Local

by

Shellie Mierwald

Last Fall one of my producers, Way Fruit Farm, managed to talk me into a bushel of pears instead of my regular half bushel. At first I was thinking, fabulous and amazing product but what the heck am I going to do with all these pears? I immediately thought of trying them out in a pear hot sauce, and knew that limes and black pepper paired well together. After thinking of additional complimentary ingredients, our Key Lime Hot Sauce was born. It was definitely different being that it was light in heat and color, and I loved it. My husband Dave and I were unsure of the new hot sauce, we wondered how our customers would use such a unique sauce. We debuted it at the NYC Hot Sauce Expo, and it was our fastest selling sauce. We asked customers to let us know how they were using the hot sauce, and the responses weren’t what we were expecting. People were taking the sauce and using it on ice cream, cheesecake, seafood, pork, chicken, mojitos, margaritas….it fascinated me. I began to notice on the chile forums an upswing in the use of spicy products on sweet foods, not just on savory foods.