, MD. Linda works a lot harder than Joe much of the time. She’s a full-time student at the Ohio State University with a major in psychology, and plans to graduate in 2007. She is also the full-time mother to sons Ari, age 4, and Joshua, age 1. Ari is autistic, and is making much progress thanks to a lot of help through his school and through Linda’s efforts while Joe’s at work for 80 hours per week. Linda is every bit as much of a chilehead as Joe, but tends to like stuff a little milder sometimes and is big fan of most foods made with chipotles. Linda is responsible for almost all the creative processes involved in the design and technical components of this blog, and does some writing as well.

Chuk Hell is a resident of Austin, Texas for almost 20 years, and an aficionado of hot & spicy food of the highest order. Not only does Chuk grow his own chile peppers, but he also makes his own hot sauces and salsas. Chuk makes a living in the culinary arts, and is a baker by trade. We also understand he is quite the musician and raconteur. Chuk was the very first writer we asked to help us with the blog, and his Featured Product writeups are top-notch. For more info on Chuk, go HERE for his intro.

Jon Passow is a resident of Hollywood, CA, but a native of Cleveland, OH. In addition to being a rabid chilehead, he is a “quasi-famous” actor with an ever-growing list of films and TV shows to his credit. He also grows his own peppers, in addition to a wide variety of other fruits, veggies, and other miscellaneous flora. Jon has a background which includes some journalism and is passionate about his love of hot sauces and spicy food. He has also been known to sport a mullet famed in both song and story. For more info on Passow, go HERE to see his intro.

Tina Brooks is a resident of Rigaud, Quebec in the Great White North of Canada and is co-owner of Brooks Pepperfire Foods (aka Peppermaster). Tina is also a long time Chilihead and spends some of her travel time in the Bahamas gathering peppers for the sauces she makes with her husband Greg. Besides making some great sauces, she’s also a lover of spicy fare of all nationalities. Although she describes herself as a “self-indulgent narcissist,” we love it when she graces our blog with her writings. She has a great introduction, which you can read HERE.

More writers may be added in the future, so we’ll update this listing when/if that happens.

About time to update our mission statement…

So what’s this blog all about, anyway?

This blog was born March 26, 2005 out of a personal website that we had been doing for almost a year previous where we paid homage to our favorite hot sauce makers, showed off our hot sauce collection, and just generally ruminated about the world of hot & spicy food in general.

Our reasons for doing this blog include:

1. We offer the Featured Product cyber-column. In it, we take some products from a particular manufacturer of hot & spicy foods and taste them, use them in recipes, offer links to other online reviews and recipes, and list the ingredients for anyone who’s interested.

2. We do reviews on products of all kinds from the world of hot & spicy food. This includes, but is not limited to, hot sauces, salsas, picante sauces, spice mixes, snacks, jerk sauce, mustards, chicken wing sauces, BBQ sauces, and other miscellaneous hot & spicy products.

3. Our writers do reviews on homemade hot sauces, salsas, and spice mixes. There are quite a few amateurs who make some great stuff, so we love to have them show off their hot & spicy culinary creations.

4. Offer links to visit our ‘hot’ blog friends. There’s a lot of good bloggers out there who have sites offering a wide variety of angles on food, both hot & spicy ones and those which are more mundane. Please go visit them!

5. While we have our faves amongst the industry major players, we hope to provide some exposure for those start-up companies who are trying to make a name in the hot & spicy food business with their products.

6. We offer links to those manufacturers whose products we own, collect, use, or generally esteem. Without them, the world would be bereft of really wonderful hot & spicy food. Besides that, our ‘Hot Info’ and ‘Friends’ lists offer links to personal and commercial websites to explore for people whose hot and spicy passions mirror our own.

7. We hope to give a little insight into our own humble collection of hot sauces and offer some info about us in general. In addition, we provide coverage of the collectible hot sauce world both from our own perspective and reports of debuts of collectibles from the manufacturers themselves.

8. We provide a forum for other writers to write about the importance of hot sauces and spicy fare in their lives, and give a way to share their experiences along with ours.

9. Recipes of all kinds are available, both original creations of the blog’s writers and those available in internet and written media in the public domain.

10. Coverage of news stories and press releases from companies and events of the world of hot & spicy food. We’ll write about nearly anything that fits the description, from chili cookoffs to restaurant openings to industry conventions such as ZestFest. Sometimes it’s just worth writing about the fun stuff, too.

If you are new to our site, then be WELCOME! If you’ve been here before, then please keep coming back!

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