And I really like ” Tabanero Hot Sauce.”

Up until when I was 18 years old “hot sauce” was not something found on my dining room table.  My maternal grandfather loved hot sauce.  I can remember his bottle of hot sauce when I when we went to visit him, but his love of vinegar based hot sauce didn’t carry over to my mother.  My mother was a pretty good cook, but heat to her came from simple ground black pepper.  It wasn’t until I started eating at the mess hall at Fort Hood, Texas that hot sauce became an integral part of my daily dining habit.  A little Tabasco on my eggs in the morning and my meat loaf for dinner helped make eating more enjoyable.

Up until about a year ago I thought I was a hot sauce gourmet because I had three different flavors of Tabasco hot sauce in my refrigerator.  Toss in a bottle of Texas Pete and some Louisiana Brand hot sauce and I pretty much had anything and everything I thought I needed in the hot sauce department.  Then I got my hands on some other hot sauces, hot sauces that would rip the taste buds right off your tongue.  Even though Mrs Grail makes fun of me for heating food so hot it makes me sweat, I just can’t take hot sauces so hot you can’t taste anything after eating them.  Call me a wimp…call me whatever but I’m just not into heat for heat sake.  But then again maybe that’s just my hot sauce ignorance talking.

I knew, the moment I opened the bottle of Tabanero, and gave it the “drop on the finger” taste test that this was a different kind of hot sauce.  It was a little hotter than I normally prefer, but the heat faded quickly and left nothing but a nice little flavor on my tongue.  What I’ve noticed with a lot of hot sauces is when it’s put on food the flavor of the hot sauce doesn’t come through for me.  Instead I’m left with just heat.  That’s not the case with Tabanero, since the harshness of the heats fades it leaves just an amazing flavor profile that, so far, has compliment everything I’ve eaten it on.  And over the past couple weeks, other than my corn flakes, I’ve eaten it on just about everything.

I recently asked Kevin Peake about Tabanero.  He described Tabanero as, “An extremely flavorful sauce with a kick but that isn’t too hot.”  I knew the flavor of the sauce was not like anything I’ve every found in a hot sauce, but I sure found it interesting when he explained the combination of ingredients, “Tabanero Hot Sauce has a base of carrots and key lime juice that provides a zesty flavor.  The heat comes from the Habanero pepper.  The heat is balanced by the sweetness of the Agave nectar.  Agave nectar actually accentuates the flavors and allows the complex flavor profile of the Habanero to be appreciated,” he explained.

Okay, I get the key lime juice, if you’re not going to use vinegar you need something to give the hot sauce some tanginess.  But carrots?  Really?  I never would have put those two ingredients together, and we all know I’ve tried some weird ingredient combinations before.  It works though.  Habaneros are often described as having a slight citrus flavor so the key lime also makes the Habanero flavor stand out.

Look, as I mentioned at the beginning of this blog post, I’m not a hot sauce expert.  I don’t know much about peppers or pepper combinations.  But I do know what tastes good.  And this hot sauce is one of best condiments I’ve ever eaten.  It’s just that good.

And if great taste isn’t reason enough to use Tabanero the company, CDS International Holdings, is a company that tries to do good things  for others.  Kevin Peake explains:

“The founder of Tabanero is Carl De Santis (CDS International Holdings). Carl is a passionate entrepreneur with an affinity for embarking on interesting and philanthropic projects. He once developed a beer called Chillie Beer which had an actual chile pepper in it. It was a dream of his to create an amazing hot sauce that could also do some good! We knew that we wanted this sauce to be authentically from Mexico and we wanted to create a unique hot sauce. As we began our search for the right ingredients, we gravitated towards the state of Tabasco in Mexico for a couple of reasons,” Kevin said.

“One reason was the influence of the Mayan culture on the birth of hot sauce. The second reason was that Tabasco gets the most rainfall in Mexico, making the land extremely fertile and providing amazing and flavorful peppers,” he continued.

“We wanted this to be a project that would give back to the community so we have made contributions to help build orphanages along with a pledge of giving back a percentage of all sales to the state of Tabasco. Our first crack at this was in 2005, we were developing the product and created our first batch when in 2007 Tabasco was devastated by floods that washed away the majority of the crops. This set us back a few years. In 2009 we were able to begin redeveloping and it was at this stage that we decided to add Agave Nectar into our recipe which is our key ingredient. We got our first batch of our revamped Tabanero in 2010 and launched it in Los Angeles in 2011.”

“Tabanero Hot Sauce” is available in a limited numbers of stores in California, Florida and North Carolina.  Some of the stores I’m sure can ship this fantastic hot sauce directly to your door.  And you really should do your best to get some of this hot sauce.  It will be well worth the effort.  You can find those stores on Tabanero’s website.

Need another reason to purchase Tabanero Hot Sauce?  Then check out this recipe from their website.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Larry Gaian

Leeks are root vegetables that look quite like giant green onions, to which they are related. Their flavor is onion-like but much milder. People who avoid leeks because they don’t like onions should try them — their flavor is mellow and not overpowering, and many onion-haters love leeks.–WiseGeeks

I was the proud recipient of some unwanted leeks this week.  Free leeks aren’t exactly the greatest gift a guy can get, I mean they aren’t free bacon, but leeks have become one of my new favorite vegetables.  Up to this point I’ve only cooked leeks in braising liquids with tougher cuts of meat.  They add a great flavor to broth and the resulting gravy.  I love leeks…

Leeks have a wonderful onion flavor and are great for adding flavor to other dishes.  As a side dish they might not be for everyone, but for me grilling leeks gives them a nice little flavor that when combined with a little olive oil and vinegar makes them one of my favorites.

Here’s how I grilled my leeks!

Trim the root end of the leeks off and the leafy tops.  Remove the first layer or two from the leeks.  They should look something like the picture on the left above.  Bring a pot of water to a boil, add some salt and/or a little BBQ rub to the water.  Reduce heat to a simmer and cook the leeks for about 12 minutes or until they just start to get tender.  Remove and drain well.  Be careful, you want to try to keep the leeks in their original shape.  Try to keep them from coming apart.  When the leeks have cooled, give them a light coating of olive oil and grill, over medium heat, until they start to char and get grill marks.

Remove the leeks from the grill and immediately rough chop them.  Toss them in a bowl with a little more olive oil and a splash of vinegar.  Add a dash of salt and serve.  The mild onion flavor works great with the acid from the vinegar.  A little sweetness comes out from the caramelizing from the grill.  Great…great flavor.

In the process for cooking I used an interesting salt I picked up at the Winter Fancy Food Show from The Salt Works.  The Hellfire salt is smoked for days with mesquite wood and infused with Habanero and a little lime.  I added 1/2 tablespoons of the Hellfire sea salt to the water during the initial cooking process. The salt with Habanero added an amazing flavor that actually held up through the entire cooking process.  I added a pinch more when I served the chopped leeks.

This salt has a lot of strong smoke flavor and is quite hot from the Habanero, so a light hand is needed.  It would be very easy to ruin your meal with a heavy hand.  I’m going to have to see about ordering some in quantity because I’m already thinking about a new chicken brine using the salt.

Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2012 Larry Gaian

I watch a lot of cooking shows on television.  Whenever you watch a cooking show the on air personality will always taste their creations and exclaim to the tv audience how wonderful it is.  Do you ever wonder if they cook anything that just doesn’t taste good?  I’m not talking about something that isn’t perfect.  I’m talking about spit it out, unable to swallow bad.  It’s hard to imagine Giada, Rachel, Paula or Bobby Flay taking a bite, looking into the camera and saying.  “Dang, this really stinks.”  Just doesn’t happen.

One of my favorite shows is “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”  I’ve gotten a lot of great cooking inspirations from this show.  Today I write about the opposite of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate.”  Tonight I write about “The Worst Thing I Ever Cooked.”  Scan the internet, not to many “foodies” will admit that they screwed up when cooking.  I know my buddies at “No Excuses BBQ” and “Brew and Que” have written about cooking disasters.  And my hat is off to them.  But for the most part only successes make into print.  This is not one of those cases.  This is a blog post about some pretty bad food.

This weeks throwdown on the BBQ Brethren is about Scovilles, that crazy heat measurement for telling how hot a pepper is.  I like heat, but I’m not a chili head.  I don’t like heat for heat sake.  I want flavor first and foremost.  I got the brilliant idea to to combine habaneros and a smoked pork mousse with sharp Irish cheddar cheese. 

On the surface it’s not all that crazy of an idea.  There are lots and lots of Pork Mousse recipes on the internet.  It’s actually something that appears to be popular in some circles of cooking.   Most often when I think of mousse I think of chocolate and it’s a desert.  But it can be an entree if done correctly.  So I set out to come up with what I figured would be a nice tasty pork mouse.

I bought a couple of thin pork loin chops and seasoned them with a little bit of “Simply Marvelous” Cherry rub.  I figured this would give me a little sweet with a nice mild cherry flavor.  I used maybe a tablespoon between all four chops.

The chops then went on the smoker at 225 degrees with cherry wood.  The goal here was to have a common flavor from start to finish.  I’ve been thinking about how I was going to do this for several days.  So I was fairly confident I was going to have some good flavor combinations here.   I learned a long time ago that just pulling stuff out of the pantry and tossing them together was a recipe for disaster.  So I did some thinking…

After smoking the chops I cooled them and put them in the refrigerator overnight.  The next day I chopped up the chops and put them into the food processor with a teaspoon of rub and some heavy cream.  Because the pork loins were so thin they were done before they had a chance to absorb much smoke flavor so I used a tablespoon of “Show Me” BBQ sauce.  This sauce has a good dose of liquid smoke in it and I knew it would give me the smoke flavor I was looking for.

Once I had the consistency I needed I put the mousse into a zip lock bag, cut the corner off.  This allowed me to pipe the mousse into the habanero halves that I had removed the seeds and veins from.  The color of the mousse wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but it wasn’t too bad.  I wasn’t all that thrilled with the flavor of the mousse.  Normally thought I have found that some rubs and sauces don’t taste all that great when you just taste them without cooking so I figured I’d just wait and see.

I’ve fallen in love with Irish Cheddar cheese.  It’s got a great sharp, nutty flavor that I just knew would go with the cherry in the rub and the wood smoke.   It also looks nice when it’s melted.

After topping the mousse with the cheese I popped them into the oven and baked them at 325 degrees for about 15 minutes.  This cooked the mousse and melted the cheese to give me a nice looking appetizer. 

After allowing them to cool a couple of minutes I grabbed one and tossed it into my mouth.  I got about three chews before I realized that this was just horrible.  It may have actually been The Worst Thing I Ever cooked.    The flavor was just so bad.  Individually the flavors seemed to be a good match, but when you put them together with the habanero it just made for a concoction that was just so bad I had to spit it out.

This made the whole Shankopotomus fiasco seem like a walk in the park.  So Giada, Rachel, Alton and Bobby, what’s The Worst Thing You Ever Cooked?”

I got a tweet from @nephewsbbq (Dylan Moody) asking if I’d like to have some samples of his BBQ sauces to try.  I told him I’d be happy to give them a taste.  A few days later a box arrived with jars of all six flavors.   I don’t normally review six BBQ sauces all at once, but I figured in this case it would be the best thing to do.  So I had a few friends over, cooked up some chicken drumettes and we taste tested all the sauces.

Nephews BBQ sauce is a gourmet line of bbq sauces where we pair the sweetness of fruit with the spiciness of chili peppers. The result is an award winning line of unique bbq sauces that will make you the king of your next backyard bbq or tailgate. Nephews started out as a wedding favor for friends and family at his wedding in 2009. The response was overwhelming and after winning an award in December Nephews BBQ Sauce was born. Once you try our sauce we are confident you will invite Nephews to all your bar-b-ques!

So here’s a compilation of the comments from five wing users over the course of an evening.  It’s interesting to note the degree of “heat” each of the taste testers could handle.  My comments about each sauce is marked in italics.

“SWEET THUNDER”:

It’s not a surprise that all of four of the taste testers thought this sauce was sweet.  Everyone considered the sauce to be mild.  Other comments included: “very smooth,” “good flavor,” “to sweet,” “no heat and good for everyone.”  A couple of the taster testers noticed a lot of vinegar.   For my tastes this sauce would be more of the traditional type of sauce I would use for pulled pork or chicken.  There is a taste of vinegar, and that’s not a bad thing, but it does have a tendency to stand out on lightly seasoned meats like chicken.  For someone not used to a vinegar type sauce they might have a problem with this.   This is a great everyday sauce.

“PEACHY ‘POTLE”:

For everyone the peach flavor popped right out on this sauce.  Comments: “Moderate heat,” very good flavor,” “nice peach,” “everyone would like this sauce.”  I tasted the peach right off.  This sauce would go with just about anything.  If you like fruit based sauces this is one you’ve got to try.  There’s not a lot of chipotle flavor and for most people that will be good.  For my tastes this is a moderate sauce.  But don’t think it’s “hot” because it’s not.  I’m just not sure what level is between mild and moderate.

“HABAN’ORANGE”:

Everyone got the orange in this sauce.  It’s not hidden at all.  Comments: “good tangy flavor,”  “very good flavor,” nice citrus,” “mild to sever heat,” “mild heat.”  WOW!  This sauce has some pucker power.  The citrus/orange just whacks you right up front and doesn’t go away.  I love this sauce.  Don’t let the habanero in the title, this sauce isn’t nearly as hot as other sauces on the market that use habanero.  I’d use this sauce on just about anything, but it’s going to be a staple for pulled pork and fish.

“ANGRY NEPHEW’S”:

Okay, this sauce just about killed one of my taste testers.  It’s the hottest of the bunch.  Comments: “burn baby burn…lips, tongue and throat,” “good flavor, nice afterburn,” “for people who want a hot flavor,” “a very nice kick to it.  Not outrageously strong but still a strong burn,” “not for wimps.”  This sauce is more of the traditional type “hot” BBQ sauce.  It’s nice but for me, when compared, to the others there’s not anything I would call special about it.

“CHERRY ‘POTLE”:

Just like the other fruit sauces the flavor of the fruit just jumped right out front and took charge for all the tasters.  Comments: “very strong cherry flavor,” “not much heat, small kick at the end,” “love the sweetness,” “mild.”  I found this sauce to be much like the peach sauce.  And that’s a good thing.  My two favorite woods to smoke with are peach and cherry and this sauce will compliment many of the dishes I like to cook.  Again, not a lot of the traditional chipotle flavor.

“GHOSTLY PUMPKIN”:

Pumpkin and Ghost Peppers!  This was the sauce we were all a little hesitant to try.  One of the hottest peppers on Earth combined with pumpkin, not your traditional BBQ sauce combination.  Comments: “slight pumpkin flavor,” “mild to warm,” “did not taste pumpkin,” “moderate heat,” “good pumpkin flavor,” “good spice flavors,” “nice mix of the pumpkin and pepper flavors.”  I expect the heat of this sauce to just kill every opportunity for the pumpkin flavor to be found.  Not true at all.  This is a mild to moderate hot BBQ sauce.  The pumpkin, for me, just popped.  When I tasted this sauce I immediately thought of Thanksgiving.  Weird, I know.  I really love this sauce.  It’s different, yet not so odd that it won’t go with your meats or side dishes.  I’ve had lots of non-traditional sauces (gimmick) and most of them aren’t meant to be taken seriously.  This sauce is seriously good.

Let me be honest here.  When Dylan first contacted me and I went to their website and read about these sauces I was not sure what I was getting myself into.  I had the misfortune of trying strawberry BBQ Sauce once and I wasn’t ready for another “spit out my meat” episode.  But I’d committed to trying them so I did.

These sauces are different.  Different in a good way.  What I especially appreciated was that the fruit seemed to take the front of the stage.  I love the flavors of these sauces.  The “peppers” take second fiddle.  They are there but they are in the sauce in a manner that doesn’t mask the fantastic flavors of the fruit.  For the most part the heat doesn’t overpower anything.  I review a lot of sauces and there are few that I dislike.  But there are even fewer that I’ve come right out and said, “Buy this sauce.”

You can find out more about Nephew’s sauces here.

The jar of Crazy Uncle Jester’s Afterburner Sauce has been sitting in my pantry for months and I’ve resisted trying it.  But after watching the “Hot & Spicy” episode of “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” on the Food Network I had a craving for something with a little kick.

Stupid Crazy Hot?

So with no other options in the house I had no choice but to get out the vanilla ice cream and the Afterburner sauce.

I’m not even sure how to review this stuff.  The first taste told me this was not your ordinary hot fudge.  The creamy sweetness of the vanilla ice cream combined with the cocoa and sugars in the sauce hits the front of the tongue and tastes awesome.  Then the habanero kicks in as the dessert slides down your throat.  And you know immediately this isn’t your mother’s hot fudge.

There’s not much else you can say about this stuff.  It’s hot…stupid crazy hot.  And it tastes really good.  But know this.  It’s not for faint of heart.

You can read more about the whole line of Crazy Jester’s sauces on their website.