Turn Up The Heat This Winter
by Rachel Vidoni

As transplants to New England from the dry heat of Arizona, my husband and I are fond of anything spicy or reminiscent of our beloved Mexican food, including hot sauce. You can imagine our excitement when we got the call to attend a local hot sauce tasting event in Plymouth—a chance to blind-sample a dozen products made, marketed, and sold locally, using many local ingredients and farm-grown peppers.

Martha Stone graciously offered her Plymouth restaurant as venue.* The old tavern’s ambiance seemed at first more suited to a succotash tasting, with the low ceilings, wide plank wood floors, and sepia toned photographs adorning the walls, but the sauces looked perfectly cozy in the gold-rimmed china saucers—dainty dishes of yellow, orange, and red in keeping with the season.

Bottles and jars covered in brown paper set the stage for the two dozen tasters to sample the products without being biased by pretty labels or ingredient lists. Our instructions were to evaluate sauces on personal taste—not just on perceived heat. The purpose wasn’t to come up with a number one winner across the board, but rather to help categorize and characterize the sauces using our own subjective palates. What sets one person’s lips ablaze might just light someone else’s fire; what one person thinks is too sweet might be a saving grace for those with a tender tongue.

Mayflower Brewing Company IPA and Golden Ale—generous donations from the Plymouth brewery—proved the perfect compliments to the spice of the evening and a welcome respite from the heat. Also on hand were some heat-absorbing foods: Southern-style lima beans, turnip greens and corn bread, Puerto Rican surullitos (cheesy corn fritters), and West Indian salt cod fritters.

Guests meandered around four different sauce locations scooping, sampling, and jotting down notes and ratings. A glance through the record sheets divided tasters into three basic categories: sweet-lovers who prefer fruity, mild sauces; folks who like their heat on the roasted, smoky side; and the straight-up chile-heads who relish pure fire. Securely in the last category, my husband gave a straight-As to the hottest sauces there, and after watching him choke and cough through his bite of #12, I took the cue that it was probably too hot for me. When he regained his composure he said, “Wow. That’s a really good sauce.” A nearby taster commented, “I started with #12. Now I can’t taste anything!”

“What I’d like to know,” I asked at one point, “is how some of you feel tomorrow morning after eating the really hot sauces…say, after your first cup of coffee.” It got chuckles, but no one volunteered a phone number for a morning-after interview.  There were guests who commented they would have liked to taste each sauce in order of heat—starting with milder sauces and working up to the hotter ones—to avoid taste-bud burn-out between samples. But where’s the fun in that? The suspense of what you’re going to experience in that little dab of goodness is half the excitement. Paper napkins and long sleeves were deployed to wipe sweating brows and runny noses, and the stalwart tasters soldiered on, never knowing when they’d hit the next “sneaky sauce”, as one person put it.

So, what were the results?

Sailor’s Swagger, Heartbreak Sauce, and Torch-ered Heartbreak were voted the sweetest in the bunch, with Torch-ered Heartbreak Sauce having the most heat of these three. It was noted that the Heartbreak Sauce had a “sweet, sweet Asian style,” or belonged on “toast.” One guest noted that there was “nothing else like” Sailor’s Swagger, with its bright yellow color and intense pineapple-y flavor. Not surprisingly, it was the only one enjoyed by a child at the tasting.

Dickie’s Sweet Burn, and Web of Life’s Heirloom Pepper Sauce, and Hungarian Hot Wax carried the most roasted pepper flavor.  All three had a fair amount of heat to them—probably in the medium category—but each of these exhibited a pleasant complexity as well as heat.

Interestingly, tasters perceived six sauces (half the entries!) as “hottest”; but a clear pattern emerged on analysis: Walter’s Island Fusion (the fabled “Sauce #12”) was the clear leader in pure heat, followed by Web of Life’s Habanero and Walter’s Caribbean Hot Pepper Sauce. Descriptions included: “dilating pupils!” or “hot, fast and in your face!” My favorite comment of the night was written after a guest had tried Walter’s Island Fusion; “Having a hard time gathering my thoughts, my words are exiting thru my wide open pores.” Another merely scrawled, “Thrilling!”

So what did we discover in the end? Well, that taste is subjective (which we knew), that there are many local hot sauces available (which we may not have known), and that there truly is a sauce for every palate (which is good to know). Each person was able to find and identify a favorite sauce or three, a condiment to add to almost any dish. Chilis, soups, stews, meats, veggies, dips, and, apparently, even toast, could benefit from a little kick of one or more of the sauces we sampled—just the thing to spice up warm, winter comfort food. A jar or two would be perfect gifts or stocking stuffers for sauce lovers you may know. Personally, I now have a list of sauces to buy my husband—the three that made him sweat.  During the cold winter months, nothing says love like a little heat.

Local hot sauces keep you warm from the inside out!
(a partial list):

Heirloom Pepper Sauce

Heirloom Pepper Sauce is truly a work of “heart.” Donna Blischke created her sauce six years ago for her husband, a hot sauce connoisseur. It was also a great way to use the peppers and produce she grew on her farm. “I'm proud to say the pepper seeds are ordered in the spring, started in my greenhouse, grown out in the fields, harvested and cooked into hot sauce all on the farm. Everything from the seedling to the finished bottle is certified organic by Baystate Organic Certifiers. The salt and the vinegar are the only off-farm ingredients.” A blend of her peppers lends Heirloom Pepper Sauce its heat, which varies according to the variety of peppers used. Blischke’s favorite way to use her sauce is to drizzle it in homemade chili and on cornbread, adding flavor as well as a little zing.

Cost: $6.00
Purchase at: Plymouth Farmers’ Market and on their website.
Heirloom Pepper Sauce
Web of Life Farm
71 Silva St. Carver, MA 02330
(508) 866-7712
www.weboflifefarm.com

Caribbean Hot Pepper Sauce

As a child, Phil Walters would cut peppers for his mother, learning her secrets for making this Caribbean-inspired hot sauce. “My mother used to make the hot sauce without the goggles or anything us modern makers use. This is really her recipe.” Caribbean Hot Sauce has a mango base, hints of curry powder, and gets its heat from local habañero and scotch bonnet peppers. Walters has been making his sauces at the Dartmouth Grange or the Vermont Food Venture Center since 2004, and he test markets his sauces in Vermont before selling them here in Massachusetts. This sauce is a perfect accompaniment to steak or chicken, or it can be used to flavor soups and stews.

Cost: $8.00
Purchase at: Plimoth Plantation, local farmers’ markets, and online.
Caribbean Hot Sauce
19 Nottingham Drive
Kingston, MA 02364
(781) 588-0070
www.waltersspecialtyfoods.com

Dickie’s Sweet Burn

Twenty years ago, Richard Westhaver was hit with spicy inspiration while vacationing on the island of Montserrat in the Caribbean. “I would make batches of hot sauce to pass the time and use some of the beautiful habañero peppers the locals would grow and sell at the farmers’ market on the weekends.” Today he makes his sauce closer to home out in western Massachusetts. Made from a blend of habañero peppers, bananas, mangoes, pineapple, and freshly ground spices, Dickie’s Sweet Burn adds perfect heat to hot wings, fajitas, seafood, and pizza. Double the burn by adding it to your Bloody Mary and your omelet on a weekend morning.

Cost: $6.00
Purchase at: BoTes in Norwell, Good Health stores in Hanover and Quincy, and online.
Dickie’s Sweet Burn
P.O. Box 635
Norwell, MA 02061
(781) 659-9393
www.dickiessweetburn.com

Heartbreak Hot Sauce

This new hot sauce is made from fire roasted red peppers, brown sugar, white wine, garlic, and chili extract. The original Heartbreak Sauce debuted in March of this year, with the hotter version—“Torch-ered Heartbreak”—making its appearance in October. The sweet roasted peppers stand out among the flavors, making it a perfect fit for everything from pizza and stir fry to burgers and dogs. You can also mix it with hummus or soft cheese for a spicy veggie dip. Owners Gregg and JoAnn Marsh are committed to sustainability and purchase locally grown garlic and produce whenever possible. “Our first year has been a great learning experience and we can’t wait to work with the local farmers and vendors we’ve met as we grow and come up with new flavors!”

Approx. $6.50Purchase at: Braintree, Hingham, Dewey Square, and North Attleboro farmers’ markets. For 14 other retail locations, please visit their website.
Burning Love Sauces
27 St. Marks Rd. #3
Dorchester, MA 02124
(617) 533-7342
www.BurninLoveSauces.com

Tropical Spice Hot Sauce

Using all fresh ingredients, Tropical Spice Hot Sauce is the perfect balance of sweet and hot. Chef Jens (pronounced “Yens”) Retlev wanted to create a sauce that blended “fresh fruit with peppers to find the right combination of spice to enhance food without burying its own natural flavor.” Heirloom and plum tomatoes, along with pineapple, mango, and banana, give the sauce its sweet base, while habañero and jalapeño peppers add the heat. Work the sauce into ground beef for a fabulous burger, or add a generous amount to a prosciutto and melon appetizer.

Cost: $6.00Purchase at: Local grocery and specialty shops, and on their website.
Wicked Good Company
High Street, Bristol, RI 02809
(401) 636-1517
www.wickednatural.com

Sailor’s Swagger

Do you know a “hottie?” Andy Hatch knows over 300 of them, and you may be one yourself. Hatch describes a hottie as someone who loves hot sauce, plain and simple. If you refer a friend to him, he’ll send a free bottle of his sauce to that person. Since 2007, he’s handed out over 4,000 samples of his sweet and spicy hot sauce at the Phantom Gourmet Food Festival in Boston. Pineapple lends this sauce a signature flavor, along with mango, lime juice, garlic, and honey. The spicy heat comes from habañero peppers and ginger. Because of its Caribbean flavor, Hatch says it’s especially delicious paired with fish—conch fritters, bluefish, scallops, littlenecks, and kingfish among others. It’s also great with beans and rice and mixed with guacamole or sour cream as a dip. As far as Hatch is concerned, you can put his sauce on anything. “Even wraps and sandwiches taste better with a little swagger!”

Cost: $5.99-$6.99 Purchase at: British Beer Company restaurants, specialty food stores, and online.
Sailor’s Swagger
Andy Hatch
9 South St. Grafton, MA 01519
(774) 275-0282
www.sailorsswagger.com