I was recently speaking with Denzel Sandburg of Denzel’s Gourmet Foods in British Colombia, Canada. He was telling me that he may get his fantastic products out here to the Napa area for the Mustard Festival. Denzel recently learned that his honey mustard sauce took the top prize at the Napa Valley Mustard Festival Worldwide Mustard Competition.Then today while surfing my usual food related searches I can across this article about Denzel in the Vernon Morning Star:
Denzel Sandberg has to drain every grocery store along Highway 97 in the Okanagan to collect enough habaneros — the spiciest naturally-grown hot pepper — for his world famous hot sauces. It takes about 20 pounds of habaneros to make a batch of Fire Hazard, a hot sauce ranking eight out of eight on his spicy scale because it uses twice as many habaneros as his next-hottest sauce (Dangerous Goods, a seven) and which he uses the word really three times to convey how hot it is.
“It’s my drug of choice. This one is ‘aahhh,’” he says, widening his arms as if he were imitating a bear.
In the four-hour process of grinding, chopping, and roasting the habaneros for Fire Hazard, his eyes burn, his skin flares and his nostril hairs seer.
“It smells good but it burns,” said Sandberg. “It hurts.”
Making hot sauce is hard work, which is why the Enderby entrepreneur/chef, whose bottles have been bringing him international awards since he started Denzel’s Gourmet Foods seven years ago, entertained the idea of getting into the barbecue sauce business. Less than a year later, three of his four barbecue sauces have won some of the world’s top sauce prizes.
We hope that we will see you in Napa!
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