My introduction to these sauces and products came as an evolution-like process. First I saw the media articles come rolling across my computer screen. Then came the impressive list of awards through the Fiery Food Challenge and Scovie competitions. I even read a review or two about the sauces on another site which does reviews on hot sauces and spicy foods (there are others?). Finally, out of the Internet ether came an offer from Chef Bud Selmi himself of Sizzlin Sauces asking us to try his humble products and to allow us our own say about them.
Sizzlin Sauces actually hails from the great state of New Hampshire. Besides its nickname as the “Granite State” and being known for snowy winters, great places to ski, and the birthplace of Adam Sandler (my trivial knowledge has no limits to its depth about stuff like that), it also didn’t really have a reputation as a hotbed (no pun intended) of hot sauces and spicy food. That is, until now.
Chef Bud is a pretty interesting guy. We don’t know too many chefs in the hot sauce business, so we dialed him up (that is, sent an email) and asked him to tell us a little about himself, his products, and how he went about making New Hampshire a place on the hot sauce map….
Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background. How did you get become a lover of things hot & spicy?
I have always been a lover of Hot and Spicy food items. For years I grew my own Hot Peppers. Back in 2000 a close friend introduced me to friends of his who had started an online Pepper Plant business – Cross Country Nurseries. That year I purchased some plants, had a bumper crop of Habaneros, and then had to do something with a whole bunch of peppers. So I made a batch of sauce, gave away a bunch and also sold some. 6 weeks later the sauce was all gone. The next summer I purchased a green house and a whole bunch of pepper plants and started our business. We continue growing most of our own hybrid Habanero peppers.As far as my background I am a Certified Chef through the American Culinary Federation. Although not formally schooled in the culinary field I apprenticed under several very talented chefs.
Popularity: 92% [?]
After publishing an article about CaptainSpongefoot that appeared in the Denver Post a few months ago, we received a message from the folks there in Colorado who work with the ol’ Captain himself wanting us to try the products out for ourselves. Always being ones who try not never turn down a chance to try good hot & spicy products, we quickly agreed. About a week later, a package appeared on our doorstep…and it’s been our mission ever since to take these sauces for a test-drive to see what they could do and how they could make our food better, spicier, and just more tasty in general.
First, however, we wanted to find out a little more about CaptainSpongefoot…who he is, what does, and more. We caught up with Paul DiBello (a.k.a. CaptainSpongefoot), and he was gracious enough to allow us to ask him a few things about himself and his products. Here’s Paul….
Tell us a little about yourself and how you work to distinguish yourself and your products in the hot sauce market.
I decided early on that we would not be “somebody’s bottled up anger”, nor are we a painful body function. And I chose not to play the circus sauce game. I wanted to present a high quality sauce without making a joke about the product, something that is rare in this food group.
You have some simple, elegant labels. Who came up with the design and how did you decide on those?
I knew I wanted a different look but I didn’t know what. Sukle Advertising was contracted to find an image for the company. Their team at first came up with a name change for the company that actually made reference to a painful body experience. I almost went with it but said no at the last minute and asked then to keep CaptainSpongefoot and work along an old world, quality feel of a by-gone era. One of the team members presented a few versions of ships, nautical elements, and when the C&O labels were finally presented we all knew it had a unique feel. We also all knew that it would be a difficult marketing path to pursue.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Mario and Tony are the creative forces behind the great sauces of Chooch and Pootan. Chuckle at the name of the company if you will, but as we discovered…the sauces are a force to be reckoned with in the hot sauce industry. Yet another sauce maker from the Buckeye State, we met up with Mario and Tony this past August at the Jungle Jim’s Weekend of Fire show in Cincinnati, OH where we had a chance to sample all of their sauces and just knew that they were destined to be one of our next Featured Products. The hot sauces will be featured in a “part one” review, with the wing sauces to follow in the “part two” version. Mario Bertone of Chooch and Pootan was gracious enough to take time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions for us about how two nice Italian boys came around to making such good hot sauce….
Tell us a little about the two of you…your background and how you got into the hot sauce/wing sauce business.
Tony’s mother lived with my parents when she came to the USA from Italy.
Tony’s parents bought a home directly behind my parents home, but on another street, our backyards nearly connected. As we got older, Tony bought a home, I bought a street away, and our backyards do connect. This makes it nice, if we drink to much wine we do not have far to go to get home.
Tony is great in the kitchen, his recipe for Hotta Winga Sauca impressed our friends and neighbors. We decide to visit a Co Packer to get his thoughts. CaJohn was that Co Packer. CaJohn liked our product and suggested we enter it in the Fiery Food Challenge in Ft. Worth, Texas, so we did, and took 1st place with the Original version.
We then discussed the business opportunities, and [then] decided to proceed.
Popularity: 30% [?]
After a bit of a hiatus, we return to our Featured Product cybercolumn with our focus set upon Scorpion Bay Hot Sauce. We were contacted by Rob Burns, who is the president, CEO, and grand poobah of Scorpion Bay Hot Sauces and was asked to give his sauces a try. After seeing the products in person and tasting them for ourselves, we thought that he & Scorpion Bay would be good to focus a little more attention upon so we could find out more about Rob and his outstanding products.
The three sauces we tried are listed below for their component parts:
Chocopotle: tomatoes, water, apple cider vinegar, jalapeno peppers, chipotle chiles, red onions, brown sugar, serrano peppers, cocoa powder, garlic, kosher salt, canola oil, mexican oregano, orange juice, lime juice, xanthan gum, spices
Hotacado: tomatillos, jalapeno peppers, water, avocado, serrano peppers, apple cider vinegar, garlic, cilantro, kosher salt, orange juice, canola oil, mexican oregano, jalapeno powder, xanthan gum, lime juice, spices
De Arbol: tomatillos, diced tomatoes, chile de arbol, apple cider vinegar, onions, garlic, canola oil, orange juice, kosher salt, mexican oregano, cilantro, cumin, lime juice, xanthan gum, spices
One of the great things about the hot sauce business is that there are a bunch of devoted, passionate people in it who are totally in to what they do. Rob Burns is one of those people. Rob was kind enough to answer some questions for us about his business and his love for hot sauces. Here is our interview with Rob:
Tell us a little about how you got into the hot sauce business and the evolution of your enjoyment of hot & spicy food.
Well, I got into the hot sauce business like a lot of other folks. I started out making hot sauces for friends and the demand just grew and grew. Pretty soon I was devoting a good portion of my time just keeping up with the requests from friends.
I would say the inspiration for creating my hot sauce comes from my love of travel. Especially places like Mexico—and Baja in particular. In many places Baja is still reasonably pristine and untouched by American tourism. There are some great secret surf spots and it’s one of the few places left in the world that can give you that spirit of adventure when traveling.
Down there you never know what’s around that next corner. It could be bandits, Federales, a new secret surf spot. Or a remote fishing village where families invite you in for dinner and, if you’re lucky, will show you a few family cooking secrets.
These places have some great original authentic recipes for hot sauce and would definitely be my inspiration for creating my particular style of hot sauce.
As far as my development and enjoyment of spicy foods, I think it was genetics combined with living in a great region for spicy foods. I can remember being a child, sitting on my grandfather’s lap watching him eat dried red chili peppers. Also, my mom pretty much can hang with the best—I still have not seen her eat something that is too hot for her liking. That includes some of the pure cap extracts!
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Popularity: 43% [?]
Wow how time flies. It’s been almost two years since Joe and Linda interviewed our buddies over at Kato Productions. Mick and Rita have been turning out some great products including their newest creation, Hemi Hot Sauce, so we felt it was time to do a little catching up.
Popularity: 46% [?]
Recently published in Chile Pepper Magazine as Rhode Island’s representative to the “From Sea to Shining Sea” coast-to-coast tour of hot sauces, we are proud to bring you some of the inside scoop on the brewing of hot sauce in the lair of Devil’s Own Sauces. We were introduced to Steve Kitchen & crew by picking up a bottle of their Devil’s Own Jerk Seasoning while at this past ZestFest. Suffice to say, it was a pretty amazing jerk sauce…and certainly one of the best ones we’ve tried that was NOT manufactured somewhere in the Caribbean. Our early impression of Devil’s Own led us to find out more about them & their products, which led us to Steve Kitchen…one of the gurus behind these creations. We asked Steve a few questions and then greedily began the task of tasting his yummy hot sauces. Here’s what Steve had to say….
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Popularity: 50% [?]
Taking a slight turn off from showcasing the hot sauce makers of the world, we proudly bring to you the fine folks at Texas Select Seasonings. Hailing from Sante Fe, Texas, William Powell and his family have been putting together some fantastic spice blends for nearly two decades. Their products include some really hot spice blends for us chileheads, but a number of truly good spice mixes for those who choose to eschew the heat in favor of other flavors. Besides their selection of seasonings, spice blends, and BBQ rubs, they also have some hot sauces and salsas worthy of some attention. Throw in some stuff like mixes for fish fry, sausage mix, and pepper jelly, then you have a diverse selection of products for nearly everyone to try and enjoy. Pulling him away from his mortar & pestle in his kitchen, we got ahold of Mr. Powell himself to ask him a few pertinent questions about himself, his business, and the importance of family in what he does…
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Popularity: 91% [?]
Dan Stevens from the W.O. Hesperus Company gave us a jingle the other month for a Featured Review. Luckily, I received the honor of trying his products and having a chat with him. Along with learning why seaweed goes good in hot sauce I was also treated to an intriguing history lesson.
Popularity: 52% [?]
Danny Cash
What can you say about Danny Cash? The Man, the Myth, the Legend. He of the spiked Mohawk and Bottled up Anger. He is the head of huge hot sauce cartel in the Mile High City. He’s branching out into a variety of condiments. He rocks old school. I was lucky enough to receive the whole line up of Danny Cash products and I’ve been enjoying them for over a month now. These are quality products.
I wanted to know more about the man, Danny Cash. What led this young man to become the king of such an empire? What inspires him? How did he do it?
CH: What led you to bottle up your anger…and where did all this anger come from?
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Popularity: 49% [?]
One of the true gems from our trip to ZestFest 2006 was meeting the nice ladies from Heaters Nuts. We were casually strolling around the convention hall when we wandered by their booth, which wasn’t receiving a whole lot of love there on the Trade Day. We tasted a few samples of their products and chatted up Paige and Amy a bit, and moved on while making a mental note to get back to them later about writing up their stuff.
Unfortunately, later turned out to be a few months. Heh…better late than never, huh?!
What we really liked about their products was they didn’t try to “re-create the wheel” in regards to spicy peanuts. The simple idea was to take good ol’ peanuts and make ‘em good & spicy without all that extra salt & powder that you find in just about every other container of spicy peanuts currently on the market. These peanuts are infused with flavor rather than coated with spices, and that is their strength and main selling point.
Also available is peanut brittle, available in jalapeno- and habanero-infused versions. A great idea to mix the comfort food goodness of peanut brittle with the spicy capsaicin-laden goodness of the fave peppers in the marketplace today. In fact, their Habanero Peanut Brittle combined their Bucka’s Burners and peanut brittle to make a concoction that was a 3rd place award-winner at ZestFest, not to mention their Jalapeno peanut brittle which was a 2nd place winner also.
For our Featured Product reviews, we always include an interview with the makers themselves. Since we filmed a bunch of video, we’ll let the ladies from Heaters speak for themselves. Here is a link to the video we filmed while at ZestFest: » Continue Reading
Popularity: 59% [?]
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