FireTalkers
Interviews with the producers and makers, movers and shakers in the fiery food and BBQ world.
Firetalkers: Interview With Steve Seabury of High River Sauces
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One of the newer sauce creators of 2011, Steve Seabury of High River Sauceswas casually introduced to many of us chilehead bloggers at this year's Peppers at the Beach, where we were first introduced to his own Hellacious Hot Sauce (review to come soon!). During that event, he and I mutually discovered that we were fellow metalheads, and graciously gave me a copy of his Mosh Potatoes cookbook, which features dozens of juicy recipes from a bevy of well-known hard rockin' bands. Under the High River Sauces banner, Steve also produces sauces for other parties, and is slowly expanding his own condiment line at the same time...
Scott: What's your professional background?
Steve: I currently work for a record company called eOne Entertainment. For the past 17 years I have been honored to work for various management, marketing and record companies.
Scott: And a lot of what you do is focused around heavy metal music. What do you like most about metal?
Steve: I love the "F*** YOU" attitude in heavy metal music. Most people are terrified to say what they want because of the PC Police. I say crank it up and give the middle finger to the system. Metal is all about having balls and about conforming to your own beliefs...
Firetalkers: Interview With Darrell Fitch of Big Dawg Salsa
If you utter the phrase "King and Queen of Texas Salsa," many heat freaks will think of Darrell and Candy Fitch of Big Dawg Salsa. A firefighter by trade, Darrell began tinkering with different salsa variations for everyone at the firehouse; and once the flavor profiles were nailed down, he and his wife decided to go commercial with his addictive products.
Not only has this award-winning couple churned out several scrumptious salsas, but also condiments, ToriDuck Bloody Mary Mix, seasonings and hot sauces (which include the DNR - Do Not Resuscitate Sauce, one of the earliest commercial sauces to contain the Trinidad Scorpion chile pepper back in 2009).
Big Dawg Salsa items have been reviewed in years past on chile blogs such as The Hot Zone Online and Hot Sauce Blog, and have been written about in Chile Pepper Magazine and showcased on Good Morning America. In November of last year, Darrell and Candy garnered more national exposure by being featured on the Cooking Channel's FoodCrafters where they waxed poetic about their Double Dawg Dare Ya Salsa.
If you're a novice to the fiery foods biz and...
Firetalkers: Interview With Jennifer Reynolds of Sauce Goddess
More finger lickin' good and more divinely delectable than a Mount Olympus of Barbeque Barons, Sauce Goddess' sauces, glazes and rubs aren't to be missed by anyone serious about craving bold flavors added to even the most hum-drum pieces of meat on the grill. Head deity and company founder Jennifer Reynolds debuted the food company over 10 years ago, and her products have made inroads from her native San Diego, California through many parts of the country with strong, steady growth and continual exposure to new customers. I recently asked Jennifer a few questions about herself and her wonderful food enhancers...
San Diego Chile Grower Grows World Record Hot Chiles
Jim Duffy, a grower of the rarest and hottest chiles and owner of Refining Fire Chiles, grew the hottest chiles on record in 2010.
Scott: So why no official record with the Trinidad Scorpion?
Jim: It's a long story and time to tell it. After sending one of my Trinidad Scorpion Peppers to Dave DeWitt in New Mexico in 2009, the journey began. Dave DeWitt is called "Pope of Peppers" and is the author of many chile pepper books. Dave gave the pepper to his long time friend Marlin Bensinger, a chemical engineer and one of the foremost experts on capsaicin science. Marlin tested it and it came in higher than the Bhut Jolokia.
So in 2010 I grew some Trinidad Scorpion and Trinidad 7 Pot plants for Marlin to put into the fields in New Mexico.
Marlin drove out to Lakeside, California just east of San Diego to...
FireTalkers: Interview with Sylvia Matzke-Hill of Buffalo Wild Wings
I think that as fiery foods become more and more mainstream, restaurants serving buffalo wings (traditionally fried, unbreaded chicken wings) and/or hot wings (typically buffalo wings with breading) will grow exponentially to the point of being just as commonplace as burgers or pizza (some may argue that they already are).
Buffalo Wild Wings is America's most popular chicken wing-centric chain in terms of number of locations, with over 700 stores across 43 U.S. States. The company was founded 28 years ago as Buffalo Wing Wings and Weck and was sometimes abbreviated as BW3. Since then, the "Weck" (aka a kummelweck sandwich with beef) part was dropped as the chain focused more on sports bar food along with a multimedia-fueled game day atmosphere.
Not only as a fan of Buffalo Wild Wings, but as one who covers popular spicy foods, I knew I had to speak with someone as this genre becomes a major force in American cuisine. Sylvia Matzke-Hill, Director of Research and Development for BWW, recently took time out of her busy schedule to talk with me about the process of creating new products and sauces, the new seasonings, and the whole debate on B-Dubs' hottest sauce, Blazin' Sauce, its Scoville Heat Unit rating.
Scott: Can you give me a brief history of Buffalo Wild Wings?
Sylvia: It started about 27 years ago by a couple of guys named Scott Lowery and Jim Disbrow. They were both going to Ohio State University at the time. They were out late at night looking for some great buffalo wings, they
FireTalkers: Interview with Doehne Duckworth of Deano's Jalapenos
One of the highlights of the 2010 Fiery Foods Show definitely had to have been Deano's Jalapeños Cheddar Jalapeño Chips. One taste of them and I know they were something special. Produced under the banner of the Ranch Camp Chip Company, owner Doehne "Deano" Duckworth developed these unique snacks at The Cactus Cafй, his restaurant in Stowe, Vermont. With a couple of hot sauce trade shows under his belt, as well as distribution of his snack chips to over 30 specialty food locations, Doehne is in position to explode in the fiery foods world.
Although these products were available in 2009, Deano's Jalapeños are an easy contender for my product of the year for 2010. And in addition to the Cheddar flavor, Deano's Jalapeños are now available in Ranch with Habanero chips on the way, as well as other possible versions and concepts that Doehne mentions below.
I'm predicting a big and bright future for Doehne and his innovative snacks, so when I was recently given the opportunity to interview Doehne I jumped at the chance...
FireTalkers: Interview with Chip Hearn of Peppers
Chip Hearn, along with his sister Randi and his father Luther, were all involved in the culinary world by being regionally-renown chefs and co-owning eateries in Delaware. Inside the the Hearns' Starboard Restaurant, their then-flagship business (they've since sold it to new owners), what began as an abnormally large hot sauce collection for their weekend Bloody Mary smorgasbord soon blossomed into one of the local draws. The growing number of hot sauces became so popular (patrons would request bottles to take home) that the Hearns decided to erect their own structure in which to store and sell their spicy wares - a building that was literally a metal shed planted outside in the Starboard's parking lot. This was the genesis of the Peppers shop.
Since then, the Peppers store has since been renovated and moved thrice. It is now located in roomier digs at Rehoboth Beach, just a short car drive from its original location. It houses one of the largest sauce collections on this little blue orb, and because of that fact it's turned into one of the true chilehead meccas in the United States.
An even larger hot sauce collection was accumulated over the years by Chip and family. The bottles started as the display at the Starboard, surpassed Chuck Evans' own previously-held record and twenty years later boasts far and away the most bottles of different pepper-based sauces owned by anyone in the world - over 9,000.
Chip has also entered the competition...
FireTalkers: Interview With Dustin Larsen of Ott Foods
My Ott's stories are the following. I first heard about the name "Ott's" from an artwork contest my mom entered me in when I was a young lad. I cannot recollect what the subject of the drawing was, but whatever I has done was enough to win me a bright yellow t-shirt (you gotta love the late 1970s!) with the red Ott's logo. I found out that they were a Missouri company and not from (all together now with a cowpoke drawl) "New York City!"
Fast-forward 15 or so years after having been casually familiar with a few of Ott's salad dressings. My wife and I frequented St. Louis area Denny's restaurants and became addicted to their Buffalo Chicken Strips. After I first tasted them and I absolutely had to get my grubby little paws on the sauce with which they coated them. After a bit of research my wife and I found that these Denny's locales used, yup, you guessed it, Ott's Original Wing Sauce. A bottle of it has been in our kitchen ever since.
Ott Foods was founded almost seven decades ago in the small town of Carthage, Missouri and has since spread its wings across a large section of the central U.S. in both the retail and foodservice markets and specializes in rich, creamy dressings and sauces. I recently chatted with Dustin Larsen of Ott Foods to get a take on where the company has been and where it may be headed in the future...
FireTalkers: Interview with Steve Hoffmann of Old Vienna LLC
If you live in the St. Louis area, you should unmistakably know about Old Vienna LLC and its flagship product, Red Hot Riplets potato chips. The love and devotion for these snack products are legendary. Fiery foods fans and junk food lovers across the Gateway City come to these when they're craving a tongue-burning crunch. Rapper Murphy Lee of Nelly's St. Lunatics wrote a song about Red Hot Riplets. Readers of St. Louis' alternative paper Riverfront Times have voted these spiced beauties "Best Potato Chips" in town. There was even a Facebook group devoted to distributing the ridge-cut chips to campuses nationwide (the company's official distribution area had largely only been the greater St. Louis metro area). Now, everyone in the United States has a shot at sampling these sweet n' pungent, BBQ-tinged snacks from heaven by purchasing then at the new e-commerce capable Old Vienna website.
It all could have disappeared years ago. According to the St. Louis Business Journal, the snack company, known since the 1930s as the Old Vienna Snack Food Co...
FireTalkers: Interview with Steve Burnham of Blue's BBQ
With the hot sauce and barbecue markets cluttered with hawkers of crappy extracts and "me-too" products not worthy of a second purchase, it's refreshing to see those in the industry who believe in the rock-solid principles of quality and integrity. Steve Burnham of Blue's BBQ is one such person. He is an ex-pilot, BBQ caterer, musician and is now in the sauce business full time.
Steve believes in creating quality sauces that don't fit neatly within one sub-genre of condiments or food-toppers; and in fact, they transcend multiple categories by being all-purpose table sauces (a topic we'll get into later in the interview). His Blue's BBQ offerings like Blue's Carolina Pepper Sauce and Blue's Habanero Reserve work with just about anything that's currently in your refrigerator, freezer or kitchen cupboards.
Just released a few months ago, Blue's Chipotle Mustard Pepper Sauce is an outstanding blend that delicately balances sensations of sweet, smoky, tangy and lightly spicy unlike most other sauces I've come across in the past few years. I absolutely love it and consider it to be an early candidate for my sauce of the year for 2010.
Anyway, Steve conversed with me a few weeks ago about his sauces, distribution of his products and his general thoughts on the fiery foods industry.
Scott: What did you do before you started making sauces?
FireTalkers - Interview with Wayne Brawley of 2 Brothers Salsa
Here's the story: Texan Chef Wayne Brawley obtained a large amount of fresh tomatoes from his mother, so instead of letting them go to waste he decided to fire roast half of them and concoct a salsa recipe from them. Wayne's family became big fans of his newly-spawned product, in particular his brother Wesley, who encouraged Wayne to continue to make salsa and suggested he tried to sell it in stores. Wesley had passed away in 2004. Wayne entered a pair of salsa contests with his chipotle-infused creation and took home First Place prizes for both. Believing he had a viable product on his hands, Wayne decided to take his brother's urgings to market the salsa to retail locations around Texas. In honor of his late brother, he called it 2 Brothers Salsa.
I've asked Wayne some questions to shed additional light on his past, his company and salsa today, and what lies ahead for him and industry...
Scott: Where are you and your family from geographically?
Wayne: We live in the North Dallas area currently. My wife and I both...
FireTalkers - Interview with Kevin Benz of Twodogs Unleashed
Attempting 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...
FireTalkers - Interview with John Dilley of Defcon Sauces
Defcon Creator, AKA John Dilley, stands in his "Mad Max meets the Matrix" outfit at the 2009 Weekend of Fire at Jungle Jim's.
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...
FireTalkers: Interview with Neil Smith of The Hippy Seed Company
Based out of Ettalong Beach, New South Wales, Australia (approximately one hour north of Sydney), Neil Smith of The Hippy Seed Company is known for breeding and selling chilli pepper plants, seeds and powders, which include some of the hottest capsicum varieties in the world, such as the hallowed Naga/Bhut Jolokia. He's recently began developing sauces, which by some reports produce an mouth-numbing burn that hardcore heat freaks would love and a taste foodies would admire.
Neil is probably gained the most notoriety for doing his on-camera Chilli Tests and Chilli Sauce Tests on his YouTube channel. He's bravely consumed everything from the ultra-nuclear Trinidad Scorpion chilli pepper to some of the world's hottest natural and extract sauces while providing the global video viewing audience his reactions and thoughts. With this unique angle, Neil is quickly becoming one of the most well-known - and entertaining - reviewers of fiery eats.
As a side note, in honor of the Aussies (and everyone else in the English-speaking world outside of North America), I've ditched the Western Hemisphere spelling of "chile" in this post in favor of "chilli".;-) Cheers!
Scott: What are the origins of The Hippy Seed Company?
Neil: I started Peninsula Lawnmowing in 1998 and was always in peoples' gardens, so I started taking cuttings and I was given plants by my customers. As a hobby I built a little website and had a few non hot types of chillis and capsicums. I put some seeds of the plants I grew...
FireTalkers: Dave DeWitt on His New Book, The Complete Chile Pepper Book
The last time I interviewed Dave DeWitt for this site, the focus of the questions and answers was to help dispel some of the annoying myths about chile peppers and hot sauces that continue to float around in popular culture.
This time out, it's to talk about his latest literary excursion, The Complete Chile Pepper Book: A Gardener's Guide to Choosing, Growing, Preserving, and Cooking, which he co-authored with a longtime colleague and fellow chile expert, Dr. Paul Bosland of the Chile Pepper Institute. Dave has penned over 35 books during his storied career, most of which have covered spicy foods and the culinary arts. I happen to think that The Complete Chile Pepper Book is not only Dave's best, but also the most comprehensive tome ever written on the subject of genus capsicum. I purchased my copy back in September, and there's hardly a week that goes by that I don't open it up and refer to it for one reason or another. One needn't even be a gardener or a hardcore spicy food cook to benefit from the book; there's enough great information from this book that would interest even fair-weather pepper fans.
The Complete Chile Pepper Book is available from Amazon, and is a beautifully-photographed, full-color, hardcover edition that makes a must-have Christmas gift both for you or the chilehead in your life.
Scott: Everyone in the chile world knows of you and your expertise in all things spicy, but how did you first get into fiery foods?
Dave: After I moved to New Mexico in late 1974, I vowed to start my freelance writing career and starting writing articles on New Mexico food and travel, which led me directly to chiles. I discovered that there was not much available research on the subject, so I went to libraries all over the state and photocopied the librarians' files.
FireTalkers: Interview with Dave Hirschkop of Dave's Gourmet
Dave's Insanity Sauce has the notoriety of not only once being the hottest sauce in the world in the 1990s, but it's probably currently the most famous specialty hot sauce known by non-chileheads. Folks who aren't heat freaks may be able to rattle off three or four "supermarket" pepper sauces like Frank's, Tapatio or Tabasco, but when you press them about giving an example of a super-hot condiment, chances are they'll name Dave's Insanity more often than any other sauce.
It's this distinction and mystique about Insanity Sauce that's kept Dave near or at the top of the fiery foods game for over 15 years. But Dave's Gourmet is far more than just their flagship product; Hirschkop's company offers many other fine pepper sauces, plus pasta sauces, drink mixes, condiments, spicy snacks and more.
I was recently given the chance to speak with Dave to ask him a few questions. One might have expected a wild, gregarious man who once regularly wore a straightjacket to food shows and on the cover of his cookbook, Crazy from the Heat. Instead, Dave proved to be a genial, mild-mannered fellow. After conversing with him, I was given the impression that Dave would rather focus on making his company a diverse brand of gourmet food products ("more of a Trader Joe's or Paul Newman's" in his words) than just being makers of scorchingly hot products, something that would differentiate himself from peers such as Blair's of CaJohn's.
FireTalkers: Interview with John CaJohn Hard of CaJohn's Fiery Foods
John "CaJohn" Hard was one of my "musts" when I made my first mental list of who to interview for my website's FireTalkers section. He a guy who I considered to be one of today's foremost purveyors of heat, yet someone whom I didn't see as the prime interview focus in material that originated in the chilehead world. Sure, CaJohn's Fiery Foods has enjoyed enough attention from the hot sauce blogs to fill a battleship, in the form of product reviews, trade show coverage, and being featured in other chilehead events and discussions. CaJohn relishes interaction with fiery foods fans and they've respectfully returned the favor in spades. But it's been a few years (an eternity in internet time) since CaJohn has had a proper interview or profile done on him and his company from online chilehead community.
What can I say about CaJohn's Fiery Foods that most hardcore heat freaks don't already know about? In the decade-plus time that the Columbus, Ohio company has existed, it has become the winning-est hot sauce manufacturer in America, racking up over 350 prestigious awards, which include dozens of Golden Chiles and Scovies. They have a dizzying array of products that are awesomely delicious (I haven't tasted a weak one yet) and aren't afraid to push the envelope in terms of both heat and flavor. Inside of Columbus' North Market, a foodie paradise, CaJohn's owns both a small hot sauce store and an eatery that serves chili, enchiladas, spicy smoked sausage and nachos. CaJohn and his employees are a fixture at hot sauces shows and open up their own business to chileheads every year after the Weekend of Fire event for an open house and barbecue. CaJohn and his wife Sue participate in an annual congregation of pepper fans (known as the "Fire Mountain Krewe") at his own cabins in Gatlinburg, Tennessee for a weekend of fun and spicy eating.
CaJohn (pronounced "Kay-John", NOT "Kuh-John" or "California John") is a man instantly recognizable with his trademark trimmed Santa Claus beard and pepper print shirts. What's also trademark of him is his enthusiasm about the spicy foods and his willingness to help out both fellow sauce makers and his fans. He was gracious enough to let me ask him a few questions on him and his business...
FireTalkers: Interview with Dan Houston of the Global Warming Salsa Company
Dan Houston of the Global Warming Salsa Co. has one of the most intriging tales of the spicy foods world in recent memory. He and his wife Cherie have been longtime fitness consultants with their own Michigan-based company, Houston Fitness Consultants, and have been using a "chile pepper approach to exercise" (what that is exactly is described by Dan below). Wanting to develop healthy foods and to help raise funds for an exercise and nutrition book for kids, they decided to create salsas to aide them in their quest. A portion of Global Warming's profits also goes to help an organization that aims to help save muscle cars, as Dan is heavily into racing and classic American automobiles.
I think Global Warming has one of the cleverest themes I've seen in a while. Dan choose it as a play on the term heard so often today, but with much different meanings. One, the "Global" in the name is meant as flavors from around the world, as the company currently has a Japanese salsa for sale and will introduce other international flavors over the coming weeks. The "Warming" part is used to represent heat levels found in their products. A combination of these two concepts makes for one very interesting potential marketing angle.
It also doesn't hurt that that Global Warming Salsa Co. has some really high quality and tasty products - so good, in fact, that their fire-roasted salsas have won in the Scovies and The Hot Pepper Awards...
FireTalkers: Interview with Blair Lazar of Blair's Sauces and Snacks
Whether or not you're a fan of his products, you have to admit that few people have had the impact and garnered a cult-like following quite like Blair Lazar of Blair's Sauces and Snacks. I was recently given the opportunity to have an extended conversation with Blair, and he was candid, gushingly accommodating and extremely passionate as we spoke. We touched on several topics, including his reserves (which struck a nerve when I mentioned some were critical of the prices for which they were being sold), being on the internet, his collaboration with rock guitarist Zakk Wylde on the Berserker Sauces, and the fiery foods business.
Scott: For those who have never heard it, what was the "Reader's Digest" version of how you created the Wings of Death challenge while working as a bartender on the Jersey Shore?
Blair: Well, that's the inception of my Death Sauce back in '89, you know bartending, serving drunks on the Jersey Shore. This was before what's happened in the last 20 years, with the proliferation of spice. I think there's something really exciting about watching somebody eat something hot, and that's just as "simpleton" as I can say it. I think when you're serving people liquor, and it's 2 o'clock in the morning, what can you really do that's legal to get them to leave? You can say, "hey, if you can eat my wings you can hang all night at the bar." I would make four of the hottest wings you could possibly find, and tell them...
Firetalkers - Interview with Jim Campbell of Mild to Wild Pepper Company
I've respected Jim Campbell for a long time. The guy's done a great many things which make him an excellent all-around ambassador of the fiery foods industry. If you're relatively new to the hot sauce world, you may or may not know that he has worn many hats (no pun intended) in addition to running the Mild to Wild Pepper and Herb Company. His day job is being a firefighter with the Pike Township Fire Department in Indianapolis, Indiana, which instantly earns him the title of "hero" in my book. Jim has founded the Step Up for Charity organization a not-for-profit group that raises funds for charitable organizations, and he once held the world record for stair climbing (106,000 stairs in one 24-hour period!) that he used to help promote this great cause. On his commercial fields, he grows chile peppers that supplies chiles to a large segment of the U.S. specialty hot sauce market. On his fields he also hosts the annual Woodstock-like "Open Fields" pepper event every fall, where chileheads converge for a weekend to pick chiles and to celebrate the spicy life. Overall, Jim is an intriguing individual, so I'm pleased to have been able to ask Jim a few questions, and he was more than happy to provide his often humorous, always knowledgeable insight...
Spicy Food Reviews - Hot Sauces, Spicy Snacks, and more.
