Smoking J’s Fiery Foods
Smoking J’s Fiery Foods is a family owned and operated farm business located in Western North Carolina’s beautiful Blue Ridge Mountain town of Candler which is just a few short miles west of Asheville. Asheville is a city rich with naturally grown, artfully produced and lovingly prepared cuisine and so much more. They offer a diverse line of original hand-crafted specialty food products and great emphasis is placed on environmentally friendly farming practices as well as natural and preservative free sauces.
From what started as a chile pepper farm that began developing their own line of products then grew into a bottling and co-packing facility. Starting in 2009, Firehouse Bottling Company took great pride in bottling hot sauce, BBQ sauce, salsa, dressings and blended dry rubs becoming a small batch, packaged food manufacturing facility with a focus on quality ingredients and incomparable customer service.
The facility was originally built in 1959 and was the home to the Upper Hominy Fire Department until 2017 when they moved into a new facility and allowed FBC to purchase the building. After spending a few years renovating the space and building out a commercial production kitchen they began operating and now create products for 25 different companies and counting, with the goal is to assist clients with all the challenges associated with bringing a finished product to market. They are able to help with recipe development, ingredient/container sourcing, graphic design work and label procurement.
Co-packing Giant
Endorphin Farms Inc based in St. Augustine, Florida is a fully licensed and insured sauce manufacturing facility. Co-packing, also known as contract packing, is a subcontracting model in manufacturing where a manufacturer outsources the packing or bottling of their product to a third party. The co-packer can take over the entire production process including fine-tuning a recipe to make it faster, more efficient and at a cost savings. Co-packing allows the manufacturer to retain the rights to the product’s formula, recipe, or proprietary processes.
A family-owned business established in 1998, Endorphin Farms has worked hard to establish themselves as the premier bottler in North America. Some of the biggest names in the hot sauce community, a literal who’s who call upon The Farm to assist in their production needs. The team at The Farm helps with dialing in customer recipes, cost efficiency in ingredients, labeling and overall recipe scaling to fit the needs of the customer.
From one end of the facility to another, Endorphin Farms maintains professional, compliance and adheres to food safety regulations and guidelines, they have the entire process down to a science and make it extremely comfortable for their customers, new and old.
League of Fire – Chilli Eating Champions
The League of Fire is the original league table-based website and community dedicated to chilli-eating enthusiasts from all over the world. The LOF team painstakingly tallies an elaborate and detailed ranking system where point values are allocated to competitors when they successfully complete league certified challenges, bringing together a community of literal fire-eaters from all around the globe to push their heat tolerance, stamina, and intestinal fortitude.
Based out of the UK, two chileheads, Matt Tangent and Paul Ouro came up with a way to put a spotlight on the competitive eaters and the hyper challenge minded, it was their way to showcase these achievements and bring a community together with friendly competition and sharing an extreme passion for consuming ultra hot food and chilli peppers. This vision paired with their first belt match on July 21st, 2019, launched the League of Fire into what it is today.
Currently there are four championship belts being held worldwide; the Oceana Belt held by Gabby Del Castillo from Australia, the European Belt held by Giancarlo Gasparotto from Italy, the Americas Belt held by Kris Fragile from the US, and the World Chilli Eating Championship Belt held by Mike Jack from Canada. Mike is the all-time points leader and two-time Americas Regional Belt Championship, along with being the reigning Extreme Chilli Alliance World Champion. Mike also holds several Guinness World Records for speed-eating, many of which are for super-hot chilli peppers.
HAVOC IS Coming!
Hot Sauce HAVOC is the spicy brainchild project from Smokin’ Ed Currie of Puckerbutt Pepper Company and Steve Seabury of High River Sauces. These two maniacs came up with the idea of challenging small batch artisan hot sauce makers in a “Chopped” style competition to ultimately test their individual skills under strict time limits and a ton of pressure to create the best tasting hot sauce that matches each unique style of the cities the competitions were held in.
How it works is, each competitor has the same core ingredients to work with in their mystery basket, they are then given time to quickly shop the stocked setup pantry to find their own unique items to formulate their perfect sauce with their own individuality and flair. But what the competitors didn’t know is that they would face challenges and roadblocks along their culinary journey. The dreaded “Wheel of Doom” looming eerily on stage with them, threatening to bring its own HAVOC down upon them relentlessly and unforgivingly.
The first season of Hot Sauce HAVOC will be available weekly on YouTube with Ep. 1: Making a Hot Sauce That Tastes Like a Chicago Hot Dog now up at: https://youtube.com/@hotsaucehavoc
Be sure to tune in each week for a new episode and follow along as some of the best artisan hot sauce makers are tested, challenged, and see who ultimately wreaks HAVOC on their competitors. It’s sure to be a wild ride!