It’s time again for the annual NYC Hot Sauce Expo! to be held March 29th and 30th! SO EXCITED to have been asked to be on the Judge’s panel again this year. Even Bon Appetit threw in a contender to judge this year in light of their recent article, The United States of Hot Sauce. Awesome! This video summarizes the experience, and if you need a refresher here is my post from last year.

I was smarter this year and only brought my absolute favorites home with me, as I still have unopened bottles from last year. I’ll also go ahead and spill that the Horseshoe Peach pictured at the bottom is my new favorite brand/flavor. SO good. I’ll be eating it with a spoon and on everything I eat for the rest of the year.

One of the best parts of judging this year…

we got to take home these ridiculously rare and amazing dried peppers! I wish I had better pictures of all of this, they were so glorious. As a person that has become obsessed with drying and making my own pepper powders, I am very excited to experiment with these.

Also, this year we had double the amount of judges as last year, and STILL only one person, Mary Izett from Fuhmentaboudit! was able to hang in there until the end, along with last year’s last judge’s standing…Master Chef Derrick Prince (to my left) and Matt Timms, (to my right) who runs The Takedowns that I am always competing in (Mac and Cheese this weekend!!! YAY!). Also pictured is Jimmy Carbone of (far left) Food Karma who runs the event along with showrunner and hot sauce maker extraordinaire Steve Seabury of High River Sauces

I hope to see some of your burning faces at the event, if not just to see people compete to eat as many of my friend Ed Currie of Puckerbutt Pepper Company’s newly inducted in the book as the world’s hottest pepper, the Reaper Pepper, in the Guinness Book of Records eating contest. I for one am amped as hell to watch people suffer enjoy the heat!

Until then!

XOXO

SweaterMeat

PS – Challenge for next year! Pepper Genome Sequenced!