We’ve taken a little respite from the blogging thing for the past week as Joe has been in his stretch run to the end of his residency. However, our minds still wax towards hot sauce…to no one’s surprise, we’re sure.

Joe had his end-of-the-resident year party with his friends & co-workers this past Friday night. In addition to a night of debauchery and inebriation (thanks to many shots of wonderful tequila), it was filled with some really special gifts. As you can see from the above picture, Joe’s love of hot sauce is no secret so the wonderful nurses at the hospital went in on a little gift bag of sauces plus a capsaicin t-shirt.

Joe nearly shed a tear into his shot glass…

Now here is a great hot sauce idea that we can wrap our brains around, especially since the proceeds go towards a charity cause! Fellas, just don’t show your wives how many bottles you just have to have in your collection, OK?

Just wanted to let you know that the new Hot Sauce Hottie for May is selling fast! Don’t forget part of the proceeds goes to the Firefighters charity of the Hottie’s choice.

http://www.firerescuefoods.com/

Al (a.k.a. Buddah) passed along this cool info for those of you who might be looking for a cool gift for your favorite chilehead, even if it is yourself:

A couple of my co-workers, Ann and Roy Tolliver gave me a nice gift after they returned from their Las Vegas trip. They know my love for hot sauce and when they saw this gift in the store they immediately thought that I should have it. It is a t-shirt from a company called Crazy Shirts. This t-shirt is real special because it is dyed in chile peppers. The website doesn’t say much on the process but gives a little detail about them, “Mild chile peppers create a fiery hue that makes these 100% cotton T-shirts sizzle. Our Chile-Dyed T-shirts can spice up your wardrobe to create a red-hot outfit.”

While I think this is a cool idea, I was a little worried that the sweat produced from my body will activate the chile peppers and create a not too comfortable burning sensation on my skin. There is a tag on the shirt that again eludes to the mildness of the peppers used in the dyeing process. Time will tell, but I think I will play it safe and wait for a milder day than the 90s from this past weekend.

What is great about these Crazy Shirts is not just the cool graffic designs, 9 chile dyed shirts in total, but there are also other odd dyes used. When I saw them it made me chuckle at the thought of some of them. Numerous and unique that once you see them you might be curious enough to check them out like I did when Ann and Roy first told me about them. Here are the dyed varieties:

Novelty Dyes
Volcanic Ash
Money

Gourmet Dyes
Kona Coffee
Beer
Wine
Chocolate
Chile
Blue Hawaii
Key Limes

Organic Dyes
Hemp
Ti Leaf
Sunflower
Lavender
Hibiscus

Yes, boys and girls you read that correctly, there was Beer and Coffee in the mix. Check out the designs for yourself at www.crazyshirts.com.

I own this particularly cool t-shirt from them myself!

Okay, I am all about sampling and experimenting with new chili sauce brands and hell there seem to be as many as grains of sand on the beach these days.   One good thing is that we now have more healthy option to choose from made made with natural ingredients.  Evolving from with those who’s ingredients list looks something from a science experiment.  Well in say that sometimes when it comes down to it you just want the basics.  Just Jalapeno, just Habanero,  just Naga Jolokia(if you are lucky to get it), just scotch bonnet made from fresh chillies.  Allowing us to enjoy each peppers own particular characteristics. If someone were to ask you, “what does a Jalapeno or Habanero(any chile for that matter) taste like?, what would you answer be?  Could you even answer the question?  This is why its always good to start from the beginning giving you a pure understanding of each chili.  Once you have accomplished this you can move on to your next step of creating a sauce with more ingredients for a more complex flavored sauce constructed from the base flavor of the chili.  This is all giving a more rounded and harmonious taste experience.   Cause anyone can make “HOT” sauce, but the challenge is can you make a great tasting sauce.  Most fall quite short or don’t even come close and just get the “HOT” part right… WRONG!

So, let start with the basics, the beginning, the egg or the chicken, in this case the chile.

For all you chili head out there and “wanna-be” sauce makers, here is a basic chili sauce recipe that can be used for any chile.  I am all about using nothing but the best and freshest ingredients possible. If you want to use cheap ingredients you get s%#t for a product.  That’s just me.

Donte’s Back to Basics Chile Sauce

Ingredients

1lbs FRESH chiles(your choice) stemmed

2C White distilled vinegar (Second batch try Apple cider vinegar, I use Braggs Apple Cider or Katz Apple Cider Vinegar)

2T Sea Salt(Fleur de Sel or Sel Gris)

Construction

You can do the next step one of two ways…

Rinse the chilies in a colander under hot running water(you may want to use a veggie wash so to get any chemicals or waxes removed.  We want to eat the chili not the farmers chemical treatment.); pat dry. Transfer chilies to the bowl of a food processor along with the salt. Process, stopping occasionally to scrape down the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula, until finely chopped, about 1 minute.

or

Add chillies and salt to tall container or pitch blend using immersion blender( I live by my immersion blender. works great and less clean up.)

Next

Transfer the chilies mixture to a glass jar. Cover and let sit in a cool place to ripen for 2 days, without stirring.

Uncover and stir in the vinegar. Cover and let sit in a cool place for 5 days to let age and allow the flavors to meld.

Set a mesh strainer over a bowl. Pour the chilie mixture into the strainer and press it through the mesh screen with the back of a spoon. Discard solids (If you want you can disregard this step to keep the sauce thick).Pour sauce into a glass bottle with a tight-fitting lid. Refrigerate for up to 6 months.

Shake before each use.

We never cease to be amazed at what cool chilehead stuff that comes out of our North American neighbors…but damn this was funny. If you have ever taken this sort of dare, or watched a friend do it, then you know what we mean. Check out this short article from The Daily Gleaner out of New Brunswick, Canada:

Diehard chiliheads build ever-higher pain thresholds in heat-seeking mission
Published Saturday May 16th, 2009

ST. JACOBS, Ont. - How to slay a man with a toothpick:

1. Dip the toothpick into a bottle of Hell’s Inferno hot sauce.

2. Dare the man to taste it.

Due to the an evolutionary glitch hard-wired into the man’s brain - a glitch shared by most men, especially the manliest among them - he will be unable to resist the dare.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

We just love a good video, especially of those foolish brave enough to test the limits of human endurance by taking on the capsaicin heat of chile peppers and hot sauce. Some of the perpetrators of this mayhem are well known (yes, DEFCON Creator, we are talking about you), yet some work their magic in much more subtle fashion.

Case in point? You simply must check out this video from the most recent edition of the online Columbus Alive magazine. Follow this link:

Video: Adam eats the world’s hottest pepper

Budget yourself about 3 minutes 53 seconds worth of time to watch some true entertainment. CaJohn obviously had quite a bit of fun with this!

It’s that time again. Our barbecue retailers are all stocking up on their sauces for the coming barbecue season and that must mean it’s Spring! If you ask me, barbecue is one of the most “American” food products available, even more so than apple pie! And I say that as a Canadian. Highly unique to the American consciousness, this method of slow cooking meat products for long periods of time over low heat and high smoke creates a much loved food product. One could certainly call it a truly American cultural phenomena. Even those of us who mostly “grill” rather than barbecue. For what it’s worth, though, we Canadians may not actually barbecue, but we’re not afraid to dig a tunnel in the snow to get to our grills.

Three out of four US households own a barbecue grill, and what with all of the accessories that go with barbecuing, it is a multi-billion dollar industry. Research says that the name derives from the french word “barbe à queue” which literally translated means “snout to tail”. It is widely believed that barbecue stems from the Caribbean method of roasting pigs in fire pits. Since its importation, barbecue has taken on an almost religious aspect to its existence, with Americans holding international-level barbecue competitions that pit not only methods but also the sauces themselves for a variety of barbecue titles.

The word itself means not only the methodology, but describes the finished food product as well as the social gathering itself: As in, come to my barbecue, we’re going to barbecue some chicken and all eat barbecue.

Heck, throw a barbecue and you and your friends can watch the documentary series American Eats: Barbecue, this Saturday, April 25 on The History Channel.

If you take me up on the suggestion, though, I recommend that you TIVO the show, because it airs at 8:00 am, a little early, I imagine, for all but the most diehard barbecue enthusiasts.

Happy barbecuing

For someone who has been seared more than once by the heat of the bhut jolokia pepper, this sorta story from the Yumsugar blog both fascinates and horrifies me:

Woman Breaks World Record For Eating World’s Hottest Chiles
Mon, 04/13/2009 - 3:00pm by YumSugar

For some spice lovers, jalapeno-laden hamburgers just won’t do. Take Anandita Dutta Tamuly, a 26-year-old woman from Assam, India, who set a Guinness world record last week when she consumed 51 of the world’s hottest chile peppers in only two minutes. She also rubbed 24 of the same chile peppers in her eyes over the span of one minute.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

We love seeing new hot and spicy food blogs, since it helps the community as a whole by giving everyone an outlet for whatever viewpoint on the Internet you want to follow. So, here’s the scoop…

HotSauce.com is an online retailer of hot sauces that has been around for quite some time. Rather than create a traditional written blog, they opted to make a video blog where you can see a guy named Gabriel try various hot sauces and give his opinion about them. There’s not a huge number of them yet, but the few they have are worth watching if only for entertainment value. Check out:

http://www.hotsaucetube.com

Nice site which we hope doesn’t wither and just fade away.

As reported previously, the Ol’ Man Stillmanz Fiery Wing Challenge is now a historical fact. For those of you lucky enough to be close by in the OZ to witness or take part in it, we salute you. Hopefully, this sort of event will become a more regular type of event down under. Here’s a few words from Mick Stillman, the event organizer:

Well it’s done! The night came and passed and what a success. Now remembering it was a Tuesday and the weather was rubbish and rainy, but this massive great crowd still came out to see something they had never seen before. The Boys in the comp were nervous before the event but probably not as much as myself and Crazy Craig Holder, our mad and very very hilarious MC.

In a nutshell we had a crowd of over 200 come out to watch Michael Henderson take the first official Fiery Wing Challenge from a his arch Rival Tony “the Mouse” Mcgee, in 3rd place Shane Harris and a very honourable 4th was Jake Peirson.

I can’t tell you how relieved and happy I am that the night and the event were a success and Yess we will definately be having another Fiery Wing Challenge. I already have 67 people who have put there name down for the next event.. the people love it..soI say give them what they want.
here is a heap of piccys from the night.

We were also lucky enough to have the night filmed so once we cut it to shape we will have some vid footage. If you were lucky enough tobe there you no what I mean if you weren’t wait for the vid its worth it.
HAHha

Mick

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