With the spread of what I call Naga Mania comes more and more interesting, super heated product. From Jolokia Peanut Butter, to sauces and powders, this trend is really sweeping the industry and Brian Marx from Heather’s Heat and Flavor is surely taking advantage of it!

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We use spice mixes a fair amount these days. While most of them are simply sprinkled lightly over dishes to give them a little extra flavor, there are some that are worth highlighting as truly adding something extra to a meal. We had gotten a sample of this “Truckee” BBQ Rub recently, and thanks to the generosity of Darrell and Candy of Big Dawg Salsa, we were given some to try for our very own. Here is the description of the sauce from both the bottle and the website:

Big Dawg BBQ Rub is an amazing combination of flavors with an added dab of sweet followed by a slight tingle of heat. This rub will have you sloppin’ for more.

Rub on both sides of your favorite Pork, Beef, or Chicken. Let rub set in for about an hour and then throw on the smoker, grill or in the oven and cook low and slow. Can also sprinkle on your favorite recipes as a seasoning.

Trying a spice mix is not quite the same as trying a hot sauce right out of the bottle, but we gave it the ol’ college try anyway. We poured out a little to give it a little taste.

The written description is pretty much dead-on accurate for this product. You get that initially taste of the sweetness, followed by the salt-and-pepper flavor that the other ingredients provide. Sea salt can be a strong flavor, but it blends well with the mix of garlic and cayenne to give a smooth peppery flavor to this mix right out of the jar.

Ingredients: brown sugar, paprika, sea salt, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, cayenne pepper, and other spices

For our culinary experimentation, we opted for a couple of meat entrees. Both selections, chicken and skirt steak, were essentially prepared the same way. We used this mix like a rub, and gave the meat a coating on both sides and let it sit in the fridge overnight to be cooked the next day. For the sake of simplicity, it doesn’t get much easier than that. We made the chicken on the grill and cooked the steak in the oven with indirect heat. While we don’t have pictures of the chicken, here’s how the steak looked after about 20 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees:

With the outside a nice golden brown, the steak cut easily into thin strips that were absolutely magnificent. Cooking does mellow the flavor a little, but the results are worth the effort. There’s a broad hint of sugary sweetness with each bite, and then you really get a feel for the cayenne pepper with a little tingle for your tastebuds. The meat cooked fairly evenly as well, with none of the meat getting at all scorched regardless of the method of cooking.

Overall recommendation: We’ve put this mix on our short list of BBQ rubs that we can use with nearly anything we put on the grill or cook in the oven. Mildly sweet and a little spicy, the description of the rub above pretty much says it all. You could probably get away with using this rub as a blackening seasoning or even spicing up your dinner veggies as well. Our only regret was not having more food to try it upon before writing this review. Another winner from Big Dawg Salsa. Enjoy!!

While we have several new products from Big Dawg Salsa that we want to review, courtesy of Darrell and Candy at the Weekend of Fire show, we wanted to go back and touch on one of their products we use constantly that deserves some mention. “Salvage” is the Big Dawg version of Cajun seasoning, and the description says:

The simplicity of this spice mix is unreal. In it, we find:

Ingredients: sea salt, black pepper, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, and other spices

We use a lot of Cajun seasoning in our kitchen, so this container of spice mix has been disappearing at a constant rate since we got it. One thing that’s cool about this mix (and all the Big Dawg mixes) is the container. They’re these cool, stackable plastic containers so you can stack all your Big Dawg seasonings in one place for easy access.

Like most Cajun seasonings, this one is great for blackening. This has been our spice mix of choice when we’ve done blackened fish, either for straight-up eating for use in Linda’s amazing fish tacos. Great with grilled meats of any kind, it’s also good on your breakfast foods such as egg scrambles and omelets. It even adds some zest to a bag of ordinary microwave popcorn. Just add a tablespoon to a freshly popped bag, shake, and serve.

Overall recommendation: This is a bit of less of a true review as it is a glowing endorsement of the product. If you ever use Cajun seasoning in your cooking, you should consider getting yourself a container of this. Tasty and a little bit spicy, the uses are limited only to your imagination. Enjoy!

Live from Jungle Jims…

I’ve been walking around the show trying old and new products and I came across one company I haven’t tried before…Lee’s Hot Mustard. While I liked all of Lee’s products, one stood out for me. It’s called Lee’s Key Lime.

Ingredients: Granulated sugar, lime juice powder, jalapeño peppers & salt.

I tried this product as a dip. Here is the recipe on the container: Cream 8oz. cream cheese with half of the contents of package. Blend well. Spoon into serving crock or bowl. Serve with crackers.

I tried this with these wonderful graham crackers and it was like having a slice of key lime pie. The difference was the nice little tingle after. While this is not hot, hot…it does have a nice little kick to it. Honestly, when it first hit my palette, I had no idea this was a spicy product. You know, if you’ve been to these shows just about everything is marketed including sweet things with absolutely no heat. When I walked away and felt the tinge of jalapeños, I was very, very pleased. The booth was pretty crowded at that time so I waited and went back later. It was not hard to compliment this product, especially because I love just about anything with key lime.

Apparently, Lee has been in the business for a few years. I haven’t seen him at any shows I’ve attended so he was very new to me. He’s just about the nicest guy you’d ever want to meet and like so many others in the business does this as a second job. Lee is actually a middle school principal. Funny, but I don’t remember my principals being that nice. Anyway, you really have to try his other products. The mustards are pretty amazing. I really like the sweet one as that’s what I like on egg rolls. It gets tiring mixing things from asian restaurants to satisfy my taste. It’s so much nicer just to pull something from the shelves and be done with it.

In closing I’ll give you one little tidbit of information you might not have known. Today, Saturday, August 4 is National Mustard Day. Check out how our friends, the other Levenson’s, are celebrating at their Mount Horeb Mustard Museum. (Hi guys…wish we could be in two places at once) Oh, and you can purchase Lee’s stuff there in addition to his site.

Ever since doing our Featured product writeup of Texas Select Seasonings a little while back, we’ve been raving about their stuff to all our friends, family, and coworkers. Those kudos were mostly about their more spicy products, so we were fortunate enough to receive some stuff that was a little less spicy…but some of their stronger selling products. Needless to say, we’re glad that we did.

Now we knew that this spice mix was not going to reach the heat level of the Rattlesnake Dust or the Wild Bill’s Blazin’ BBQ, but it was obvious (to us, anyway) from the list of ingredients that this wouldn’t be a bland ol’ mix of stuff either. This product has:

Ingredients: Garlic, fine sea salt, cayenne, paprika, black pepper, onion, jalapeño powder, oregano, basil, thyme and other select spices.

First impression and taste: As with other spice mixes, we don’t sample them right out of the jar. Taking a gentle whiff, however, this mix was pretty enticing. Not a noxious blend to your nostril hairs, there is a nice hint of cayenne, garlic, and spice which almost makes you want to taste it on the spot.
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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…

One of the interesting thing about attending ZestFest was trying a fair amount of chili mixes. As people who regularly host chili cookoffs, we have generally spurned chili mixes because we have wanted our ‘contestants’ to make their chilis from scratch. It just seems that you can take a lot more pride in your creation if it’s your own mad scientist brew, right?

With this preconcieved notion in mind, we ran into Cindy Reed and her crockpots full of chili made with her Cin Chili mix. It was a lot of people dressed in cowboy hats holding two-ounce servings of chili, so we cautiously approached ready to be polite if we didn’t like it all that much. Chugging that shot of chili, we were pleasantly surprised at how good the taste was…and promptly laid $5 on the counter to take a bag home so we could try some ourselves. We didn’t have an upcoming chili cookoff or anything, but we were sure that we could make do in our own humble kitchen.

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