I typically make all my chili with beans, just to have a thicker chili consistency. After cruising the cooking section at Barnes and Noble today I decided it was time to develop another version of my chili sans beans. Having picked up a few cook books also inspired me to be a little more creative in my chili endeavors. Below is a step by step guide to making my New Mexico Red Chili, ENJOY!

Ingredients

• 3-4 lbs of beef sirloin
• 1/4 lb of Peppered Bacon
• 1 Can Crushed Tomatoes (28 oz.)
• 2 cans Tomatoe Paste
• 1 Large Red Onion
• 3-5 Jalapeno Peppers
• 3-5 Habanero Peppers
• 1 Large Green Bell Pepper
• 3-4 Tbsps Minced Garlic
• 4 Cups Beef Broth
• 1 Tbsp Corn Oil
• 2 Tbsps Brown Sugar
• 2 Tbsp Cumin
• 2 Tbsp Ground Powdered New Mexico
• 1 Tbsp Ground Powdered Hot New Mexico
• 3-4 Bay Leaves
• 2 Cinnamon Sticks
• 2 Tbsps Chopped Fresh Cilantro
• Juice of 1/2 a Lime
• Sharp Cheddar Cheese (Grated)

Step One: Chopping the onion

Step Two: Chopping the Peppers

1 Large Green Bell Pepper

Remove the stem and the seed from the green bell pepper and chop into small pieces.

3-5 Jalapenos

Remove the stem and the seeds from the jalapeno peppers and chop into small pieces.

3-5 Habaneros

Remove the stem and the seeds from the habanero peppers and chop into small pieces.

Putting all the Peppers Together

While you are cutting up the peppers, it’s a good idea to start cooking the bacon in a large skillet w/ the 1 Tbsp Corn Oil. The bacon in this recipe is used only for it’s grease & flavor. Cook the bacon until brown and then remove all the bacon meat and reserve the remaining oil for the beef.

Step Three: Beef Sirloin

Make sure you use quality meat for this chili, the flavor will really be jeopardized if the meat isn’t in line with the rest of the ingredients. I picked up 3.5lbs of Top Sirloin from the butcher the morning before making the chili. Cut the meat into 1″ cubes, and then season with salt and pepper.
Brown the Meat

Using the skillet with bacon grease, brown the meat in small batches.

When browned, your Top Sirloin should look like this. As each batch is browned, remove that batch from the skillet and place in a bowl for later use.

Step Four: Dry Ingredients

While your meat is cooking, combine all your dry ingredients for use later. Here I’ve combined:

• 2 Tbsps Brown Sugar
• 2 Tbsp Cumin
• 2 Tbsp Ground Powdered New Mexico
• 1 Tbsp Ground Powdered Hot New Mexico
• 3-4 Bay Leaves
• 2 Cinnamon Sticks

Step Five: Cooking the Veggies

Once all the meat has been cooked, place the onion, green bell pepper, jalapeno peppers and habanero peppers in the skillet, without draining the grease. Fry the veggies until they are soft and then add in the minced garlic.

Once you’ve added the garlic, cook the veggies for a few minutes longer and then remove from heat.

Step Six: Putting it all together
Take the beef broth, the crushed tomatoes, the tomato paste and the dry ingredients that we previously combined and bring to a boil in a large soup pot. To this add your meat and the pile of cooked vegetables. When adding the meat, add in all the juices that have accumulated in the bowl as well. Same for the vegetables, add in the remaining oil in the skillet.

Once all the ingredients have been combined, you should take notice of the brilliant colors in the chili. The green peppers, the red onions and the orange habaneros can still be identified. Once this chili cooks, each of these bright colors will become a part of the chili’s overall color. Let the chili cook on low for about 1 1/2 to 2 hours, stirring occasionally. Just before serving, add in your juice from 1/2 the lime and the 2 tbsps of cilantro, stirring throughly. Garnish you bowls of chili with some sharp cheddar cheese and we’re done!

Step Seven: The Finished Product
New Mexico Red Chili

This chili, as it’s cooking, has an incredible smell. The cinnamon and bay leaves add an entirely new flavor dimension and really bring out the flavors of the cumin and the peppers. When eating the chili, take the time to identify each level of flavor, and once you get a bit of habanero, your sinuses will clear out and allow you to enjoy the flavors even more! Now, with all of the ingredients, including the beef, the total cost of this pot of chili is just under $40. That includes the purchasing of all the dry ingredients that we will be able to use more of later. This batch of chili will serve about 10-12 bowls, so your looking at less then $3.50 a meal. Not too shabby.

We’ve all heard to famous story of the way Blair’s Death Sauces started – If you haven’t and want to know more, read up about Blair on the Sweat ‘N Spice Blair’s Hot Sauce Page. It’s been over 13 years since Blair first made his original death sauce (1991) and things have changed over the years. Blair’s Hot Sauces are now a international brand, with labels made in several different languages.
Digging into my personal sauce stash, I found that I have several generations of Blair’s Hot Sauces. The one thing that differentiates each generation are the labels.

Blair’s Original Death Sauce

Blair’s Sudden Death Sauce

Blair’s After Death
Blair’s After Death Hot Sauce is my favorite of all the Blair’s Death Sauces, not only in flavor but also in presentation. I think it’s the deep red color of the sauce matched with a darker label then you see on most hot sauce bottles. Flavor-wise After Death has intense heat matched with the smokey flavor of chipotle peppers. Very very tasty. One drop on a hard boiled egg makes a great high protien snack!

Okay, once a week the wife has night class, which means I get the house to myself. Perfect time to do something stupid. The other night I decided to do a taste test of Blair’s 3 A.M. – Earlier this week a customer wrote me and asked if any physical harm would occur if he used a toothpick to put Blair’s 3 A.M. directly on his tongue. I told him no, not when used properly, which is true – but the more I got to thinking about it, the more I wondered what would happen. Could hot sauce physically harm me? It just so happened that I had a bottle of 3 A.M. that was cracked and leaking, so I decided it would be perfect for me to try.

For those of you that are unaware of the heat level of 3 A.M. it’s #7 on Sweat ‘N Spice’s list of the hottest hot sauces in the world. That’s right 1,500,000 ~ 2,000,000 Scoville units of heat. Tabasco has only 2,500 so that means Blair’s 3 A.M has 800 times the heat as Tabasco. Mmmmmm…..this might hurt.
When opening a bottle of Blair’s 3 A.M. it’s important to be prepared. Clean the area you are going to be working on and use gloves! I cannot stress this enough, the extract will get all over your hands, even if your not working with a leaking bottle. Wear gloves! You’ll thank me later.
Now that we’ve opened the bottle, here’s a comparison between an unopened bottle, so that you can see what they look like. Doesn’t look to scary, but I’m sure my nose hairs sponatenously combusted once I got the bottle open.
To try the sauce, I settled on a few pieces of Vermont cheddar and a toothpick. When trying a new hot sauce for the first time, I suggest using cheese or some other dairy product as your medium, that way if you’ve overestimated your heat tolerance, at least some of the pain will be displaced.
Here goes nothing!
On to the cheese went the extract and here goes nothing.
I never knew how hard it is to hold a piece of cheese on my tongue while trying to take a picture. And trying to keep the Blair’s 3 A.M. away from my lips.
I’m not going to say it wasn’t hot, because it is hot, very hot. But because I tasted it with cheese and didn’t get any on my lips, the burning sensation lasted only about 20 minutes and it wasn’t bad at all. I liked it of course. I finished off the rest of the cheese, each with a drop of the 3 A.M – In moderation I’ve found this extract sauce to be very enjoyable. I tasted only the flavor of the cheese and not the extract – just heat. Very nice. I think I might make some chili this weekend and use the leftovers in that. We’ll see how that heats things up.
Would you take this shot? Blair’s 3 A.M. is the real deal – very thick and potent – not a sauce to be taken lightly. Enjoy!

Since putting up this blog, I’ve come across a wide variety of blogs. Some of the more memorable ones include:
- Men Knitting .::. Somehow I found this blog while looking for a craft related website. I don’t knit and don’t plan to start, but found it interesting that a man would like knitting so much that he creates a blog about it. Guess it’s not that weird, I did start the Hot Sauce Blog.

- A New York Escorts Confessions .::. This is a blog written by a NYC Escort. Not sure how I found this blog, but watch out – it’s not really work safe, especially the blogs that she links to. It’s an interesting read nontheless.

- Tucker Max .::. I happened across this guys site well over a year ago and found it again yesterday. It’s a good & funny read. He’s coming out with a book & TV show.

- Hot Sauce Live .::. Ahh, I know what your thinking, another hot sauce blog? Nope, it’s Hot Sauce Live, a blog/ezine dedicated to hot things, such as women & cars. Jeff also runs HotSauceSports

Do you have your own blog you’d like us to check out? Let us know…

Okay, I’ve ran across a lot of blogs recently with posts regarding the Gates in Central Park, so I thought I would add my two cents. The wife and I went to see the Gates on the Sunday after they opened, so day 2 of the display. It was a beautiful day out and we went to the Natural History Museum afterwards – yeah, we’re geeks. Anyways, on to the pictures of the Gates:

A view of the entrance to the Gates @ Columbus Circle. We were there early in the morning and there is still a mob of people, something that is very weird on a Sunday morning.

When I first heard about the Gates, I couldn’t really picture them in my head. Now I can and they are ugly.

I think there’s something like 9 or so miles of these things. 9 miles of gates. Yuck

Okay, the Gates are huge. Really really tall people can barely touch the bottom of the curtains. I’m not one of them.

Another picture of the Gates from far away. Lots of Gates. Lots of Orange Gates

Yep, there are lakes in NYC. Okay, so it’s not much of a lake, more like a pond, but it’s frozen and I like this picture.

I don’t like the Gates, but then again I don’t mind them either. They are one person’s idea of artistic expression. An expensive idea at that. Couldn’t they do something better with that money, like build a shelter for the homeless or support inner city youth programs. They could have built an awesome art studio.

Mayonaise has to be my third favorite condiment. Hot Sauce and Salsa are #1 and #2 of course. My mayonaise obsession goes way back to the days when our dad would cook fried camp potatoes and slather them with regular mayo. We would sit by the fire and wait to eat. Now that I know the recipe, it seems so simple, but back then, camp potatoes were my all time favorite food. Anyways, on to the mayo. Mayonaise is surprisingly easy to make, just make sure you measure correctly, otherwise it can get nasty.

Chipotle mayonnaise
Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon lemon juice
• 1 large egg
• 1/4 rounded teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup light olive oil
• 1 chipotle chile

Directions:
1. Put lemon juice, egg and salt in a blender. Slowly start blending the ingredients, adding oil little by little, until the mayonnaise is thick and you have added all the oil.

2. Add the chipotle chile and blend in. Makes three-fourths cup. ENJOY!

If your looking for a simple taco topping and don’t want to go through the labor of making the mayo, I can highly recommend mixing Chiptole Tabaso and Regualr Mayo together. It makes a brilliantly creamy taco topping that will not over power your tacos.

Wine made with Apples and Jalapenos? Unique wine produced in North Dakota, yes North Dakota.

24-7PressRelease.com – February 6, 2005 – Apple Jalapeno Pepper Wine a hit—-Casselton, ND

Jalapeno peppers direct from the frozen tundra of -30 below North Dakota are blended with farm fresh apples to produce this unique sensation. Apple Jalapeno wine, a trademark of the Maple River Winery in Casselton North Dakota has amazed people from all over the globe. While most wine consumers can relate to Cabernet or Merlot or Zinfandel, this creative wine catches everyone’s attention. This tantalizing wine provides one of the most unbelievable wine tastes with an initial semi-sweet apple taste on the tip of the tongue with a warm, but not overpowering, Jalapeno aftertaste everywhere else. More information about the Apple Jalapeno wine as well as Maple River’s award winning Rhubarb wine, a sweet blush wine that tastes like rhubarb pie, can be found at www.mapleriverwinery.com or 701-347-5900.

About Maple River Winery
Maple River Winery, privately owned by Greg and Susan Kempel in Casselton ND, produces unique wines with native North Dakota fruits. It is famous for Apple Jalapeno and Rhubarb Wine.

Tabasco in hot fight with Mexican restaurant over name

Associated Press
Feb. 14, 2005 08:55 AM

There’s a hot dispute between the makers of Tabasco sauce and an Iowa Mexican restaurant.

Hot sauce maker the McIlhenny Company is suing Tabasco’s Mexican Restaurant and Patio in Marion.

McIlhenny has used the trademark Tabasco to identify its spicy pepper sauce since 1868. But the restaurant owners say they named it after the state in southeastern Mexico.

They claim an apostrophe “s” in the restaurant’s name avoids infringing on the Tabasco trademark.

It’s not an argument McIlhenny is buying. Lawyers for the hot sauce marker want a judge to order the restaurant to get a new name, pay damages and destroy everything with using the word Tabasco.

** Recipe courtesy of Food Network.
Recipe Summary
Difficulty: Medium
Prep Time: 45 minutes
Cook Time: 30 minutes
Yield: 4 servings

Ingredients
4 (6-ounce) beef fillets

Marinade:
4 tablespoons hot pepper sauce, recommended: Cholula Hot Sauce
8 tablespoons olive oil
1 ounce garlic, minced
1 ounce chopped thyme, rosemary, and sage
Salt and pepper

Tamale filling:
Olive oil
2 ounces red bell peppers, sliced
2 ounces yellow bell pepper, sliced
1 ounce garlic, chopped
1 onion, sliced
1 tablespoon hot pepper sauce, recommended: Cholula

Tamale:
8 ounces corn flour
3 ounces vegetable shortening
4 ounces chicken broth
1 ounce achiote paste
Salt and pepper
4 banana leaves, pre-steamed

To prepare the marinade, combine all of the ingredients together in a large container and marinate the beef for 2 hours in the refrigerator. Once the beef is marinated, sear the beef on both sides in a saute pan for approximately 10 minutes or until desired doneness.

To make the tamale filling: In a saute pan, add enough olive oil to lightly coat the bottom of the pan and heat. Saute the peppers, garlic, onion, and hot sauce. Cook until the peppers are tender and set aside.

To make the tamales, use a mixing bowl and combine the corn flour, vegetable shortening, chicken broth, achiote paste, and salt and pepper. Mix until a dough starts to form. Place the banana leaves on a flat surface and spread the tamale dough in the center of each leaf. Add the cooked peppers and fold the banana leaves around the tamale. Steam the tamales for 20 minutes.

To serve, slice the tamales or cut them open and place in the center of each plate. Place the beef fillets to the side and serve.

By Debra Glidden
Tuesday, February 15, 2005
SWAMPSCOTT – It’s hot and it’s one of the best-kept secrets in town.
The Swampscott Sauce Company is a “microbrewery for hot sauce” that Shawn Callahan concocted in the kitchen of his Swampscott home.
“I always liked hot sauce. I worked in sub shops in high school and college,” he said.
Callahan, a 1987 graduate of Swampscott High School, said he purchased a marinade recipe book in 1996 and started experimenting with marinades and sauces.
“I guess you could say I’m an idea man. I began experimenting and made test batches. I started dreaming of starting my own sauce company,” Callahan said.
And he did just that, founding the Swampscott Sauce Company.
“If you’re like me, you’re a big fan of your local microbrewery,” Callahan said. “You love high-quality beer, the kind with a distinct flavor and personality. You like it because they make it in small quantities, adding equal part hops and love.”
Callahan has taken the microbrewery philosophy and transferred it to cooking.
“Making, bottling, and delivering sauces to a local audience
is the key to a successful MicroSauce company.
“It’s our mission to offer high-quality sauces with all-natural ingredients, without additives or preservatives. I cut my own vegetables by hand and unlike most other companies I don’t use dehydrated onions,” he said.
Callahan said he initially tried to find a professional chef to cook up the hot sauce and get the company off the ground.
“One day I was simmering one of my test batches. I was enjoying the sound of my wooden spoon against the stainless steel pot and decided that I didn’t need a professional chef. My background as a short-order cook and dedication to learning the craft of sauceology would be enough,” he said.
After a year of reading everything he could get his hands on about sauce preparation, his business idea was cooking and it was time to open the Swampscott Sauce Company.
Callahan, who works for a Beverly firm that creates packaging for Atari Video Games, said he has reached the point where the company is not losing money, but he admits he isn’t making money yet either.
“I haven’t quit my day job but someday I would love to be able to do this full-time,” he said.
Callahan, who has a degree in marketing, said he had enough sense to know the name Shawn wouldn’t stick in anyone’s head, so he decided to go with his nickname from college, Stumpy, for use on all marketing campaigns for his Swampscott Sauce Company. He would not say how he got his nickname.
Callahan’s sense of humor has been a useful marketing tool. He described his Devils Breath Jalapeño Pepper Sauce as a “fiery blend of jalapeño peppers, tomato puree, and spices” that will “show you what it’s like to French kiss old Lucifer himself!”
Callahan offers free delivery to Lynn, Nahant, Swampscott and Marblehead.
“The orders will be delivered by our sauce runners, handpicked professionals trained in the art of sauce delivery.Actually, I do most of the delivery myself,” he chuckled.
For a small delivery charge he will also deliver to Salem, Peabody, Beverly, Danvers, Middleton, Saugus, Lynnfield and Revere, but you’re going to pay with cash or check.
“We want the bill payer of the family to keeps tabs on the MasterGriller, who, out of love for our products, would buy a ridiculous number of sauces every month if we accepted credit cards,” Callahan quipped.
Prices range from $4.50 for a bottle of hot sauce to $48 for a gift set with an assortment of eight bottles of hot and BBQ sauce.Orders may be placed online at http://www.swampscottsaucecompany.com/index.html