Foodquest: August 28, 2005 Foodies: Slowdog, Ping Photography: Slowdog Narration: Slowdog

August in Austin is a time of triple digit temperatures,  sweltering heat baking the landscape, and...  The Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival?  Well, if things are this hot already, why not go for broke? 

This year marks the fifteenth annual run of the Austin Chronicle's Hot Sauce Festival.  Held in Waterloo Park, the festival brings in entrants from all across Texas as well as from the rest of the United States.  Folks can wander from booth to booth and sample the various offerings.  In addition to the hot sauces on tap, various local restaurants like Rudy's BBQ and Dona Emilia's also provide their cuisine for festival participants.

The festival attracts a diverse range of Austinites to the event.  As the queues in lines grow throughout the afternoon, the crowd favorites become quickly apparent.  Some booths are so popular that they exhaust their supply of chips and sauce early in the afternoon.  Others are  equipped for contingency and reinforcements arrive with ample sauce as as soon as there is need. 

One of the first stops of the afternoon is at the Sgt. Pepper booth.  Sgt. Pepper offers a range of hot sauces, salsas and pestos.  Interestingly, Sgt. Pepper offers several fruit flavored hot sauces like their Balsamic Blackberry Chipotle Sauce, the Pumpkin Chipotle Sauce and their Mango Habanero Chili sauce.

Three salsas offered by Sgt. Pepper are the Salsa Roja, the Salsa Tomatillo Chipotle, and Salsa Ahumado.  The salsas are fairly light with a soft burn that lingers for only a few moments.  Not quite as aggressive as some of the salsas from later in the afternoon.

The brightly colored pesto box at the Sgt. Pepper booth features a smorgasbord of their salsas as well as various chili based pestos.   Cilantro and Serrano Pesto, Roasted Green Chile Pesto, Chipotle Pesto and Jalapeno Pesto are among the varieties available for sampling.

Garlic dill pickles and okra are on tap at the Hill Country Homestyle Canning booth.  Pickled okra taste almost exactly like cucumber pickles except for their mushy texture.  Among the choices of mild, hot and habanero varieties of both types of pickles, the best balance of flavor seems to be reached with the  hot garlic dill variety.  The habanero variety offers a more robust burn, but the spiciness of the pepper overwhelms the flavor of the pickles.

The salsa portion of the Hill Country Homestyle Canning booth begins with the mild Peach Salsa and moves up the pepper scale to the Habanero Salsa.  The scale goes from mild, medium, hot, hot so hot, our hottest, then...  habanero..  This salsa is innocuously hidden away at the end of the line with little warning.  Of course the name habanero should be warning enough.  The mildest selection of the Hill Country Homestyle Canning salsas also offers the most amazing of flavors.  The Peach Salsa is absolutely delectable with a smooth feel that offers both sweet and tangy accents.  At the same time, a pleasant spiciness accents the warm fruit flavors of the salsa. 

Pepper Creek Farms offers a variety of honey based glazes and sauces.  Recently, their Raspberry Chipotle Sauce has won first place in this year's Scovie Awards.  Not surprisingly, they are also one of the first booths to run out of chips for their sauces. 

The final stop for the afternoon is at Winston's which offers their pepper sauce in mild and hot varieties.  In addition to the surprisingly strong kick of the mild and even more intense burn of the hot, Winston's hot sauce has an extremely flavorful blend of seasonings that makes it one of the tastiest sauces sampled at this year's Hot Sauce Festival.  Winston's hot sauces have won the Austin Chronicle award for several years in a row and has also won regional awards across Texas.   

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