Clement Bourg is proof positive that Cajun is a state of being and a way of life, not just some place from Louisiana. Clement is the grand poobah of Cajun Heat, an expanding company that now features products that include a spicy rub, hot sauce, mustard, wing sauce, and more. We were first introduced to Cajun Heat through one of their most-known products, Voodoo Ash, and it is one we heartily recommend. Since first trying Cajun Heat products 18 months ago, we were more than happy to try some more and to find out a little about the company and the man behind stuff.

Tell us a little bit about your background, and how you got into the spicy foods business.

I’m a New Orleans native and grew up eating (at the time) what I considered spicy foods. The job market led me to Northern VA where I quickly missed my grandma’s home cooking so I started to experiment with different sauces trying to capture the essence of New Orleans in a bottle.

After awhile I had a sauce that I was pleased with and would use habitually. Slowly friends started asking for bottles so I started making small batches.

I started thinking about retirement and have always wanted to own a restaurant and thought what would be better then a restaurant where the sauces and spices used were my own creation? Cajun Heat is years in the making and has years to blossom. With 17 years left of Federal service I am taking my time ensuring nothing is rushed and all products stand up to my high standards.

The values, skills, and leadership traits I’ve learned as a U.S. Marine are keeping me focused and goal oriented. This endeavor will be slow and steady but I will be victorious.

So last Memorial Day weekend, a new cable channel launched. It is The Cooking Channel. It is a sister channel of The Food Network, and features shows and stars from the original channel. One show in particular REALLY stands out. FoodCrafters.

FoodCrafters is all about the small, foodie entrepreneurs. It features 4 companies on each episode, and really, the show is about those companies. These are the kind of small companies that are truly my peer group. The stories are all similar, dedicated and driven, mostly family businesses turning out some truly gourmet products!

In season 1 both Danny Cash Hot sauces, and Zane & Zack’s World Famous Honey Co. were featured. Now, with season #2 under way, Big Dawg Salsa has announced that they will be on the Flavor episode on Nov. 30th!!!

Darrel and Candy make my favorite salsa (Burn Ur Face Off) and my wife’s favorite salsa (Flatlime). I am very excited for them and cannot wait to see their episode!

Please tune in Nov. 30th to see the Fitch’s become even more famous than they already were, or if you are in the Gainesville, TX area stop by Big Dawg’s Salsa Shack and congratulate them in person!

Sorry this is so short, I have a few more things to pack then I’m off to the mountains for elk season! (Maybe Joe can add in their website and contact info, Salsa Shack addy)

After being totally beholden to my oral boards study, the day of reckoning arrives tomorrow as I make the trek to San Mateo, CA to take my oral anesthesia boards and attend my annual anesthesiology convention. I’ll be just down the road from San Francisco, and I plan to take advantage of the opportunity to visit a really cool city…and one that I’ve never visited before. If anyone has some recommendation of good places to eat in SF, particularly to get GREAT hot & spicy food, then please send a message to me through the blog’s CONTACT FORM.

Multiple versions of this story are floating around the Web, but check out this article published in the online Chattanooga Times Free Press:

Couple suing Steak ’n Shake after hot sauce incident

By: Harrison Keely

CLEVELAND, Tenn. — A pastor and his wife are suing a waiter at Steak ’n Shake and the company itself after their son was hospitalized because of hot sauce he ate.

Tim and Mary Katherine Gann visited the Steak ’n Shake on Oct. 9, 2009, and the waiter offered their son, Caleb, “hot sauce,” giving him a bottle labeled Mega Death Hot Sauce that is not served by the restaurant chain, said Debbie Richman, owner of the franchise at 220 Paul Huff Parkway.

The lawsuit, filed Sept. 30 by Bilbo Law Office in Bradley County Circuit Court, said the substance led to “the infliction of severe injuries to his [Caleb’s] body and permanent damages.”

The Bilbo Law Office? Really? Next thing you know, you’ll find out that Judge Frodo Baggins will be presiding over this case…but I digress. Check out this blurb, which should be noteworthy to readers of this blog:

The manufacturer of Mega Death Hot Sauce — Blair’s Sauces and Snacks — claims in the product description that it “contains ingredients 500 times hotter than a jalapeno chili” and doesn’t recommend it for use without dilution.

I read the .pdf file which was the official legal filing of the lawsuit. While it may seem frivolous and a tad bit excessive, if there truth to these allegations, then the Steak ‘n Shake restaurant chain is going to be ponying up a huge sum of cash for this. Of course, the pragmatist in me thinks that any sauce named “MEGA-DEATH” should really get your attention. Besides that, who doesn’t pay attention to what you put into your food? I can’t find anything that indicates the age of the child who was hurt in all this, but I suppose there is a moral to this story. If a sauce has a skull attached to it or a big skull on the label, or even the word “Death” in the title, then it might be hot.

Just sayin’…

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Scotty B’s Hot Sauces continue their phoenix-like rise from the ashes, and with articles like this one from the Agoura Hills Patch, you can see why. Especially given that many of these sauces were ones we personally liked, we hope that trend continues:

Fresh from the Farmers Market: Scotty B’s Hot Sauces

These dressings add sizzle and heat and they’re not just for summer barbecue season.
By Mira Reverente

Fiery, scorching and burning were used to describe not the weather last Sunday, but Scotty B’s Hot Sauces. The Capistrano Beach-based company is one of several vendors at the year-round Agoura Hills Farmers Market.

Marinade, hot sauce, dip and salad dressing in one, the gourmet hot sauces come in 12.75 oz. bottles, larger than your usual table hot sauce, and six variants, ranging from mildly hot to the over-the-top, triple X hot. They sell for $8 a bottle, except for the Nemesis triple X type, which sells for $9. Volume discounts are also available.

“Most hot sauces are vinegar-based, but ours are tomato-based and natural,” said Brotha Zeigler, a sales representative for Scotty B’s. Additionally, Scotty B’s hot sauces have no corn syrup, no preservatives and no artificial flavors. The sweet versions have only one gram of sugar in each bottle.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Someone once said that “Variety is the spice of life.” I firmly believe they were referring to wing sauces. It wasn’t but a handful of years ago, that when you made wings, you used 1 of about 3 sauces, added some butter to the mix and drowned a bunch of chicken limbs. Times have changed and now we enjoy literally hundreds of pre-made, ready-to-use wing sauces. Some are good. Some are very good and others leave a lot of room for improvement. The latter is a hint for my next review, so check back often on the Hot Zone Online to read the review.

I have found one of the better wing sauces: Rippin’ Red Wing Sauce, owned by Rizzotti Foods, LLC

[Read the rest of this entry...]

It sounds like an oxymoron at first, but you find out soon after that there is nothing black nor swampish about these products. Black Swamp Gourmet seems to put out some pretty good products with excellent versatility. Granted I have only tried the meat rub and hot barbeque sauce, but I think it’s a winning combo. [Read the rest of this entry...]

At my workplace, most of the people there are not chileheads nor do they eat a lot of spicy foods. Some of this has changed since I was hired, with my seemingly never-ending barrage of hot sauces, salsas, and other spicy goodies I have brought to work.

I need a unique chile-themed recipe that I can throw together Thursday evening after I get home from work. Recipes must contain six (6) ingredients or less. You may submit the recipe to us at our Contact Form.

Winner will receive a choice of one (1) new hot sauce from a selection presented to you via email. Recipes must be submitted by Wednesday October 6, 2010 by 12 midnight, eastern daylight time.

At some point, we have all done it. If you eat enough spicy food, chile peppers in particular, you are going to mess up by either having an accident or not washing your hands well enough…and then touching a sensitive part of your body and then suffering the capsaicin-laced wrath of that pain. Well, what do you do if you get it in your eye? Well, another blogger over at the BlogHer site had that happen to her. So check this out, and feel her pain.

First I would just like to say that the number one remedy for bringing relief to the pain of hot pepper in your eye is simply to wear gloves while cutting peppers and NEVER EVER TOUCH YOUR EYE after cutting them.

However, since I was not quite so smart last Friday, I had to come up with another remedy.

It all started so innocently. We needed to leave for our homeschool PE class that morning, but I was trying to get some of the peppers from our garden cut up and frozen before we left. My husband Matt has been the pepper guy at our house most of this summer so I was not aware that some of them were of the very freakishly hot variety. (They were shaped like tiny sweet bell peppers.)

Praia do Futuro, Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil

I got all the peppers cut up and put away, cleaned up my mess and washed my hands. I then proceeded to help get the boys ready to head out the door for PE. My eye was itchy…and so I scratched it.

Bad idea.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

For those collectors out there, I thought I’d post this little bit of news. Heartbreakin’ Dawns’ first collectable is now on sale on their website. I got to see the prototype bottle in person at this years Weekend of Fire and fell in love.

The Albo’Gator is a limited edition collectable sauce that comes in a hand blown, glass container, complete with skull embedded into the top. Limited to 100, this thing’s probably going to fly off their site. They even have videos of the bottles being made. To check out the page, visit THIS LINK.