A few weeks ago, we had written about an article which talked about Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap in Chicago and their dedication to spicy fare. Well, the debate rages on…this time about the merits of spicy chicken wings. Check out this cool article from HALife.com which revisits Jake Melnick’s as well as other topics:

A hot debate takes wing

By Peter Rowe
Copley News Service

There are two sides to the Buffalo chicken wings debate.

“There’s nothing better,” said author and restaurateur Kevin Roberts about enjoying a big plate of Buffalo wings. “But it’s all about the flavor. You don’t want it so hot that you can’t taste the food.”

In the heated argument over hot sauces, Roberts represents one side. Don’t call his side unmanly, though - at least not in Roberts’ hearing. His new hangout, East Village Tavern & Bowl in San Diego, is a testosterone-enriched haven for sports fans.

Besides, Roberts has a point. Thermonuclear sauces incinerate everything in their path, including the food’s flavors. That’s no fun.

Or is it?

On the other side of the hot sauce issue is Robin Rosenberg, chef de cuisine at Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap in Chicago. Before ripping into Rosenberg’s wings, diners must sign a waiver: “These wings are gonna be really H-O-T, and I hereby declare that the terms of this waiver and release have been completely read, and I totally get and voluntarily accept that I have no right to whine about anything that happens to my mouth after I accept the challenge.

“I am psyched. I am proud. I am ready.

“So bring ‘em on!”

Time to pick a side.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Well, we finally manage to upload our photos of the 2008 Cinco D’Ohio show and it is now available for viewing:

Cinco D’Ohio 2008 slideshow

Many of the pictures were good, some were not. All are available for viewing/digestion. It was awesome fun both being a judge for all the competitions as well as just enjoying the show. Enjoy the pics!

We will have our own pictorial rendition of the goings on from this past weekend’s Cinco D’Ohio event at the North Market, but in the meantime we’d like to offer up some pictures courtesy of Donavan Stanley at the Mommy It Burns Blog. Check it out:

Geckofiend’s 2008 Cinco D’Ohio photo album

Donavan was victorious for the amateur hot sauce contest, and we were lucky enough to get some samples of his sauce for our very own consumption. Yes, we will be reviewing those at some point soon. Stay tuned!!

Just in time for Cinco de Mayo comes this article from the Lake Oswego Review which re-hashes the subject of chile pepper hotness. A review for most chileheads, but informational nonetheless:

How hot is that red-hot chile pepper anyway?

By Barb Randall

Ole! Cinco de Mayo fiestas will be happening this week, with prodigue el banquete (lavish banquets) filled with zippy salsas, rich moles and the vibrant flavors common to Mexican and Tex-Mex cuisines. We can credit at least some of the cuisines flavors to chiles.

Most of us have a tale or two about unexpected encounters with chiles. Stories about dishes so hot they caused tears to roll down cheeks, smoke to billow out of ears and flames to erupt from mouths. The images are comical, but frankly, except by tasting, how can you tell how hot a chili might be?

Pharmacologist Wilber Scoville was intrigued by that very question and in 1912, he set out to determine the different heat levels of a wide variety of chiles. His experimentation led to the invention of the Scoville Organoleptic Test, the first systematic laboratory approach for measuring a chile’s pungency or heat.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

Chuck Evans gifted us with this jar of salsa goodness back at the 2008 North Market Fiery Foods Festival, so we decided to crack this jar of Raspberry Lime Salsa open right ahead of this coming weekend’s Cinco D’Ohio festival just to get a taste (no pun intended) of some of the stuff which will be available there at the show. Now I will admit to not being the biggest fan of fruit salsas in general or even to chipotle, so I hoped to give this a more fair & balanced take on it. For one thing, it’s hard to go wrong with this list of ingredients:

Ingredients: tomatoes, tomato puree, onions, red raspberries in syrup, chile peppers, Smokey Chipotle (R) pepper sauce, lime juice, lemon juice, vinegar, herbs and spices

Now this is the kind of list we like to see in the products we try…nothing but real ingredients without any chemical-sounding names of ingredients. Here’s the description of the salsa from Chuck’s website:

Chuck’s very original mild red raspberry salsa is spiked with fresh lime juice along with a hint of smokey chipotle providing layers of flavor. Serve over a block of cream cheese; top off a char-grilled pork chop; or drizzle over vanilla ice cream. Provecho!

Taste: We didn’t do anything fancy-shmancy with this salsa, but rather just ate it straight out of the jar with some tortilla chips. Given the recipe suggestions above, we wanted to try it au natural to see how it would do unadulterated by other stuff. The result? This was a surprisingly good salsa that Joe had to be restrained from finishing all in one sitting! The salsa base is a little on the thin side, but has big chunks of tomatoes and raspberries to whet your appetite. The heat is indeed on the mild side as the label suggests, perhaps 3/10 for heat, but the incredible taste will make you forget that it’s not all that hot & spicy. Great combination of chipotle flavor as well, which isn’t too smoky or sweet with the fruit in the salsa. It has a smooth flavor that really balances the peppery flavor with the combination of raspberry and lime.

Although we didn’t try it ourselves, take Chuck’s hints about the cream cheese and pork chops. This salsa would be amazing with those. You could certainly do this with ice cream or just about any dessert, and we think this would be great drizzled over cheesecake. Yum!

Overall recommendation: For those of you who think that fruit salsas are too sweet or may not truly be in to the flavor of chipotle…then this is the salsa for you. It’s definitely on the milder side of the chilehead spectrum, but it has enough heat to keep you interested at least. While you can find lots of uses in cooking for this salsa, it really is good straight out of the jar. We’d love to see a spicier version of this someday, but for now we’ll be licking the insides of the jar until we need to get some more. Try some for yourself and see what you think. Enjoy!

It can be a rarity indeed when we crank out a review truly quickly, so we allow a little inspiration to take hold of us when we have the chance. Such is the case with this new Honey BBQ sauce from the mad geniuses at Torchbearer Sauces. This is the first new product we’ve tried from Torchbearer in quite a while, but we have always enjoyed their products in the past…so we had no inclination that this sauce would be any different. It’s the first bottle that strays from their non-woozie eight ounce bottle that’s been a standard issue for their stuff, and comes in a huge-mongous sixteen ounce bottle.

Ingredients: tomato paste, water, honey, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, molasses, worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, chili pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, lemon juice, oregano

Kudos to the gang for sticking to all-natural ingredients. An automatic thumbs-up from us for that!

We’ve seen this story in a couple of other media outlets, but this article on the Fast Food Maven blog sums it up better than any of the other sources. We here at the Hot Zone Online sorta doubt this new hot sauce would hurt a single molecule on the taste buds of most chileheads, but it’s great to think that Del Taco has finally seen the light about making some better hot sauce for their tacos. Read:

Del Taco debuts blazing hot Del Inferno
April 28th, 2008

Today, Southern California’s iconic taco chain, Del Taco, debuts its first new hot sauce in 15 years.

The blazing hot item is dubbed Del Inferno and is three times hotter than any hot sauces served at rival chains, Del Taco said. (Del Taco’s two other offerings are mild sauce and Del Scorcho.)

So, how does Del Taco know Inferno sizzles past its rivals?

The Mexican fast-food chain had Del Inferno tested against its competitors by Certified Laboratories. The New York-based food analysis company tested the competing sauces using the infamous Scoville scale, which measures the hotness or piquancy of a chili pepper.

Del Taco didn’t give the results, or list the names of the rival hot sauces that Del Inferno beat. But rest assured, Del Inferno is one hot mama, according to the chain’s marketing reps.

“There’s no doubt about it, Del Inferno will set your scalp ablaze,” said Mimi Somerman, chief marketing officer at Del Taco.

While we’re generally “on the clock” for the world of hot sauces and spicy food stuff, we took a break this past weekend down to Lexington, KY. You see, once upon a time, Joe was a student at the University of Kentucky. For most of his 5 years there, he was a disc jockey for the campus alternative radio station, known as WRFL-FM. This was a tremendous opportunity for right-brained creative expression for Joe for so long and it has been sorely missed since he graduated in 1994. Well, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the creation of WRFL, of which Joe became a DJ shortly thereafter. In fact, Ashley Judd was a fellow DJ at that station while Joe was there…even if he never really saw her in person.

This whole past week has been a series of events to commemorate the 20th anniversary of WRFL, and it culminated last night with a 12-hour festival entitled the FreeKY festival. It was an amazingly fun time, and it was so nice to see a lot of people that Joe hadn’t seen in several years at least. Lots of fun was had!

Anyhoo, we’ll be back at our usual stuff again tomorrow. Stay tuned!!

Friend of the Hot Zone Online, W.O. Hesperus, showed off its hot sauce-making muscle recently with great results. Check out this article from NECN.com:

Maine hot sauce maker takes top prize

(Marnie MacLean, NECN: Maine) - A hot sauce maker from Maine went home with the top prize at a Louisiana festival. NECN’s Marnie MacLean has the story.

At W.O. Hespers in Portland, Maine, Dan Stevens is the chief cook and bottle washer…literally. Dan started making hot sauces in his kitchen ten years ago…and now, his original recipe has won top honors at the Cajun Hot Sauce Festival in Louisiana.

Stevens: “That award went to Tabasco last year..and their factory is in the neighborhood. It’s nice to beat the big boys now and then.”

And beat them in their own backyard. Dan started making the sauces as an activity to do with his three kids. The hobby turned into a business and now, he has twenty sauces….but it’s the first one he ever made…called Canceaux sauce that got folks in Louisiana talking.

The sauce is named for a British ship that burned Portland back in 1775. Dan tells you, it starts sweet…then you taste the garlic.

Click here to read the rest of the source article

I remembered reading another review of this hot sauce online a couple of months ago and wished that I had had some of my own to try and then…WHAMMO! Todd Ross of Bisummo sends us a request to taste their hot sauce for ourselves. It was as though he was reading our minds. Thanks for using your Jedi mind powers for the forces of good, Todd. Soon thereafter, a couple of bottles of their Ass Murdering Hot Sauce showed up on our doorstep and I wasted very little time in cracking open the bottle and pouring over and in just about everything except breakfast cereal.

There’s a lot of “ass” hot sauces out there these days. You’ve probably seen them. Ass in the Tub. Baboon Ass. Neal’s Hairy Ass. Ass Kickin. Big Daddy’s Ass Burn. Ass Blaster. Flaming Coon Ass. Ass Reaper. Smack My Ass and Call Me Sally. The list goes on and on.

Face it, folks…that’s a lot of ass. Despite the fact that this sauce also highlights the “ass” (it’s a donkey…get it?), this sauce is one of a kind. I am also glad to I can say that that is a good thing. This sauce doesn’t reinvent the wheel with its ingredients, but it has an impressive list of good stuff.

Ingredients: lime juice (lime juice from concentrate, sodium benzoate, lime oil, sodium metabisulfite), jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, dijon mustard (water, vinegar, mustard seed, salt, white wine, fruit pectin, citric acid, tartaric acid, sugar, spice), garlic, habanero peppers, vinegar, molasses, olive oil, turmeric
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