Exploring the Source with Joey's Hot Sauce (Part 1)

In part 1 of Exploring the Source with Culinary Seasons, I interview Joey Repice of Joey’s Hot Sauce. Joey was inspired to create his hot sauce because his wife Lisa was looking at brands of hot sauce in the store and expressed her frustration with the amount of fillers, additives and sugar in the ingredients.

Joey’s Hot Sauce line of Hot Sauces

From Inspiration comes Priscilla the Creeper

Joey headed to the farmers market in Mar Vista, Ca and picked out some organic peppers and came home to create his first sauce. Keeping with his Italian heritage, he utilized the cooking techniques his mama taught him. Joey’s inspiration to create Lisa a hot sauce which evolved into Priscilla the Creeper currently the mildest hot sauce in his original line. This sauce has great flavor, notes of the roasted poblanos and other peppers with a creeping heat that catches up to you without taking your breath away.

Lisa the Truffle Queen

While living in Southern California, Joey was further inspired to develop a truffle infused hot sauce that kept with his no b/s motto, and didn’t have any artificial ingredients. Once again he headed to the Mar Vista Farmers Market and connected with The Truffle Brothers, importers of Italian Truffles. Since moving to Oregon, Joey has partnered with an Oregon truffle forager out of the Willamette Valley that delivers truffles exactly when Joey needs them.

He headed back to the kitchen with a bag of truffles and dropped some in a blender with a batch of hot sauce, creating Lisa the Truffle Queen. This sauce has the heat from the Priscilla the Creeper with an amazing earthy undertone that does not have metallic or synthetic taste. Joey points out that because he is not using any truffle oil or synthetic flavoring the earthy flavor of the truffle comes through.

I especially enjoy the flavor of Lisa the Truffle Queen because of the earthy tones and creeping heat. The lack of synthetic ingredients to get the truffle flavor keeps out the metallic flavor that many truffle flavored foods have.

Joey is all about flavor with his hot sauces, as shown with Lisa the Truffle Queen, he utilizes the best ingredients to deliver the best flavor.

Finding the Balance between Flavor and Heat

The care Joey takes to deliver flavor continues with Joey’s Hot Sauce 50/50, middle ground for heat in the original line of Joey’s Hot Sauce. This sauce gets the addition of roasted habanero with the seeds and membrane removed. Roasting the peppers allows the habanero to expand the flavor of the pepper without excessive heat. Roasting the flesh of the pepper brings out more habanero flavor.

“Hulling the habanero is a laborious, time consuming process but I do this because I like the flavor of the habanero without the burning heat.”, Joey

The heat on this one not only creeps up on you like his original sauce but has an added bite that lingers. The habanero peppers in the recipe definitely have additional flavor but begin to deliver the burn too! Don’t get me wrong, I can take the heat but from here on out the Joey’s might make you sweat!

Working with Talented Chefs

Joey may look familiar to some of you. He worked as a Beverage Director at Pure Food and Wine in New York for 10 years. He was also featured on Bad Vegan, the documentary of the downfall of the owner of Pure.

His time working with Vegan Chefs in New York gave him insight on ways to extract or impart flavor into Vegan food. As we discuss his hot sauces, he talks about working with those chefs and picking their brains to learn techniques that inspired him to use in creating Joey’s Hot Sauce.

When developing his line of hot sauces, he came into it with fresh eyes. He not only wanted to make a no sugar hot sauce for his wife but have a flavor forward result. By using sweetness from roasted sweet peppers and delivering added flavor from varying pepper combinations between sauces he has created hot sauces that hit the mark for people wanting a healthier, cleaner option in a hot sauce. Plus delivering several levels of heat.

As Joey points out, “There aren’t a lot of competitors on the market that are able to claim they are a better healthy choice. Plus, with this many options.”