Bringing The Heat
Photos by Adam DeTour / Styled by Catrine Kelty
When people think of hot peppers, they typically think of the southern U.S.: New Mexico and its delicious choice of red or green chile sauce; Texas and its ubiquitous heat (both in flavor and in temperature); or South Carolina and the infamous Carolina Reaper, known to be the hottest pepper yet discovered in the world. But chiliheads are increasingly growing local, with peppers and sauces adding flavorful heat to dishes all around the Greater Boston area, and ensuring that New England, despite our frigid winters, gets its due for bringing the heat.
Those steeped in Boston’s heat history might recall one of the first establishments to put this region on the map. Beginning in the 1980s, Cambridge’s East Coast Grill became a destination for spice seekers. On a surf trip to Barbados in his 20s, chef Chris Schlesinger sampled a mustard-based hot sauce featuring Scotch Bonnet peppers. He was hooked, and later started concocting and bottling a similar sauce at the Grill. Inner Beauty Hot Sauce gained considerable notoriety, and was featured on the restaurant’s infamous Hell Nights, when dishes like the Scorpion Chili Artichoke Dip and Pasta from Hell were on the menu, and seats were hard to come by.
It wasn’t until much later that Craic Sauce founder Brian Ruhlman learned of this history. For most of the Hell Night era, he was but a wee lad playing in his family’s garden in Concord. But just prior to starting a new job in 2014 in Ireland, where his family hails from, Ruhlman picked out a couple Golden Ghost peppers and habaneros from a Johnny’s Seeds catalog, and attempted his first hot sauce.
“With no recipe or expectations, I mixed some pineapple to complement the fruity notes of the chili peppers and noted that sugar pumpkins were just coming in at the same time,” recalls Ruhlman. “So I roasted chilies with pumpkin with nutmeg and brown sugar; caramelized onions with garlic, ginger and carrots; and then blended the mix with some vinegar. What I tasted was unlike anything I had before, and opened my eyes to the opportunity for innovation in flavor with making unique hot sauces.”
Like Schlesinger before him, he was hooked. Ruhlman kept up his hot sauce hobby during his years abroad, and returned home with a brand name inspired by his Irish heritage: Craic Sauce (pronounced “crack”) was born. In Ireland, “craic” is synonymous with “good times,” and many conversations begin with the salutation, “What’s the craic?”
From the beginning, Ruhlman sourced peppers from local growers as much as possible. Plenty of farms in the Greater Boston area grow chilis. Since peppers like lots of sun and heat, the New England weather can be a challenge, with a late spring or early fall frost being a risk for the 110-day growing season of a ghost pepper. But places like Stillman’s Farm, which began in Lunenburg and has expanded to a New Braintree location, have found success growing everything from your standard bell peppers to Hungarian Hot Wax. Chiliheads have taken notice.
“We get numerous calls a week about sourcing peppers,” says Geneviève Stillman, who runs the farm alongside her husband, Glenn. “Mostly it’s about wanting to try the hottest.” Yet for people who truly love peppers, the obsession with the Scoville scale and Hot Ones histrionics can obscure the depth of flavor peppers offer.
“I often find that most hot sauces out there focus more on the heat level and less on the actual flavor of the sauce,” says Thomas Norton, chef de cuisine at The Farmer’s Daughter, which serves breakfast and lunch at its two locations in Easton and Sudbury. “This can definitely turn a lot of people off to peppers. It’s seen more as a contest of who can stand to eat the spiciest pepper.”
Like Ruhlman, Norton grew up sampling the offerings in his family’s garden, and was intrigued by the heirloom vegetables that didn’t appear on any grocery store shelves, which was a natural gateway to his interest in peppers. When selecting ingredients for the restaurant’s seasonal, rotating hot sauces, Norton always prioritizes unique flavors, resulting in combinations like Green Apple Chili and Miso Habanero.
“I choose the peppers I use for hot sauces based more on the flavor than the heat a pepper has to offer,” says Norton. “I like peppers like Fresno, Cheyenne and Cherry Bombs because they are both delicious and have the heat levels I prefer in a hot sauce.” This means a level that will leave a patron hungry for more rather than desperately reaching for the nearest glass of milk. “I’d rather my hot sauce be delicious regardless of the heat and allow the natural flavor of the pepper to shine,” explains Norton. “I’m not one who looks to make a hot sauce so spicy that you can’t enjoy it by the spoonful.”
“It’s true that the heat and capsaicin are unique elements of peppers, but they have such a wide range of characteristics and subtle flavors,” agrees Ruhlman. “Even the very hot peppers like the Scotch Bonnet or Trinidad Scorpion have floral bright notes that are so unique and will transform dishes. The flavor of a New Mexico chili like a Big Jim or Hatch pepper is really special. When people explain their feelings of eating and smelling fire-roasted New Mexico chilies, you can tell they are being transported to some of their most special memories.”
It is this kind of experience that Ruhlman hopes to evoke with his array of sauces. He recently began growing on an agricultural plot of land in Chelmsford called Mud Island, which certainly lived up to its name this summer. The “island” is part of a former farm that was purchased by the town in 2008 and has been revitalized under the guidance of the Chelmsford Open Spaces Stewardship Program, with a community garden and land for lease. With his new space on Mud Island, Ruhlman will be able to become a mostly seed-to-sauce company. He is excited about having insight into the whole process of sauce production, as well as the increased connections growing his own peppers provides.
“The most fulfilling thing is meeting different people in the community, and being inspired and inspiring,” says Ruhlman. His hope is that by expanding taste horizons, people might get creative in their own right, and start experimenting with the peppers he finds so enthralling, whether it’s with their own sauce or a spicy dish. Ruhlman advocates for adding hot sauce to items as varied as smoothies, salads, hummus and cream cheese.
“If you want to cook using the peppers themselves, stews are great,” says Ruhlman. “My favorite is a chili verde stew with potatoes, pork butt, onion and roasted green chilies like poblanos, Anaheim or Big Jim chilies.”
Stillman’s favorite pepper dish involves charring whole shishitos on the grill, drizzling them with extra-virgin olive oil, balsamic and coarse salt, and eating them right off the stem. The added chance of devouring the rare spicy shishito only adds to the excitement of the dish. Stillman laughs while recalling one customer who accidentally received a little too much excitement when following this recipe on a mislabeled batch of ghost peppers masquerading as shishitos. “He popped an entire ghost pepper into his mouth and spent about 20 minutes thinking he was going to die,” says Stillman. She assures me it was the last time any pepper mislabeling occurred at Stillman’s.
To Norton, there is a classic dish that provides a natural entry point for the pepper-curious. “I know this one is a bit obvious, but Buffalo wings always seem to do the trick in my experience. The salty, spicy sauce blended with rich butter and crispy chicken wings is a great way to dip your toes into the world of peppers.”
Above all, Norton loves the expansive possibility of peppers. “My favorite thing about working with peppers is taking something that by itself can be overwhelming to the palate and turning it into something that can be used in cooking regularly to enhance the flavor of food,” he says. “Food is such a universal tool in broadening one's experiences in life. The natural curiosity of humans lends itself to trying new things. Harissa, sriracha, sambal … these things have become almost as common to some people as ketchup. Twenty years ago this may not have been the case.”
As for putting Boston on the national chili radar, Ruhlman believes the key is honoring the connections peppers can foster. “I think there is room for Boston to get on the map, but it begins with being genuine, sourcing local and working together with farmers, chefs and community.”
Start there, and the craic will surely follow.
crafthotsauce.com
stillmansfarm.com
thefarmersdaughtereaston.com
This story appeared in the Fall 2021 issue.
