Well, about two weeks ago I got this at the Fiery Foods show in Columbus. It’s Chuck Evan’s Montezuma Smokey Chipotle Squash, Black Bean and Corn Salsa and I received it from a very eager Chuck Evans. This is his brand new salsa and according to him, “It’s probably the most nutritious salsa you’ll ever eat!”
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It’s always a pleasure getting test sauces from industry hopefuls. Often they are way crafty and sometimes so inventive I’ll have to bust out the thesaurus just to find the words to describe them. Such a sauce always comes from Lynn “Devil Duck” Duck (no, I didn’t type Duck twice, his last name really is Duck). Last I was in his area of New Mexico I received his two newest sauces, Barracuda Breath Test Batch #1 and Barracuda Breath Test Batch #2.
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Time to expand the chilehead world view for those of us here in North America! Thanks to Mick from Ol’ Man Stillmanz Boutique Chilli Sauces, we have a report from the 2008 Hot Sauce and Fiery Foods Festival (called the HSFFF) from the land Down Under. Mick’s story about the show is pretty entertaining, and we plan to do more to highlight Aussie products and industry events as we hear about them. Check out Mick’s story, fresh from the show:
The two days were a huge success, as Horrible Haggis’s Festival just goes from strength to strength. The funniest thing is this year was to be the last at his deer farm in the beautiful wilds of country Victoria. Imagine driving for 40 minutes into rolling hills, dairy farms, and little wineries. It’s magic great if you’re on a motor bike. My wife and I, not knowing Victoria, got pretty nervous when we realized how rural it was. I remember turning to her and saying something about no one coming to this festival in the middle of nowhere, its real “Mad Max” country.
Let me tell you, Haggis is a fiery little fella but a good guy at heart. He was saying to me that it was time for a change. He thought the best thing for the festival was to bring it into the Melbourne CBD so it would be easier to take it to the people, get some bigger sponsors, and take some of the financial pressure from the Redback Chilli Co. I could see the sense behind his thinking; it sucks throwing a party and then catching the whole bill.
That Friday I got very drunk and slept in the stall. I was awoken early by my wife, she threw a bottle of Gatorade at my head, told me I looked terrible, and with that…I was up!
Saturday the first Day
It’s funny when you are the new guy on the block. There’s a funny feeling on the back of your neck and the pit of your stomach its fear; we didn’t know what to expect from this whole experience. All I knew was that no one in Victoria had ever heard of “Ol’ Man stillmanz boutique chilli sauces.” I had 600 bottles of sauce and I had to sell them. Because I’m from Brisbane Qld…that’s over 1000 kilometres away, and who knows how many miles.
The first day was hot and dry about 32 degrees. The sound check at the stage was cranking out, the bar was set and ready to roll, and all of us sauce guys were winding up our final preparation for the onslaught of the masses.
Then they started to roll in and they didn’t stop.
The rockabilly bands played loud and wild guitar solos howled through the air. The day got hotter and the crowd just kept growing in size and what a crowd…they were great. Ever go to a chilli festival and find that the crowd isn’t really into chilli? There are no tire kickers at this festival. The crowd is hardcore, they love chilli, and they want to try it all. We got swamped with hands grabbing for samples and asking questions. I was so busy I had to ask people from the crowd to get me beers and you know they got them and gave me my change.
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We’ve pretty much posted all the good stuff about the show from several days ago, but we still had some pics that we hadn’t posted as of yet. At long last, here’s the photo album from the show. Enjoy:
2008 North Market Fiery Foods Festival photo album
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Bret from Jungle Jim’s just let us know that the official information for the 2008 Weekend of Fire show is now available. Time to make your travel plans to come to Ohio! Check it out:
Our First Weekend of Fire was a huge success and brought in 1000’s of people! This year promises to be even better as people are already calling about the ‘close-to-home’ show featuring hundreds of fiery foods: hot sauces, salsas, barbecue sauces, mustards, snacks, ketchups, snacks, and more.
For more information, contact:
Bret Vitek – Hot Sauce and Fiery Foods Manager
Jungle Jim’s International Market
513-674-6000 Ext. 6208
Email: bvitek@junglejims.comDonna Lennox - Oscar Event Center Coordinator
Phone: 513-674-6055
Cell: 513-404-0206
Fax: 513-674-6054
Email: dlennox@junglejims.com
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We weren’t the only bloggers in attendance at this past North Market Fiery Foods Festival. Not including us, there were five other bloggers there taking pictures and generally taking in the festival for the food bloggers to enjoy on their sites afterwards. One of these was done by Heather, who is a Columbus Foodie who has a cool blog called Sopressata. Heather had a cool writeup that’s worth checking out. See this post on Heather’s blog:
She got some great pics of the event, so check out her blog and tell her we sent ya!
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Looks like the Brits are having a little capsaicin envy. Known for being the home of some spicy curries (and we tried some when we visited there in 2000), apparently their “ultimate curry” could use a grain or two of pure capsaicin. Check out this blurb from the UK Daily Mail:
What is the hottest curry you can bear to eat?
The active ingredient in curry or chilli is capsaicin. The more capsaicin present, the hotter the curry. Ordinary Tabasco sauce is about 260 parts per million capsaicin. A habanero chilli contains about 17,000ppm.
Theoretically, the hottest curry you could make would be a bowl of pure capsaicin crystals. This dish would be 10,000 times hotter than a vindaloo.
Although capsaicin does not actually cause a chemical burn or any direct tissue damage itself, the impact on the nervous system of such powerful stimulation is similar to an allergic reaction. As well as incredible pain, you could expect uncontrollably streaming eyes and nose, upper body spasms, and severe difficulty breathing for 30 to 45 minutes.
In fact, our ultimate curry would be five times stronger than the pepper spray used by police for riot control.
Provided you are healthy with no history of heart conditions or asthma, it might be possible to survive a teaspoon of pure capsaicin, but impossible to eat anything else for a few hours.
Theoretical limit: 5g capsaicin
Current record: 0.1gIn 2005, Blair Lazar refined 500g of capsaicin from chilli peppers to create a sauce. He tried a single crystal. “It was like having your tongue hit with a hammer,” he said.
Click here to read the rest of the unrelated source article from UK’s Daily Mail
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Moving on to the next tasty potato chip from the Kettle Brand line are these Spicy Thai chips. What’s so cool about Kettle Brand is that these chips weren’t even on the list of five varieties we were asked to try that were on their “hot & spicy” list. As it turns out, Kettle Brand has discontinued their five flavors of hot & spicy that we had originally tried, as they have settled on the Death Valley Chipotle as being the People’s Choice for this year. That said, we continued to plow through these chips just to continue to explore the Kettle Brand version of hot and spicy.
Ingredients: select Russet potatoes, expeller pressed high monounsaturated safflower and/or sunflower oil, honey powder, (evaporated cane syrup, honey) salt, garlic powder, jalapeno pepper, ground ginger, onion powder, habanero pepper, dried parsley, citric acid, cilantro extract, ginger oil, cayenne pepper, white pepper, lime oil
The ingredients list is pretty similar to the Organic Chipotle Chili Barbecue chips, but without some of the ingredients being listed as “organic.” Their look has a nice aesthetic appeal, as you can see the spice-laden chips as they came out of the bag:
Taste: The emphasis with this chip is spicy, but not hot. Despite habanero and jalapeno peppers being listed as two of the ingredients, it’s fairly modest in terms of its heat. However, the chips themselves are very tasty and munchable. The honey and ginger adds a non-sugary sweetness that you won’t find in most store-bought chips, whose sweetness comes from stuff like high fructose corn syrup. This sweetness is very complex, yet subtle, and melds nicely with the other spices to make another snack with wide taste appeal. A five-ounce bag barely lasted long enough once opened for us to scrawl down our tasting notes before it disappeared.
Overall recommendation: Another winning spicy snack chip from Kettle Brand, but I hope they decide to start packaging these chips in more than five-ounce bags. Such a small amount is not enough, especially if you’re mail-ordering these from the company. If you do decide to pick some up, you’re in for a treat. These aren’t a prototypical Thai spicing as we imagined it, but these chips are spicy-sweet, loaded with ginger, and destined for extinction in short order once you open the bag. Enjoy!
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Several weeks ago, we received a package that contained a selection of hot & spicy potato chips from Kettle Brand Chips. In addition to looking forward to having the chance to taste them, we had hoped to be able to crank out a few reviews on those. Unfortunately, we nibbled those chips to extinction without so much as writing a word about them. Whoops! Well, we decided to rectify that by coughing up a few bucks to get some more chips to review and in the process we also picked up a few extra varieties to try as well. This variety, the Organic Chipotle Chili Barbecue chips, were one of the “extras” we picked up, and thought it would a good review to introduce ourselves to Kettle Brand Chips.
Ingredients: organic select Russet potatoes, organic expeller pressed high monounsaturated safflower and/or sunflower oil, organic dehydrated vegetables (organic tomato, organic onion, organic garlic, organic jalapeno pepper), organic evaporated cane juice, sea salt, organic spices (organic cayenne pepper, organic chili powder, organic chipotle chili powder, organic parsley), citric acid
I really like the whole organic notion with food, but there’s something a little odd about applying the term organic to any food that’s deep-fried and snack-y like potato chips. That said, I give credit to Kettle Brand for putting this sort of product out there. Now, will the taste match up to the notion that organic is better, and where does this product rate in the whole hot & spicy foods spectrum? The proof, is in the bag:
Taste: This chip has a very distinct spicy-sweet flavor that’s certainly more barbecue than chipotle. While being somewhat reminiscent of other BBQ potato chips currently on the market, there’s just enough chipotle flavor to distinguish this chip from others like it. Make no mistake, this is NOT a spicy-hot potato chip. In fact, it barely rates a 2/10 on my heat scale with its meager amount of chipotle. However, it’s a truly taste-worthy chip in which the bag was rapidly consumed in a single sitting. The chips are decently thick, so you won’t have to worry that your bag will be full of crumbs, either.
Overall recommendation: For a barbecue-flavored potato chip, this one’s worthy of your efforts to try it. While not overly hot, it has a nice spicy-sweet flavor that will appeal to a broad amount of people. The fact that this product is made from all-organic ingredients is such a bonus, and I’d certainly pick up another bag of this flavor if I saw it on the grocery store shelves. Enjoy!
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With a dearth of actual pictures of the chili chefs and their creations from the Professional chili cook-off, I just wanted to scribe a little about the process of being a judge for one of these contests. This was the second year out of the past three (Linda had the fun last year) that I participated as a judge for the professionals, and it’s been enjoyable each time.
My qualifications to judge a chili contest? Well, aside from running a blog about hot and spicy food and feeling pretty decent about my experience with chili, I can’t say that I’m an expert by any stretch. So, you can see me in the picture above (far right) at the judges table this past Saturday looking all studious as I tasted bowl after bowl of chili goodness.
» Continue Reading
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