Shownotes
The central theme of this podcast episode is an in-depth exploration of the intricate relationships between hot sauces, salsas, and barbecue sauces, as articulated by our esteemed guest, John Hallner, the Hot Sauce Sensei. In our discussion, we delve into the culinary elements that define these condiments, emphasizing how their foundational ingredients such as peppers, vinegar, and sweetness contribute to their unique flavor profiles. Hallner elucidates the distinctions and commonalities among these sauces, drawing attention to how regional variations influence their composition and culinary applications. Furthermore, we examine the burgeoning trend of hot honey and its rising popularity in contemporary cuisine, alongside the complexities of balancing heat and flavor in homemade sauces. This episode promises to enrich our listeners' understanding of flavor dynamics, ultimately guiding them toward crafting their own signature sauces.
Links referenced in this episode:
- paintedhillsnaturalbeef.com
- barbecuenationjt.com
- oregon dungeness crab
- oregondungeness.org
- heritagesteel
- hammerstahl.us
Companies mentioned in this episode:
- Painterdale's Natural Beef
- Yellowbird
- Gator Hammock
- Swamp Dragon
- Instacart
- Tabasco
- Sweet Baby Rays
- Heritage Steel
- Weston Kia
- Hammerstahl
- Spicy Shark
- Underwood Ranches
This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:
OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy
Transcripts
It's time for Barbecue Nation with jt.
Speaker A:So fire up your grill, light the charcoal, and get your smoker cooking.
Speaker A:Now from the Turnito Burnett studios in Portland, here's jt.
Speaker A:This is an encore.
Speaker A:Hey, everybody.
Speaker A:Welcome to Barbecue Nation, or as we like to call it, just the Nation.
Speaker A:I'm jt, along with my co commander, radio wife, and hall of famer, Ms. Leanne Whippen.
Speaker A:Dave and Chris are doing whatever they do do.
Speaker A:I've not figured it out over the years, but they're always got a smile on their face.
Speaker A:We'd like to thank the folks at Painterdale's natural beef Beef the way nature intended.
Speaker A:You can check them out online@painted hillsnaturalbeef.com Our guest today, John Hallner, if you follow him on Twitter, Instagram, that kind of stuff is the hot sauce.
Speaker A:Sensei, I saw one of John's earliest blogs, and this is two, three years ago, and how hot sauce is the common thread between salsa and barbecue sauce.
Speaker A:And I, and I liked that piece of.
Speaker A:So I asked him to be one of our field correspondents.
Speaker A:So a lot of times, if you see him out there and see any of his postings, he'll have his Barbecue Nation hat on.
Speaker A:He's doing a little video, and he's talking about this and that, and he does.
Speaker A:Good.
Speaker A:And he's actually this kind of cottage career curriculum he started is taking off.
Speaker A:So, John, welcome back.
Speaker B:Thanks.
Speaker C:Yes, welcome back.
Speaker A:So listen, go ahead.
Speaker B:Thanks so much.
Speaker B:Thanks so much for having me again.
Speaker A:No worries.
Speaker A:So let's, let's revisit that.
Speaker A:How are, or what is the common thread between hot sauces and salsas and barbecue sauce and all of that?
Speaker A:I mean, some people have a fear of if you put hot sauce on the label, like, my wife won't touch it.
Speaker C:Okay.
Speaker A:My daughter might drink it by the gallon, but my wife won't touch it.
Speaker C:So.
Speaker A:And if I try to explain to her, it's really not that hot, that's why we call her Lily lips around here.
Speaker A:And, and, you know, there's a big difference there for people.
Speaker B:Exactly.
Speaker B:So I think, you know, I look at, you know, your, your hot sauce as basically being peppers, salt and vinegar.
Speaker B:So when you take a look at the peppers, if you want to throw tomatoes onto that list and you keep it chunkier, and you reduce the amount of salt and you reduce the amount of vinegar that you have, you're going to have a salsa, you know, and so a lot of the concepts that you see with salsa recipes, you know, a mango habanero salsa, for example, or a salsa with avocado and tomatoes and other things that are a little more traditional, or something I was playing a lot with recently was what they refer to as salsa.
Speaker B:Borracha, or drunk sauce is the translation in Spanish.
Speaker B:And that's where they used either beer or tequila, and mixed that as the part of the liquid base along with some orange juice is common in a lot of the recipes.
Speaker B:And then they mix that with the chilies and the tomatoes and garlic and onions.
Speaker B:So salsa very largely is just chunky hot sauce with a degree of less salt, because it's not trying to be a pickle as much as a hot sauce.
Speaker B:On the other side of the coin, you've got barbecue sauce, which, again, is typically going to have some element of an acid, but also a lot more sweetness.
Speaker B:So, to me, a lot of barbecue sauces are really more like a sweet heat category of a hot sauce.
Speaker B:And again, whether you have peppers or not, you're going to at least have some kind of tomato, some kind of mustard, a little bit of acid.
Speaker B:But you get that with.
Speaker B:The culinary term is a gastric, you know, for kind of a sweet and sour type situation that you're playing on with the fruit and the acid that would be in a traditional ketchup or a mustard base, you know, but again, a little bit less acid, probably more sugar in a barbecue sauce than in a.
Speaker B:In a hot sauce.
Speaker B:But essentially, they're all trying to achieve the same thing.
Speaker B:They're trying to build.
Speaker B:Bring some rounded flavors and help you to have a nice condiment for your meal.
Speaker A:When.
Speaker A:When you explain that to people the way you just did, which is, you know, very proficient there.
Speaker A:Do you lose them, though?
Speaker A:And I'm being.
Speaker A:I'm being somewhat sarcastic and trying to be funny here, John, but the point is that, you know, when you start talking about vinegar based.
Speaker A:I mean, these discussions have been going on in the barbecue world since Leanne was growing up in Missouri and riding a pony, you know, that type of thing.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker A:You've got people with definite beliefs and definite palettes, and then you say, okay, well, this one's got a little.
Speaker A:Much more of this or a little more of that.
Speaker A:And much more isn't very good grammar, I'm afraid.
Speaker A:But, you know, and these things are doing that.
Speaker A:I think most people think of this as just like, okay, we're going to dump some ketchup or tomato base or tomato sauce or something like that.
Speaker A:We're going to put in some other stuff and brown sugar, maybe some onion Powder, or if they like it really chunky, they dice up some onions.
Speaker A:Whatever their secret recipe is, a lot of times they, they tend to shy away from the heat.
Speaker A:The heat that you're talking about.
Speaker B:Right, exactly.
Speaker B:So, I mean, even in, in barbecue, I have a class that I call I speak sauce.
Speaker B:And it's, it's designed to actually take a look at the various regional inspirations for different sauces because to me, you know, I will.
Speaker B:I've done over 250 recipes in the last four years.
Speaker B:You know, so I'm always looking for areas of inspiration.
Speaker B:What are common flavor pairings and how can we, you know, take something over here and bring it over there?
Speaker B:So, you know, in the barbecue world, you know, there's at least a dozen different regional sauce styles.
Speaker B:You know, you have your Central Carolina, your Southern Carolina, your eastern North Carolina, which is again, just your vinegar, your cayenne black pepper.
Speaker B:You know, your southern Central Carolinas are going to be your mustard based.
Speaker B:You move into Georgia, where it's a little bit of tomato and mustard, a little ketchup and mustard mixed.
Speaker B:You know, Missouri's Kansas City barbecue is known very much for heavy molasses in the sauce, a lot sweeter.
Speaker B:You move to Oklahoma, you actually start seeing things like Worcestershire getting added in, because it's right in between Texas and Kansas City.
Speaker B:Texas is where you start to see a little bit of the heat and they like to incorporate some of the peppers into some of their sauces.
Speaker B:But if you talk to people in Texas, they'll probably tell you there's at least four different regions of Texas barbecue that, you know, there's in the sauce varies from region to region depending upon what they're serving it with.
Speaker B:Certainly they, they love brisket down in Texas.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:Oh, yeah, sure, you're going to get a little bit of variation there.
Speaker B:But I think, you know, that's, that to me is really what's important is, you know, as a teacher of, of, you know, all things sauce related, I like to look at, you know, helping somebody find their signature sauce.
Speaker B:And a lot of times that's going to be matching the heat to their palate, matching the sweet to their palate, even matching the acid to their palate and how acidic you want it or not.
Speaker B:You know, there's a lot of interesting examples even in the hot sauce world, where some people don't like the vinegar.
Speaker B:You know, I think the last time I was on the show, we talked a lot about, you know, how Instacart had a survey that was done and hot sauce was the most hated kind of.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker C:Which is crazy.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, when you look at the growth of the, of the marketplace for hot sauce, you sit and scratch your head about that.
Speaker B:But, you know, the normal reaction that people have to hot sauce is I don't like either the vinegar or I don't like the heat.
Speaker B:And, you know, there's.
Speaker B:There's such a broad range of sauces out there.
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:You're really understanding how to match that.
Speaker B:There's a, There's a guy down in Louisiana, Swamp Dragon.
Speaker B:He actually uses alcohol to be the stabilizing base and, and achieve a shelf stable sauce without having to use the vinegar, because he hates vinegar.
Speaker B:And he said right out, you know, I started my company because I don't like vinegar, you know, so, you know, if you got 40 proof alcohol, basically you can, you know, it'll stabilize your sauce and preserve it for easily a couple of years, according to what he's written.
Speaker A:A couple of beers or a couple of years.
Speaker A:Okay, well, because he was talking about being stable with alcohol, and I thought, yeah, that never worked for me, so.
Speaker B:That's funny.
Speaker A:No.
Speaker A:Well, you know, John, when you, when you're talking about that, of course, when you're talking about adding Worcestershire to something, I'm all in, because I love that stuff.
Speaker A:But don't most people who.
Speaker A:Other than buy a bottle of Sweet Baby Rays or whatever their favorite sauce is, a lot of them just do.
Speaker A:And this is how I started with it.
Speaker A:You'd buy a container of the barbecue sauce you like, and he started adding stuff to it.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You know, there's, you know, there's nothing at all wrong with that, I think, but I, I think if you really want to get to where you're creating your own signature sauce, really understanding what's the foundation of that sauce and what are the different knobs that I need to turn to either bump something up or, or reduce something, you know, and then that's where you're trying to, again, I think, look at the various flavor elements, you know?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Sweet do you want.
Speaker B:How much acid do you want?
Speaker B:You know, how salty do you want it to be?
Speaker B:You know, how hot or spicy do you want to be?
Speaker B:Do you want to be super smoky or not super smoky?
Speaker B:Usually garlic and onion is another knob that you can kind of turn to figure out how much you want, you know, so when you're, you know, if, if you don't understand what that base sauce is, that you're starting with how much or, or you Know how you're going to push it?
Speaker B:Maybe too far.
Speaker B:You're certain you can experiment until the cows come home and find something that you really like?
Speaker B:You know, I'm pretty sure there's a.
Speaker B:There's one of my favorite hot sauces is Gator Hammock out of Feld of Florida.
Speaker B:It's a little place along the road, the highway between Naples and, like, Fort Lauderdale.
Speaker B:I think it's the Tan Miami highway or something along those lines, but it goes through the Everglades.
Speaker B:And I stopped in his shop at one point, but I'm pretty sure that on his label it basically says, I use a cayenne pepper sauce and I add black pepper, garlic, and a handful of other things to it.
Speaker B:And, you know, that's.
Speaker B:It's such a killer sauce that I've been using for 25 years probably, you know, but not realizing that when I actually really, you know, read a label, looks like he's just taking something like Frank's, you know, or Louisiana Hot Fluff and doctoring it up.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker B:You know, but I think, you know, understanding what you're doctoring and being able to turn those knobs gives you a lot more control.
Speaker A:Well, yeah.
Speaker A:And like, make a reference here to Leanne's pig powder.
Speaker A:She goes, it's a little sweet with a little heat.
Speaker A:Did I say that right?
Speaker C:You did.
Speaker A:Okay, that's one for me today.
Speaker A:And that makes a lot of sense for people because a lot of people.
Speaker A:And when we come back from the break, which we got to go to here very shortly, I want Leanne to address this.
Speaker A:But when you're cooking for people, like in a restaurant, because Leanne's worked in the restaurant industry for a long time, you know, it's, it's sometimes it's not fair just to say, well, this is our kind of Buffalo style sauce that has got a huge range in a flavor profile there.
Speaker A:So I want to talk about that.
Speaker A:Anyway, we got to take a break.
Speaker A:We're going to be back with John Hallner, the hot Sauce Sensi and Ms. Leanne and myself right after this.
Speaker A:Don't go away.
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Speaker B:This is an encore.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the nation.
Speaker A:That's Barbecue Nation.
Speaker A:If you want to contact us, email us, do any of that, just go to barbecuenationjt.com or you can find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Speaker A:And Leanne does a lot more Instagram than I do, but we're out there.
Speaker A:And you can find out about John the Hot Sauce Sensei.
Speaker A:He's on all those platforms too, because he happens to work with us.
Speaker A:And so that's kind of a fun thing.
Speaker A:So back to what I was saying before the break.
Speaker A:Nothing kind of gets under my skin.
Speaker A:Like, I love wings.
Speaker A:I. I just love wings.
Speaker A:Some days I want them with some fire in them, and some days I want them a little more savory, maybe a little sweeter.
Speaker A:You know, I'm a little flippant about those things, but when you go into a restaurant and they say, they basically say, this is a sweet sauce, this is a buffalo sauce, this is maybe a chipotle sauce.
Speaker A:And those are your choices that.
Speaker A:That may not work for everybody, you know, like that.
Speaker A:So this question is to you, Leanne, when.
Speaker A:Because I know you like wings, like I said.
Speaker B:But.
Speaker A:How do you ascertain which levels of heat and sweet to serve your clientele?
Speaker C:It's a difficult question.
Speaker C:I'll give you an example of what happened not just this past weekend at an event.
Speaker C:I was using Alfargoni's chimichurri sauce for an event.
Speaker C:He has a spicy and original.
Speaker C:The spicy is not that spicy, but I toned it down and did a half and half.
Speaker C:I had people coming up, having it, saying, oh, my God, it's so spicy.
Speaker C:And then other people come up, say, well, I don't taste any spice in it again.
Speaker C:A week before, I was at a sauce thing.
Speaker C:We had the sweet sauce, the spicy sauce, the medium sauce, and it was all over the board.
Speaker C:People's opinions, even people that tasted the sweet sauce, thought it was spicy.
Speaker C:I find that the older people are more sensitive to the heat and the younger people because their palate's new.
Speaker C:So everybody's palate's different.
Speaker C:But if you're going to long and short of it is, in my restaurants with barbecue sauce, the sweet sauce is incredibly sweet.
Speaker C:There's no question.
Speaker C:No one's going to say it's spicy.
Speaker C:So you're removing the elements of cayenne, chili powder, whatever.
Speaker C:So you really have to stay with the sweet zone.
Speaker C:The hot is all a matter of opinion.
Speaker C:Most.
Speaker C:Most of the time I go with a safe hot and not like a habanero crazy hot, where it takes away from the taste of the food and then it is what it is.
Speaker C:You can't please everybody, I'm saying.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:And I think a lot of times my wife will accuse me of trying to blast her palate from time to time because she's basically told me that I'm no longer a good barometer because my own palate has gotten so sensitized or desensitized to heat over.
Speaker B:Over the last four years of working with peppers like a Carolina reaper or a scorpion or a ghost pepper, even Hobbit pros, you know, and I've been very specific in terms of when I do the recipe development.
Speaker B:I'm always using the same liquid base ratio so that I can start to understand a little bit about how much of each individual pepper to add.
Speaker B:The.
Speaker B:The joke with the, you know, gardening folks is that, you know, a habanero pepper, you'll usually see it listed in a range of Scoville units.
Speaker B:So it might be a hundred thousand Scoville from one plant, and then, you know, three plants over.
Speaker B:That plant was stressed during the growing process.
Speaker B:The farmer didn't water it as much, and the.
Speaker B:The pods coming off of that one are three times as hot.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And, you know, one of the big problems, you know, I've.
Speaker B:Since I've been on the show last, I've really started to, you know, talk more with craft hot sauce companies because, again, I'm always looking for inspiration, and I like to see how other people make soft.
Speaker B:And, you know, what, you know, when I'm talking about the.
Speaker B:The challenges of the business with them, that's the one thing they always come back with is, you know, a small recipe, small batch recipe, you know, scaling that up into a large batch.
Speaker B:It's not a one for one.
Speaker B:You know, it's not a linear process because, you know, once you start using more produce and the variability that you get in the peppers, it's gonna throw everything off.
Speaker B:So you really almost have to come up with what's a.
Speaker B:Your base heat range and then kind of adjust, you know, and kind of start small maybe, and then add more pepper to it to see, you know, when you hit the heat level that you're actually shooting for, and then, you know, kind of backfill with the, the other ingredients, you know, so it's, it's a, it's a tricky deal with co packers that are making hot sauce from time to time and having that consistency level.
Speaker B:But go ahead.
Speaker A:Oh, I was just going to say, I, if you go to Texas, they have jalapenos on their Cocoa Puffs and what.
Speaker A:And I'm sure Leanne's run into this too.
Speaker A:But when I'm doing some sort of an event, I don't do catering anymore.
Speaker A:But when I was, if, if we were going to make poppers, you know, just simple poppers, something maybe bacon wrapped or whatever, and you got the jalapenos.
Speaker A:Some jalapenos.
Speaker A:The flavor was very smooth.
Speaker A:It had heat to it, but it was a nice smooth flavor.
Speaker A:And then other ones you get that are very harsh and very hot.
Speaker A:And so, you know, John and I are standing there eating.
Speaker A:These are going, These are really good.
Speaker A:They're very flavorful.
Speaker A:You know, we're talking about all the great aspects of it.
Speaker A:Leanne comes up and grabs one and it lights her up.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And, and how, when you're making these sauces, especially these prototype batches, how do you deal with that?
Speaker A:That you're not getting the.
Speaker A:If you, yeah, if you put 50 jalapenos down there and they were actually grated, they would be 20 of this, 20 of that, 3 of this, 3 of that.
Speaker A:You know, on this, on the Scoville scale.
Speaker A:So how do you deal with that?
Speaker B:It's.
Speaker B:It's challenging.
Speaker B:You.
Speaker B:I think you just have to, you know, again, going back to the restaurant side of things, I was in Maine last summer, and I was really excited because the restaurant had a Calabrian chili wing sauce.
Speaker B:And to me, you know, Calabrian chilies are from Italy.
Speaker B:They're typically a little bit hotter than cayenne peppers.
Speaker B:They're in that same range.
Speaker B:But I was excited because you.
Speaker B:It's a really unique flavor, and you don't see it almost ever on a restaurant menu.
Speaker B:So the fact that they had it, I applauded the chef and, you know, I told the manager.
Speaker B:But when I said, hey, can you tell the chef this is.
Speaker B:I'm really excited by the menu.
Speaker B:They were like, well, you know, we had to kind of tone down some of those things because a lot of the people were saying it was too hot.
Speaker B:And I was like, yeah.
Speaker B:I mean, it's, it's, that's the thing.
Speaker B:It's like you don't, you know, you have to kind of adjust for people's palates to a Large degree.
Speaker B:So it's always.
Speaker B:I always talk about what I call low pepper, high pepper of approach.
Speaker B:And if you look at most hot sauce tropes and, and a lot of the hot sauce tropes are either taken from the barbecue world or taken from the salsa world.
Speaker B:And that kind of goes back to that whole.
Speaker B:The thread between the three, you know, but it's, it's really easy to make a super hot hot sauce if all you got to do is just throw in a bunch of super hot peppers, some vinegar and salt.
Speaker B:That doesn't take any skill.
Speaker B:It's, it's really, to me, the philosophy is build a low heat base that you, you know, you're comfortable with.
Speaker B:And then, you know, you can always add spice.
Speaker B:You can't remove it.
Speaker A:We gotta take it.
Speaker A:We gotta take a break.
Speaker A:But we're gonna be back with John Halner, the hot sauce sensei and field reporter for Barbecue Nation and Miss Whipping and myself right after this.
Speaker A:Don't go away.
Speaker A:Hey, everybody, it's JT and I have eaten.
Speaker A:If you've ever looked at me, you know that.
Speaker A:But I have eaten seafood all over the world, and I can tell you there's no place better than here in Oregon and our Dungeness crab.
Speaker A:If you want to learn more about Oregon Dungeness crab, just go to oregondungeness.org find out how to cook it, how to catch it, where to buy it, and the sustainability of what they're doing there in the Oregon Crab Commission.
Speaker A:Check it out.
Speaker A:This is an encore.
Speaker A:Welcome back to Barbecue Nation on USA Radio networks and a whole litany of platforms out there.
Speaker A:If you want to get the easiest way to it, tap into our RSS feed and then you hear everything.
Speaker A:Some stuff you don't want to hear, I'm pretty sure, but you can do that.
Speaker A:We're talking with John Hallner, like I said, our hot sauce sensei here on the show.
Speaker A:And, and I want to go back to what you were saying before the break.
Speaker A:You know, when you, when you go to the shelf in the grocery store and, you know, you mentioned chalua, of course, Tabasco's, excuse me, a household name and all that.
Speaker A:And they are truly kind of sauces like Worcestershire.
Speaker A:So they've got that viscosity of that, and then other ones are thicker and, you know, occasionally they've got a renegade seed from one of the peppers that, that lodges in your roof of your mouth, and they'll have a fun afternoon.
Speaker A:But, you know, what do you look for when somebody's going to try to create their own hot sauces at home.
Speaker A:John, I mean, what, what do you recommend?
Speaker A:Not what do you look for, but what do you recommend?
Speaker A:Do you want them, you want them thicker?
Speaker A:Do you want them thinner?
Speaker A:You know, hardcore barbecue people and stuff, they already got their own ideas about what they want.
Speaker A:But if, if there's, as we called them in the last show, the civilians who are just kind of getting their foot in the door on some of this stuff, what do you recommend for them?
Speaker B:So that's a great question, jt.
Speaker B:I think from a large portion of the folks that are using hot sauce.
Speaker B:You know, like one of my cardinal rules is if you look at the 10 reasons to make sauce is you control the heat and you control the viscosity.
Speaker B:You know, those would be two, two reasons out of the 10.
Speaker B:But the, the reason you want to control the viscosity is because if you're using something really hot, you definitely don't want it to be super thin.
Speaker B:Because when you're trying to pour it out of the bottle and you don't need a lot, then you know, the idea that you're going to have a runny sauce that's going to be super crazy hot and spill all over everything and basically torch the dish, that's not my idea of what you want to try and accomplish.
Speaker B:Normally though, I try to build up enough food mass in the sauce with other non pepper ingredients.
Speaker B:I take a very chef forward approach to coming up with the recipes.
Speaker B:I'm not a chef, I didn't go to culinary schools.
Speaker B:I don't claim to be one.
Speaker B:However, I know enough about aromatics.
Speaker B:You know, your French mirepoix, your Cajun trinity, you know, your onions, garlic, celery, bell peppers, some of those ingredients, those will build you a nice foundation.
Speaker B:And if you, if you look at a lot of the super hot sauces.
Speaker B:So for example, you know, Yellowbird is one of the best selling hot sauces on Amazon and they've been around for quite a while now.
Speaker B:They do organic sauces, people like that.
Speaker B:But they actually call their sauce a condiment called a habanero condiment.
Speaker B:And when you taste it, you'll notice that it's actually not super spicy.
Speaker B:And the reason why is the number one ingredient is carrots.
Speaker B:So you get these, you use your aromatics to build a base and again, that will give you that thickness that you want.
Speaker B:And ultimately you're pickling the vegetables and pureeing them.
Speaker B:I say I like to make, you know, pureed pickles, you know, and People kind of look at me strange and I'm like, hot sauce.
Speaker B:Like, oh, okay.
Speaker B:I guess it is a pureed pickle because you're trying to get that smoothness with a hot sauce.
Speaker B:And that's, you know, typically with barbecue as well, you're usually pureeing it so that you can, you know, lather it on and slather it on more evenly as opposed to a salsa that you leave chunkier.
Speaker B:But, you know, normally I would encourage people, you know, if they.
Speaker B:If they're not doing something super hot, then you want a little bit thinner sauce, then, you know, for.
Speaker B:By all means, if, for example, that Eastern Carolina sausage, just vinegar and there's nothing in it to.
Speaker B:To make it go further, you know, adding a little bit of jalapeno or, you know, a little bit of herb to that vinegar base and being able to use it liberally, you know, there's nothing wrong with that.
Speaker B:As opposed to, you know, when I've got ghost peppers.
Speaker B:I had a.
Speaker B:You know, I made a cardinal mistake.
Speaker B:You know, you don't pour things over the pot.
Speaker B:But I was doing that the other day because I was in a rush and.
Speaker B:And I had a. I was trying to bring a batch of sauce for somebody that I had given me some product to work with, and, you know, and I ended up hitting it with a little extra chili.
Speaker B:And I broke my rule.
Speaker B:And it was.
Speaker B:I had a super hot hot sauce that was a little bit thinner than I wanted it to be.
Speaker B:And so I was, like, giving it out, but I was warning people, like, just, you know, proceeding with coffee, you know, this isn't just, you know, it's.
Speaker B:It's a.
Speaker B:It's an experiment.
Speaker B:It's a, you know, you know, all this is in development, essentially, but, yeah, really trying to have enough other ingredients to create the viscosity, some kind of viscosity, you know, so usually I strive for something similar to ketchup because I want to use a lot of sauce.
Speaker B:A lot of times I. I don't use ketchup, personally.
Speaker B:I just use hot sauce.
Speaker B:So normally I'll do, you know, something of a medium low heat, and then if I really want to, I can take a reaper or a scorpion and throw it in.
Speaker B:A lot of times when I'm doing batches, I'll pour off half the batch, and then I'll throw a little bit of reaper chili in it and reaper, scorpion or habanero, and I'll blitz it up.
Speaker B:And then for people who tell me, oh, I want it really hot, how Hot.
Speaker B:Do you want it?
Speaker B:Oh, I can take it.
Speaker B:All right.
Speaker B:Here you go.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And then when they're on their knees crying, it's a different thing.
Speaker A:So I've got a very rudimentary question for you, but I've actually, I want to get your take on it.
Speaker A:Leanne, jump in here.
Speaker A:If we go off the rails on this, but people walk into a grocery store and they're Especially in the Hispanic food section.
Speaker B:Yep.
Speaker A:You got a red sauce and you got a green sauce.
Speaker A:What's the difference?
Speaker B:So, yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker B:And actually, one of the classes that I've put together is the 20 types of hot sauce you need in your refrigerator.
Speaker A:So that's a lot, John.
Speaker B:That is a lot.
Speaker B:So, you know, the.
Speaker B:The red sauce and the green sauce there, it's just whether the pepper is ripe or unripe, you know.
Speaker B:So, you know, and personally, I don't know if you've spent much time in New Mexico or did you.
Speaker B:Did you realize that New Mexico actually has a state question?
Speaker A:A state question?
Speaker B:Yes.
Speaker B:The state question is red, green, or Christmas?
Speaker B:They made a law out of it.
Speaker B:So when you go in to eat in a restaurant in New Mexico, they're probably going to serve you some hatch chilies with that, and they ask you, do you want the red sauce, the green sauce, or do you want Christmas?
Speaker B:Which is a combination of.
Speaker A:The combination there.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So every year when I do, I do four annual sauces sauce recipes that I've kind of stuck to as a tradition.
Speaker B:I do an annual Christmas sauce which has red and green peppers.
Speaker B:And usually the resulting sauce is kind of brownish.
Speaker B:But I like Christmas sauces from the perspective that you get.
Speaker B:You know, the ripe peppers are going to give.
Speaker B:You have a lot more time to develop sugars, so they're typically going to be, you know, less of that vegetable and astringent qualities, more of the berry qualities.
Speaker B:The last time I was on the show, I think we talked about how peppers are botanically the berries.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:So the riper they are, the more those sweet properties you're going to get as opposed to the green where you get.
Speaker B:Especially if you think about a green bell pepper versus a red bell pepper, there's a lot more of that kind of bite and that astringency in those grassy notes that come from those green sauces.
Speaker B:But when you start looking at food pairings, green notes come up in things like seafood a lot of times, and that's why sometimes you'll see a lot of seafood dishes are paired with some kind of a green salsa as opposed to a red salsa.
Speaker B:But you know, the, the nice thing is is you get to kind of pick and choose.
Speaker B:And I'm very much on, on pairing of sauces.
Speaker B:So red, green and Christmas.
Speaker B:Those are three styles.
Speaker B:On my blog.
Speaker B:I got, you know, seven core styles.
Speaker B:The, the next one will be a mustard based sauce.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:You know, so those are actually more prevalent in the islands.
Speaker B:And it is actually, it's a traditional style there.
Speaker B:You know, you've got your chili oils, you know, so if you think about, you know, when you go to the Chinese restaurant and they give you that red oil, that's, that's a chili oil.
Speaker B:But also in Mexico they have this thing called salsa matcha, which is essentially where they'll take peanuts and sesame seeds and garlic and chilies and they'll blend that with the oil.
Speaker B:So it's kind of like a chili crisp, which has been become a very, very growing category of spicy condiments.
Speaker B:So I would almost say that they're hot sauce as well.
Speaker B:You also have sweet heat.
Speaker B:So obviously we've talked a lot about, you know, some of the, the barbecue sauces and how they're very heavily steered towards sweet.
Speaker B:Hot honey actually is one of the top selling hot sauce hot sauces on Amazon, Mike's Hot Honey.
Speaker B:And you know, there's, there's a lot of them on the market, you know, and you know, it's a, it's a growing category in and of itself.
Speaker B:Usually they'll add a little bit of vinegar to try and round out the flavor a little bit and give you some of that bitter sweet play.
Speaker B:And then to me, I also feel like soy based hot sauces are their own category.
Speaker B:I've had some really good ones.
Speaker B:One of the people on the, my blog, Komodo sauce makes a black sauce.
Speaker B:And I've got the whole story on the blog if you want to check that out.
Speaker B:But it's, you know, when you think about pairing food and hot sauce and adding some spice, having something in each of these genres to counteract and counterbalance.
Speaker B:Like when you would reach for a sweet barbecue, you could reach for a hot honey and you're going to get the heat and the sweet to go along with your whatever protein you're serving.
Speaker B:So there's a lot of things that you can do to get those pairings that you're looking for and really vary the meal accordingly.
Speaker C:You were talking about viscosity.
Speaker C:I'm going to switch it up a little bit.
Speaker C:And you said, oh, the Hotter the sauce, it should be a little bit thicker.
Speaker C:But I feel as if one of the first hot sauces on the market, Tabasco, broke that rule from day one.
Speaker C:I mean, that is just like drops of water.
Speaker C:It's the vessel they're using to control.
Speaker B:Correct.
Speaker B:So, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:And a reducer on the bottle makes it a lot easier to control that.
Speaker B:But again, if you're, you know, the average home person may or may not have a reducer for their bottle.
Speaker B:So that's, you know, typically I don't, I, I bought woozy bottles with reducers, but, you know, again, normally I'm making sauce that's designed to be poured out.
Speaker B:So.
Speaker B:But yeah, you can certainly do that.
Speaker B:And yes, Tabasco certainly is just, it's pepper, salt, vinegar, you know, that's been, you know, fermented and aged on oak barrels, which is why Tabasco, to me has that really extra level of flavor that you get from the fermentation and the oak aging.
Speaker B:That that's what really.
Speaker B:It's almost impossible to replicate that in a home setting.
Speaker C:Yeah.
Speaker C:But, you know, back to the question.
Speaker C:Yeah, the hot sauce is going to depend on what I'm putting it on.
Speaker C:I mean, if I'm having Mexican, I want to have something that probably has some smoky or chili powder type notes to it.
Speaker C:You know, seafood.
Speaker C:I think of, you know, more of like a tropical hot sauce, you know, so.
Speaker C:And there's such a variety now.
Speaker C:I guess that's why you have to have 20 in your fridge, like you say.
Speaker A:Yeah, I guess so.
Speaker A:I guess so.
Speaker A:We got to take a break.
Speaker A:We're going to be back with John Halder, the hot sauce sensei and Barbecue Nation roving reporter right after this.
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Speaker A:This is an encore.
Speaker A:Welcome back to the nation.
Speaker A:That's Barbecue Nation on USA Radio networks and multiple, multiple a factor of Six platforms out there.
Speaker A:We're talking with John Hallner, the hot sauce sensei.
Speaker C:We were talking question forum.
Speaker C:With all the hot sauces out there, what's like the.
Speaker C:The rage right now?
Speaker C:What's the trend?
Speaker B:That's a great question.
Speaker B:Like.
Speaker B:Like I alluded to earlier, hot honeys, I think, are a really big trend.
Speaker B:I was.
Speaker C:Think that counts.
Speaker B:Well, so to me, it falls into the sweet category, though.
Speaker B:So, you know.
Speaker B:You know, I think it.
Speaker B:It is a growing segment, and I think the reason why is because, again, you know, people love sweet barbecue sauces, but they want a little bit of spice.
Speaker B:And, you know, you've seen where chefs and, I mean, even pizza places are putting hot honey on their pizzas, and then they put it on the crust, and they'll.
Speaker B:They'll drizzle it across it.
Speaker B:A lot of wing places are using hot honey to, you know, as a.
Speaker B:As a flavor option.
Speaker B:And see, to me, hot honey, it's actually, it's really easy to make.
Speaker B:You just take the pepper and you stick it in the honey, and then you pull the pepper out a little bit later, and you've got hot honey.
Speaker B:You know, it's.
Speaker B:To me, you know, like.
Speaker B:So, for example, there's a company up in Maine, Spicy Shark.
Speaker B:And Gabe and I have spent a lot of time chatting together.
Speaker B:I went up there last summer for the New England Hot Sauce Festival that he organized for the first time, and he was telling me about his hot honey, where basically he tasted honey up and down the eastern seaboard and settled on three different aviaries that had, like, a goldenrod and a clover and trying to remember just a wildflower.
Speaker B:But he actually blended the honeys, then matched it with the habanero and the vinegar to come up with his final product.
Speaker B:So in those circumstances where you've got somebody who's taking it to the next level and really being very thoughtful about how they're composing the.
Speaker B:The sauce, that's cool.
Speaker B:I. I mean, I love his product.
Speaker B:And, you know, I've, you know, blown through a lot of it.
Speaker B:And, you know, Gabe makes sauce the way that I make sauce in general.
Speaker B:I have a tremendous amount of respect for, you know, pretty much everything that he puts out.
Speaker B:He's got.
Speaker B:He's got the.
Speaker B:The hot maple and the.
Speaker B:The blueberry hot maple.
Speaker B:You know, being from Maine or New Hampshire, rather.
Speaker B:It's, you know, that's just in that neck of the woods, lots of maple syrup.
Speaker B:But that, to me, is a growing category.
Speaker B:I'm seeing more.
Speaker B:Habanero was at The Drink, Eat, Relax festival I just did over the weekend where I was doing some of my saucer field sauce reporting.
Speaker B:And they actually, they use all habaneros in their product line that they've come out with a, a hot honey that they do an exclusive, I believe, with Walmart for their, uh, Sriracha honey.
Speaker B:Actually, you know, speaking of which, Sriracha, the, you know, hoi fung that has, is the main producer of what we know as sriracha in this country, the green cap.
Speaker B:They've been having supply chain issues to get enough of the, the jalapeno peppers that go into it.
Speaker B:So now Tabasco even has their own version of Sriracha and it actually own.
Speaker C:The rock to store it.
Speaker C:So Underwood Ranches, they used to produce the peppers for him, and they make their own sriracha sauce now, and it blows it away.
Speaker C:It's the best sriracha I've ever had.
Speaker C:Absolutely outstanding.
Speaker C:And you know, Underwood Ranch is out in California, but it is a supply issue because I know they're having a tough time keeping up with it as well.
Speaker B:Well, yeah, there have been droughts and whatnot that have really affected the, the crops and so, you know, but I mean, people, people get addicted to that style.
Speaker B:And Sriracha is really just a lightly sweetened, fermented jalapeno sauce with a little bit of garlic.
Speaker B:And so it's, it's not a full blown sweet heat, but it's not just your typical red sauce that doesn't have any extra sugar and it's got kind of falls in between, and then the garlic gives it a nice little bump.
Speaker B:But, you know, that's why people use it like ketchup.
Speaker C:Right.
Speaker C:Well, Sriracha was a rage, but I feel like ghost peppers are starting to fall off the map.
Speaker C:That was the rage.
Speaker C:You know, I agree with you.
Speaker C:Hot honey is definitely, you know, there.
Speaker C:But I was thinking more along the lines of, is there a certain pepper that's the rage?
Speaker C:Because I think ghost was a little bit too much for people, but it was good from a PR standpoint.
Speaker B:So, yeah, I think, you know, if you're, if you look at that on the really hot side of things, you know, Carolina Reaper passed Ghost as the hottest pepper.
Speaker B: ind of went like in the early: Speaker B:That was the hottest thing going.
Speaker B:And then the ghost kind of, you know, you know, replaced the habanero as the hottest thing going.
Speaker B:And then, you know, you had scorpions and you know, which are hotter than ghosts.
Speaker B:And then finally the reaper or Troy Primo also does the seven pot Primo pepper, which there's a lot of similarities between reapers and Primo 7 pot peppers.
Speaker B:And that's a whole nother side story.
Speaker B:But you know, even Ed Curry, who from Parkerbart Farms, he does the Carolina Reaper.
Speaker B:He's got pepper X that supposedly is twice as hot as the Carolina Reaper.
Speaker B:But again, it's just like, how much of that can you use, right, you know, to do it?
Speaker A:So here's my question as a.
Speaker A:The, the real advocates for peppers are gonna go, oh yeah, I gotta get that, I gotta, you know, do this.
Speaker A:And the other ones are gonna go, but I want to taste the chicken or I want to, you know, taste the seafood or whatever it is.
Speaker A:How do you get that balance?
Speaker A:Because I have friends, none of them are still alive anymore, but I had friends that all they like to do was dump hot stuff on their food.
Speaker A:It's like, right, why don't, why are you doing that?
Speaker A:Why don't you just get a piece of white bread and eat it like that would dump that sauce on there.
Speaker A:Because the expensive piece of fish or beef or whatever it is, you're not really tasting that.
Speaker B:Right.
Speaker B:So, you know, it's interesting.
Speaker B:If you end up going to a hot sauce festival, there are a lot of really good craft hot sauce companies that make, you know, flavor forward chef driven recipes where they're blending in the, the different peppers and the, the interesting thing, you know, again, going back to the idea of a habanero condiment, you know, from Yellowbird, it's not that spicy because they're only using a little bit of habanero.
Speaker B:But when you actually start getting into the super hot chilies, there's actually five different types of capsaicin and they each present themselves slightly differently.
Speaker B:So are they going to be a sharp pain or are they going to be kind of like a dull, dull pain?
Speaker B:Is it going to be stabbing you in the front of your mouth?
Speaker B:Is it going to be stabbing you in the front of your mouth or are you going to feel at the back of your throat or is it going to be all over your mouth and making your sinuses light up?
Speaker B:So the five different types of capsaicin all have different properties.
Speaker B:So what ends up happening is, is when you do that low pepper, high pepper approach, you build a base and then you start adding in super hot peppers, you're going to get different elements of how that cap station is going to present itself.
Speaker B:And sometimes you can even, you know, you know, I don't.
Speaker B:Doesn't happen all that often.
Speaker B:And sometimes it's more serendipitous than it is intentional.
Speaker B:But you know, when you can get a sauce that gives a little bit of a presentation on the front note and then kind of shifts gears after a few seconds and gives you another, you know, another sensation or flavor profile and then finishes with something completely different, you know, that's really like the holy grail when you're trying to come up with a recipe is you're trying to get all those layers of flavor, almost like a chef tasting meal.
Speaker B:And when he's giving you that one bite and he wants, he or she want you to have that ultimate experience of how the flavor transforms.
Speaker A:Real quick, John, about 10 seconds here.
Speaker A:How can people find you?
Speaker B:Hot saucecookbook.com is my main site.
Speaker B:There's over 30 recipes there that has my links to my socials as well.
Speaker B:Hot saucecookbook.com Very good.
Speaker A:Thank you.
Speaker A:John Hallner, our hot sauce sensei.
Speaker A:And like I said, John will be stick around for after hours.
Speaker A:We hope you all are having a great Memorial Day weekend.
Speaker A:And so for Ms. Leanne, myself and John, have a great time.
Speaker A:Remember our motto, turn it, don't burn it.
Speaker A:And please remember why we celebrate Memorial Day.
Speaker A:Take care, everybody.
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