By Gwyneth Doland
Blair Lazar is a New Jersey Gen-X'er whose record-breaking hot sauces put the 'x' in extreme. His motto is "Feel Alive®," and that's exactly how you'll feel when you're running around the room searching for a beverage. His Original Death® Sauce, gets tossed over more than 50,000 pounds of Buffalo wings every week, plus countless other uses. While the Death Sauce® (in many varieties) has mass appeal, Blair's Reserves have developed an amazing cult following. Released sporadically and in small batches, the Reserve products come in special glass bottles, signed, numbered and hand-dipped in colored resins--a 24 karat gold skull sometimes tops them. Fans avidly collect the bottles, which sell for hundreds and sometimes many thousands of dollars on the Internet and through private collectors. Blair's Reserves are the hottest of the hot, including his 16 Million Reserve, which is listed by Guinness World Records 2007 as the "hottest chili sauce commercially available." Funny, frank and frankly obsessed with hot stuff, Blair is the kind of personality that makes fiery foods so much fun.
GD: Before you began your hot sauce empire, you were a bartender at the Jersey shore, where you came up with the "Wings of Death Challenge." What was the challenge?
BL: Back in 1989, when I was bartending, it was always a hassle to get the inebriated patrons to leave at the end of the night--they wanted the fun to go on. Two o'clock would come around, and people would not leave. So I knew I had to do something: create the hottest wings I could make--the Wings of Death®--and tell them they could stay after closing if they could eat them all. Only a few ever did it. Almost all of them bowed to the challenge and went on home.
What was the secret to your sauce?
We used to buy these big drums of pickles for the bar, to go with the sandwiches, and I noticed that they were using an extract, a concentrated pepper extract (to make the pickles flavorful). That was what gave me the idea to develop this super hot wing sauce. When I started using it for my sauce, the extract makers said, "You can't use it for that!" They thought I was crazy.
But it worked, right?
Yeah! The bizarre thing was that the bar patrons would come back the next day and say, "Hey, you know that sauce that I couldn't eat last night? Uh, can I have some more of that?" So I'd give them a little plastic cup of it.
You just gave it away?
What did I know? It was a ton of fun. Finally, in '92 I went down to Staples and ran off handmade color copies of the labels and started bottling it at night.
What did you call the sauce?
It's called The Original Death® Sauce.
You named your first sauce "The Original"?
Well, no, that's what we call it now. At first I called it, "Try this portion cup of my sauce!"
You've come a long way since "Try this portion cup of my sauce." How have things changed?
They really haven't changed. I can honestly say, that is the very same sauce that I started with. The formula is exactly the same. Death Sauce® and After Death®, while they had different names, they were both the same sauce from the Wings of Death®; one was hot and the other was just hotter.
What's the main ingredient in the sauce?
Habaneros. Habanero and I have been best friends for 17 years. I love not only the heat, but I love the flavor. As extreme as my sauces have become, I've always focused on flavor as well because it's not just about burning people, it's about giving them something good. I love the fruitiness of habanero and how it blends with other ingredients.
Are any of your sauces too hot for you, or is your lust for heat insatiable?
I've tried them all, including the 16 million Scoville unit one that's in the Guinness World Records 2007. But too hot? I think everything has a time and a place. There are times I want that, and there are times I don't. There are times that I enjoy my original Death Sauce®--that is literally always. I cook with them at home; I use them on everything. I have two bottles of Death Sauce® on my desk right now. As for the super-hot sauces, they amuse the hell out of me, and they give me a rush like nothing else.
That's one hell of a rush! Are you a danger junkie? Are you into bungee-jumping, skydiving, motorcycle racing and that kind of thing or is hot stuff the one method you've chosen for flirting with death?
I think that I get enough of my kicks from hot sauce! I definitely like to drive fast, but I don't jump my car over burning buses.
You make all these sauces yourself. Isn't it dangerous is it to work with super-hot stuff?
I have burned myself so many times--and I'm not even saying this in a braggadocious way--that I don't even think about it anymore. It's just something that happens. Seriously. When I'm making a batch, I have to ask other people if the sauce is hot enough. I think I might have burned a few receptors out. I'm a great judge of flavor, but not of heat. The only way I know if it's really, really hot is when my hiccup alarm goes off. I'm not the person to ask, "Is this hot enough?"
Because the answer's always no?
Right. But again, it's not just about heat. When I attempted to launch my long-awaited wing sauce, we went through so many rounds of samples and worked on it and worked on it. Everything was great, and we made maybe 500 cases or so. But then I tasted it, and it just wasn't right. I felt like it was lacking the heat; it just wasn't there. We dumped it. I haven't been able to go back and work on it again.
You threw it all away? Can't you just add more heat?
No. It's not just adding more heat because that changes the flavor profile. You have to start all over again. I'm totally obsessive about it. Really, really obsessive.
Do you think you need counseling?
Probably. I think if I walked in somewhere and explained how distraught I was over this sauce, I'd be committed immediately.
Have you made any particularly memorable mistakes since you've been in the business?
You're not writing a book, just an article, right? I don't think you have space for all of my mistakes! But here's one. When I was starting out, I thought that if I just taped all my cases together and put labels on them and sent them off, they'd be fine. I had built up an inventory of something like 25 cases and had made sales to maybe five different places. Nobody told me about packing peanuts or outer carton boxes or anything like that.
Uh-oh.
There were broken bottles and hot sauce everywhere. I think I annoyed every UPS driver in the country. I had just worked for weeks making the sauce, and it all got wrecked. But I didn't give up! And my customers were great. They knew how hard I'd worked on it, and they forgave me. I still sell to some of them now.
What new products have you been working on?
We will perfect the wing sauce I just mentioned, and we have a new superhot sauce, a new barbecue sauce, the opening of Blair Labs in January of 2007, and we have new potato chip flavors coming out. We make about 1.5 million bags of chips a month. We started that in 1999 and they've done great, really well.
Everybody's doing hot chips now.
I know. Nobody used to be able to pronounce chipotle, and now McDonald's has spun off a whole chain of restaurants called Chipotle Grill. Five years ago, most people had no idea what an habanero was, and now it's on a bag of Doritos.
Did you notice the trend towards spicy chips and decide to capitalize on it, or were you surprised by the success of your chips?
I have never looked at any of this like, "Will this be huge?" or "Will this make money?" I do it because I want to do it. I loved the hell out of it when I started, and I still do today. I have never written a business plan in my life, and when I do, that's when it's time to get out of the business. I do a lot of stuff off the cuff and because of what I feel at the moment. Sometimes I make mistakes, but that's OK.
Look for Blair's Hot Sauces and Snacks on the Web at
www.extremefood.com
Habanero Parmesan Chicken
Rex Swank invented this recipe based on Blair's Habanero Chips.
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon seasoning salt
2 2-ounce bags Blair's Original Habanero Chips, finely crushed
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
6 boneless skinless chicken breast halves
Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix the cheese, seasoning salt, crushed Habanero Chips, and garlic powder together in a bowl. Moisten the chicken with water and coat with the cheese mixture. Place in a shallow baking dish, and bake for 25-30 minutes, or until chicken is cooked throughout.
Yield: 6 servings
Heat Scale: Hot
Huevos Rojos
This recipe, submitted by Joe, is a variation on huevos rancheros.
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
4 blue corn tortillas
1 jar Blair's Death Salsa
2 tablespoons chopped cilantro
8 eggs
3/4 cup shredded Monterey jack cheese
In a large skillet, heat the oil and fry the tortillas for 5 seconds per side. Drain on paper towels and keep warm in the oven. In a bowl, combine the Blair's Death Salsa and the cilantro and mix thoroughly. Set aside. Fry two eggs at a time, topping with a portion of the shredded cheese until melted. Top each tortilla with two eggs and spoon on the salsa mixture. Garnish with a green jalapeno for color.
Yield: 4 servings
Heat Scale: Hot
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