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Celebrity Grill Podcast Interviews Scott Roberts

Celebrity Grill POdcastDo you listen to the Celebrity Grill Podcast? Well, I’m honored to be the featured guest on this week’s show! It was a lot of fun and I chat with host DM about grilling various kinds of meat, veggies, plus a little about hot sauce.

You can listen to the podcast on iTunes here or on the Celebrity Grill website. The podcast is very informative and JM is a great host who is extremely passionate about backyard grilling, so if you’re into that sort of thing be sure to subscribe!

Review – Gameday Eats Hellfire Habanero

Gameday Eats Hellfire Habanero SauceGamedayEats.com is website geared towards showcasing recipes of sports fan foods – you know the snacks, dips, wings and meats we all proudly love to stuff our happy little faces with whether watching the game at home or tailgating out in the parking lot by the stadium. Gameday Eats is now trying their hand at making wings sauces. Curt Johnson of the site was kind enough to ship me a jar of their brand new Hellfire Habanero sauce to put through its paces…

Review – Chef Hymie Grande Cascabel Express Barbecue Glaze

Cascabel Express Barbecue Glaze
Different is good. Well, more specifically, different can be desirable if a sauce recipe is inspired and smacks down artificially-created walls and conventions even if the item isn’t necessarily a 5 out of 5 stars on taste.

On this subject, Chef Hymie Grande’ (real name Jamie Faitelson) is someone who has got to applauded for his exploratory spirit. He seems like someone who is bored with tedium in foods and will jump at the chance to interject the bizarre and the unconventional. While I love regular barbecue sauces, I was genuinely excited to see his take on the genre of condiments.

The Chef also has additional “separate from the rest of the pack” clout going for him even more because Cascabel Express Barbecue Glaze (and his other two condiments) are first BBQ sauces to carry the American Diabetes Association mark on the bottles’ labels, as they meet the stringent ADA specifications. Cascabel Express is also vegan-friendly, all natural, and contain no high-fructose corn syrup or processed sugar.

With all of these attributes, if Chef Hymie Grande’ could pull this off as a delicious taste-bud pleaser, he would have one hell of a unique product on his hands. Unfortunately, I think this sauce misses the mark on flavor. It does it just barely, but it still misses enough for me not to give this a raving thumbs up…

St. Louis Chili Cook-Off To Be Held On January 30, 2010

StLChili - St. LOuis Chili CookoffSt. Louis finally gets an ICS-sanctioned chili cook-off next Saturday, January 30th, 2010! It will be held at the Heart of Saint Charles Banquet Center and will run from 11:00 am to 4:00 pm.

Here is the general information provided by STLChili.com:

Come and taste all the chili you can handle at the Saint Louis Fire and Ice Chili Cook-off. The cook-off will include decorated booths following our 2010 theme, Fire and Ice. Live music will keep your toes tapping while vendors and public are eligible for Awards and Prizes! Soda, water, tea and Budweiser beverages will be available for purchase to wash down the scrumptious chili! Bring your friends and family to help decide who has the best chili of Saint Louis, Missouri!

For More Information…

FireTalkers – Interview with Kevin Benz of Twodogs Unleashed

Kevin BenzAttempting to cleanly categorize Twodogs Unleashed Sweet Hidden Heat Salishes may very well be a futile exercise. It has elements of products that many chileheads may currently have sitting in their refrigerator doors, such as mustards, salsas, relishes, dips, glazes and spreads. It’s like a thick sweet and sour sauce with a mustardy kick and chile-derived heat. Salish (a combination of “salsa” and “relish”) is strange stuff but it works on many levels. You’ll have to try it to get the full gist of what I’m saying.

I wanted to know a little more about the man behind the product, Kevin Benz, so I contacted him to ask him a few questions. I found out that he, like many populating the spicy foods industry, has a day job but is passionate about his “second” career – making, selling and promoting his salish. He does this locally around his hometown in northern Illinois and nationwide on his Twodogs Unleashed website

Review – Danny Cash Naga Sabi Bomb

Danny Cash's Naga Sabi Bomb sauceI’d previously sampled Danny Cash‘s unique Naga Sabi Bomb sauce. A healthy spoonful had been enough to impress me with its power as a dual naga/bhut jolokia and wasabi hot sauce, even if I wasn’t crazy about the taste. Alas, sometimes first impressions can be deceiving. Often, a sauce or condiment will need a “proper context”, e.g. used with certain foods, to obtain its true flavor and usefulness. Danny had told me that Naga Sabi was amazing on sushi and even guacamole, so I knew that this sauce required to be put on some grub to give it a fair assessment…

German Teens Guzzle Extreme Hot Sauce, End Up in Hospital

name-hereBERLIN – Officials in Germany say eight teenagers were hospitalized after a test of courage in which they drank a chile pepper sauce more than 200 times hotter than normal. The Red Cross in the southern city of Augsburg says that 10 boys, aged 13 and 14, year drank the sauce Wednesday morning, apparently in school.

The German news agency DAPD quoted the Red Cross as saying the boys complained of feeling sick, and eight were taken to a hospital. They were to be kept in overnight for observation.

The Red Cross said that on the Scoville scale, which measures the hotness of sauce, the sauce measured 535,000 – compared to 2,500 for normal Tabasco Sauce.

Letter From the UK – January 2010

david-floydChristmas is well and truly over, the snow has gone, the kids are back in school, it is now time to make good on the New Year’s resolutions, like learning to write better articles, losing weight, etc…

My last letter from the UK came out just before Christmas, most of our UK vendors had just moments to go before they would not be able to ship and more orders and where running as fast as they could to ship all the orders, all reports from the front reported good sales well up on last year, but there was little hot news in the last few days.

Now as we move into 2010 we have heard from a couple of our larger UK suppliers that they are close to moving to larger premises and their business continues to grow…

Quaker Steak and Lube Triple Atomic Tough Wing Challenge

I know there are no Quaker Steak and Lube locations within a couple hundred miles of St. Louis, but there’s enough of you that live in close proximity to one to make this very noteworthy.

The famous sports bar/wing eatery chain is having a contest to promote their new Triple Atomic Sauce. In a nutshell, if you make a video showing why you’re tough enough for the new wings, and if your entry gets chosen you could win free wings for three years and a $500 gift card. Watch the video below for more details or go to http://www.tripleatomictough.com.

Peppers at the Beach Event Update

The Peppers store in Rehoboth Bean, DelawareHere’s an update on the Delaware-based chilehead event first mentioned by John Dilley of Defcon Sauces. In John’s words:

“PEPPERS AT THE BEACH EVENT, MAY 15 – 16, 2010

“Greetings. As the year begins, I know everyone is picking and choosing which events they may or may not attend with their products. Well, for about the past month, I have been in contact with the legendary Chip Hearn at Peppers in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I had received a number of requests from both customers and other manufacturers that we should have some sort of gathering there, considering they…

Chileheads Help With Haiti Relief By Releasing Limited Edition Hot Sauce Bottle

Operation: Peppers and More

If you’re a hot sauce fanatic or a spicy food lover, you can help out with the Haiti earthquake relief by purchasing a special, limited edition bottle of hot sauce from Peppers and More. 100% of the money generated from the sales of this will be donated to the American Red Cross. Peppers and More is incurring ALL the manufacturing costs. The price of each bottle will be $10.00 plus $5.00 shipping. Click here to learn more.

FireTalkers – Interview with John Dilley of Defcon Sauces

John Dilley
Defcon Creator, AKA John Dilley, stands in his “Mad Max meets the Matrix” outfit at the 2009 Weekend of Fire at Jungle Jim’s.


Purveyors of some of the mightiest wing sauces on the planet and mainstays at hot sauce trade shows, Defcon Sauces owners John “The Creator” Dilley and his wife Maggie “The Createss” have racked up an impressive array of awards for their fiery products and have become a cult chilehead favorite. Eat some wings with a generous coating of one of their unique Defense Condition sauces and it’s highly likely they’ll become one of your favorites, too.

I recently asked John some questions and he didn’t disappoint as he responded in his usual humorous and eloquent way about a variety of topics.

Scott: How did you get started making wing sauces?

John: It all started in the late 1980’s. I had wings for the first time at a restaurant. They were no where near as popular as they are now. I really liked them. I had grown up learning how to cook from my grandmother as well as my mother, and really enjoyed experimenting in the kitchen. Well, the wing things were tasty, and I figured I could make them myself…

Review – Walt’s Spicy Barbeque Sauce

Walt's Spicy Barbeque SauceLike a great many BBQ sauces, Walt’s Spicy Barbeque Sauce originates from a namesake restaurant (technically, there’s now a trio of locations in the Cincinnati, Ohio area). I was impressed with what I had tasted in Walt’s milder sauces, so I acquired a jar or two of their fieriest version for review at home to see if it was able to stand up to the same high standards. It received a 5th place finish in the 2009 NBBQA Awards in the Barbecue Sauce: Tomato Spicy category, so perhaps I had a winner on my hands. Or not?