The Weekend of Fire event hasn’t even happened yet and it’s making some news. We ran across this article from the Middletown Journal and wanted to make sure we pointed our readers to it. In it, the writer even quotes Jungle Jim’s own hot sauce maestro Bret Vitek.

Weekend of fire promises to bring on the heat

By Michael D. Pitman
Staff Writer

Monday, July 30, 2007

FAIRFIELD — More than 50 vendors from across the country will turn up the heat at Jungle Jim’s International Food Market’s Weekend of Fire.

The inaugural Weekend of Fire will be held Saturday and Sunday at the Jungle Oscar Event Center. Vendors will offer tastes of a variety of products from hot sauce to salsa, barbecue, mustards and more.

Owner “Jungle” Jim Bonaminio created the Weekend of Fire after attending the Fiery Food and Barbecue Show in Albuquerque, N.M., said international foods manager Bret Vitek.

“We were out there two years ago, and (Bonaminio) said, ‘Why can’t we do something like this? Why can’t we make it a big demo kind of thing?’ ” Vitek said.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Well, it’s been a while since I have reviewed a wing sauce…so what better way to get back into the game than with one of the selection from Monty’s Gourmet Foods. While the spicier wing sauces were beckoning to me, I opted to go with the Roasted Garlic Wing Sauce because I really enjoy garlicky sauces a great deal. Few garlic sauces seem to retain much in the way of heat, but if any sauce can do that…Monty’s can.

One problem, if you can call it that, was that we don’t make a whole lot of chicken wings at home these days. Due to diet restrictions and just an overall concern for our dietary health, our deep-fryer is on indefinite hiatus except for special occasions. So, the “challenge” for this sauce was to find some other uses aside from using it strictly for chicken wings. As an aspiring gourmand-wannabe, I took up this challenge with a few suggestions for help. Here is the description of the sauce from the MGF website:

This one is all about the garlic! Super duper garlic flavor and smell sets this wing sauce onto a level of pure goodness that cannot be beat! If you like garlic, you will love this wing sauce. Your wings will thank you, your guests will thank you, and your mouth will thank you for getting this sauce.

Well, I asked Monty for a few other suggestions for how to use this sauce outside the norm. Those in hand, I set off to examine this sauce a little closer. The ingredients look like this:

Ingredients: water, vinegar, peppers (red, cayenne), salt, natural butter flavor, canola oil, onion powder, granulated roasted garlic, garlic powder, xanthan gum, citric acid

First things first. While I wasn’t going to make chicken wings, I could still find a way to use it on chicken to get that similar taste thang going. Seen above are a couple of pedestrian pieces of fried chicken from one of our local eateries. I was going to make these into Roasted Garlic chicken pieces worthy of my chilehead status. How to do this? Pretty simple, really. I just took the chicken, put the pieces into a plastic container with a sealable lid, added a modicum of sauce, and shook it up.

As you can see from the picture above, the Roasted Garlic chicken just looks a lot better than the regular ol’ fried chicken. Tastewise, it’s a revelation of garlicky goodness. Slightly tart from the vinegar base, this sauce adds great garlic flavor that will make you vampire-repellant for at least an hour after your meal. As for heat, that was the bigger surprise. This sauce packs a little heat to it, moreso than expected. I’d call the heat about 6.5/10 on my heat scale, with a little accumulation the more I ate. The heat profile was very cayenne in taste, which was fine by me since I like the cayenne flavor. It was good enough that I let nary a drop of sauce shed by the chicken to go to waste.

The suggestion that I found most curious was to use this sauce as salad dressing. You usually don’t think of this kind of sauce being able to be used that wat, but I was looking for something, anything, to make my rather ordinary salad choices more interesting. So, with salad in hand, I added a huge dollop to a garden salad and set about the task of wolfing it down. The results? Thumbs up for the most part. Unlike a vinegar-and-oil dressing, this sauce didn’t really have that oil component to dull out the tartness of the vinegar…which I found to be a little distracting. Love the flavor, but I may have to mix this sauce with something else just to get over the vinegar dominance in the flavor.

Lastly, I used this as a straight-up dipping sauce. For the most part, it was a good choice. From meat to veggies, it was tough to go wrong with this sauce. It went well with most choices, but I found that I liked it so much with my french fries that I’d use it in place of catsup. Yummy!

Overall recommendation: For a sauce that I was unsure would be all that noteworthy judging from the outside of the bottle, this one turned out to be pretty darn good. Tasty and full of garlic flavor, this one had enough heat to keep me happy without shorting out my heat sensors. Don’t just save it for your chicken wings, as it will do well to flavor up a variety of other foods. Use it for yourself and see what you think. Enjoy!

Well, it’s been a month since we posted any pictures of our peppers…save for the ones that were afflicted with a little blossom end rot and have since been disposed of from our plants. Pictured above is the voluminous production of our Cayenne plants, and both plants are producing the same amount of peppers. Very long and still very green, these ones have a few weeks to go before they are ripe enough to harvest for our use. The tough part, believe it or not, is dealing with Joe’s red-green colorblindness and him wanting to pick some of those peppers when they’re still green.
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We’ve been preaching about the endorphin rush from hot peppers for years, and many books and magazines have been published which support this. This article from the Clarion Ledger out of Mississippi is a short summary of this same topic. Check it out this snippet and link:

Burn, baby, burn: The high of hot peppers
By Felder Rushing
Special to The Clarion-Ledger

Psssst! Wanna cheap buzz that’s legal?

There’s no need to turn to mind-altering drugs - just eat a hot pepper.

It’ll make you downright woozy - after you get over the initial think-you-are-dying stage.

The white lining the inside walls of hot peppers contain a material called capsaicin, which causes a distinct burning sensation when in contact with nerve endings in mucous membranes.

Oddly enough, the heat isn’t real - it just seems that way, so much so that your brain can’t override it. You just can’t talk a pepper burn down.

Other than riding it out (at most it usually lasts only a few minutes), the surest way to get relief is by drinking milk.

Casein, a substance found in dairy products, disrupts the reaction.

In other words, that old joke about chasing hot peppers with ice cream to soothe the after-effect is, well, not a joke!

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Huvason from Fat Kid Sauces has a special announcement for you all. Even if you’ve seen it elsewhere first, it’s no less special to hear it again…

Fat Kid Sauces Jungle Jim’s Weekend of Fire 2007 Collectible

Fat Kid Sauces is pleased to announce the special limited edition “Fat Kid Sauces Jungle Jim’s Weekend of Fire 2007 Collectible” . There will be a total 48 of bottles created. Each one signed and numbered, wax dipped, and hand stamped. Cost is $40 per bottle (plus shipping), or $35 per bottle (plus shipping) for two or more bottles. Payment must be made in advance via paypal in order to reserve your numbered bottle. Shipping can be saved if you are picking it up at the show. Any bottles left will be available at the show.

The bottles are going fast, so if you are interested please send an email to sales@fatkidsauces.com with your Paypal information, bottle # you would like, number of bottles, and whether you will be picking it up at the show, or need shipping (if you need it ship, please include your address.

Please feel free to email me with any questions, and enjoy!

These look sufficiently cool enough to become a must-add for our collection, so we’ll definitely be picking one up at the Weekend of Fire event! You should as well.

Well, it’s been a while since we have had a request to do a homemade sauce review, so were pleased as punch to hear from Julie B. with an offer to try some of her pork green sauce that she makes which she sells to friends and family. A pork green sauce? That was a new one on me, I must admit…but the more she told me, the more I was inclined to give it a try. Here is some of what Julie had to say about her sauce:

We have played around a lot with this sauce and I think it has really turned out good with a great aroma especially when heated first. This pork green sauce is slow cooked for 3 1/2 hours before it is packaged. We offer both a mild & hot sauce. It is great smothered over burritos, etc. I have used it when I have grilled shrimp & fish by adding a little sauce to the shrimp & fish while I am cooking and also when I have grilled chicken. Also, if you take a little velvet cheese and heat it with the sauce, it makes a good dipping sauce for tortilla chips. We have taken hamburgers and smothered them with sauce & cheese.

So, this sauce arrived in two medium-size mason jars, complete with a no-nonsense label that simply laid out what was in these sauces. This is:

Ingredients: green chilies, tomatoes, onions, jalapenos, habaneros, pork loin, almond extract, garlic, broths, spices & more

Admittedly, I’ve not had many green chile sauces that were made with pork. I’ve tried my fair share of ones made to use with pork dishes, but not where the pork was made with the sauce itself. Taking some of Julie’s advice, I set about the task of trying the milder sauce by first pouring it out into my saute pot to heat up a little. Here’s a look at it as it warms on our stove:

My main man Scotty B was generous enough to send me 3 HUGE bottles of hot sauce the other day. Being used to 5 ounce “woozies” , these 12 ounce bottles seem GIANT.

Now, Scotty B has a knack for making some of the hottest all-natural sauces I have ever tried. These rival CaJohns hottest sauce in the vicious heat department.

I was already a fan of DEVIL’S DROOL, a hot, freak’n HOT vinegar based “southern-style” hot sauce. Think of a Louisiana-style sauce on steroid. This has a vicious heat that hits fast and sticks around. I loaded up a tortilla chip and this had me coughing a bit. Scotty said something about this being ‘re-tooled” and it does seem to have a more consistent viscosity and color but it still lives up to it’s moniker of a bodily fluid of Satan. Great, great sauce.

Heat 9/10
Taste 8/10

The other red sauce is a new one, as far as I know called RED RAGE. This is a thicker sauce but also with a heaping helping of red habaneros. The vinegar is farther down the ingredient list and it’s not as noticeable. This is just a great all-around VERY HOT all-natural sauce. It’s thickness would make it a natural to cling to all sort of foods and in the generous 12 ounce bottle I’m sure all the hard core chileheads who like to cover all their food with fire will have a ball with this sauce, Still, it doesn’t kick my ass as much as DEVIL’S DROOL but it’s still quite hot.

Heat 8/10
Taste 8/10

The oddball here was GREEN NIRVANA, a medium hot ( says so right on the label!) green sauce that is based on jalapeno and serrano chiles. This sauce has a nice balance with undertones of tomatoes and an “earthy” flavor that I wasn’t crazy about at first but has grown on me since. I think I’d like to try this one as a marinade and basting sauce for barbequed chicken.

Heat 4/10
Taste 6/10

( Photo: here we see RED RAGE on the left, DEVIL’S DROOL on the right and GREEN NIRVANA on the bottom. )

Call this an “all-points-bulletin” for the hot sauce world.

The makers of some of our fave hot sauces no longer seem to exist, at least not in terms of their business. Longbranch Trading Company (formerly at www.longbranchtrading.com) has ceased to be, with no forwarding URL or any other proof that their products or their owners still exist.

The question is…does anyone know what happened to LBTC or to the owners, Curt & Pam Worthy? If so, please send us a shout using our CONTACT FORM.

Thanks!!

We have always said that there is always room for one more blog about hot sauce and spicy fare. Well, our prediction continues to hold truth with the evolution of Flavor and Fire, the latest hot blog brought to you by CaJohns Fiery Foods Co. Face it, CaJohn has a lot going on. Between the stream of new products coming out of the kitchen to local culinary events to industry trade shows, you can keep up with all the goings on from the world of CaJohn through his new blog. That, plus information on the ever-popular culture of hot sauce collecting should keep you checking back early and often.

The blog looks great, John. Keep up the good work!!

Pepperfire Heats up Haitian Economy Importing Goat Peppers

Brooks Pepperfire Foods Inc. of Rigaud, Quebec joins forces with Haitian Farm Operation, Greenland Corporation to bring economic reforms to Haiti through fair trade chili pepper initiative.

Rigaud, QC, July 20, 2007: Today, Brooks Pepperfire Foods of Rigaud Quebec announced the launch of a fresh pepper sauce made entirely from Haitian Goat Peppers. Part of the company’s Pepperfire Initiative to create a market for Fair Trade chili peppers, Goat Pepper Mash is the first in a line of pepper products that will bring economic reform to chili pepper farmers the world over. The Pepperfire Initiative is designed to help impoverished farmers improve their economic status by bringing fair trade chili peppers to market. Greenland Corporation has applied for Fair Trade Status with Flo-Cert.org the world pricing organization for Fair Trade certification. Once priced, the chili peppers become eligible for Fair Trade status.

Pepperfire Foods Pepperfire Iniative.
An article by Tina Brooks, July 20, 2007

One of the poorest countries in the world and the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, Haiti is just a stone’s throw from our back door. Bordering on the lush green and wealthy by comparison, Dominican Republic, the economic difference between the two countries is staggering. Haiti suffers from horrific poverty and 77% of Haitians live on less than $2 per day.

Greg Brooks, Peppermaster and President for Brooks Pepperfire Foods of Rigaud, Quebec says of the situation, “I remember the constant flow of Haitians escaping in small and medium sized boats and landing on the shores of Nassau in the hopes of earning income to send back to their impoverished communities — And it hasn’t stopped.” Brooks Pepperfire foods is one of the many Canadian companies working to help improve the economic situation of Haitians by participating in growing the Haitian economy through trade.

Haiti has been known to the world as a hotbed of political unrest for the over 200 years it has been independent. Through the Political struggles the country has suffered at the hands of politicos who have as yet been unsuccessful in raising the nation from a state of civil war and unrest.

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