Month: July 2014

Watch out before drying your kids’ tears!

Breaking news! Today, it’s been announced that the dates for the 2015 New York City Hot Sauce Expo will be April 25 & 26, 2015. Save the date, and stay tuned for more details!

Via Ken Alexander, of FieryWorld.com and one of the Head Judges of the World Hot Sauce Awards:

“Below is a list of the winners of the inaugural World Hot Sauce Awards. The awards ceremony was held at the Lafayette, La Acadian Center, and the site of the Louisiana Hot Sauce Expo.

“The winners were selected by approximately 30 judges from across the country, including executive chefs, restaurant owners, elected officials, beauty queens, hot sauce industry experts, and enthusiasts!  The judges tasted 582 separate samples and each category had multiple judges. Everyone had a “hot” time and sweating foreheads, red faces, and sniffly noses were prevalent in the judge’s ranks! The awards are listed by division and category.

“My apologies if there are misspellings along the way, but there was limited time to proofread the list in an effort to get it out to everyone in a timely manner!!!  Congratulations are in order for everyone who submitted an entry and especially to the winners across very crowded fields of excellent spicy sauces, spices, confections, etc etc etc!!!  So without further ado, here are the lucky winners…”

Me and mustards have a sometimes peculiar relationship. Don’t get me wrong; I’m a lover of a fine, flavorful mustard. Yet I’m picky, fussy, and hard to please in a number of ways when it comes to the pungent condiment. I’m a fan of the straight, bright yellow table mustard, but only in a certain limited range of applications. I go crazy for a sweet and spicy honey mustard with incredible depth, a good deal of sweetness and an overall smoothness to taste the extremely sharp edge off.

But an ultra-bitter, nasal-y, sharp, horseradish, or a whole-grain mustard? My view on them can vary from unsavory to that of “I can’t wipe off my tongue enough after sampling it!”. So if you want me to like a mustard, it had better delivery on several different fronts or else it’s not going to please my finicky tongue.

El Diablo Hot and Spicy Mustards is a fairly new company that aims to change the game when it comes to fiery mustards. And make no mistake, El Diablo is not ashamed of the “spicy” moniker, as their marketing mentions, “flavors so powerful, so hot, so intense…not even the devil could resist”. But can their flavors – namely Mango, Smokey Chipotle, Steakhouse, Texas Chili, Jalapeno, and Habanero Hot & Spicy Mustards – fit in squarely with my particular palette? Well read on to find out if I liked these…

Currently airing on local Louisiana television are a few commercials for the Louisiana Hot Sauce Festival, which is being held at Acadian Village, Lafayette, LA on July 19th and 20th! For those of us not residing on southern Louisiana, you can watch these Cajun-flavored videos below: