Chillin’

With the

Chileheads
A scorching journey to the heart
of America’s hottest food show
BY ELI ELLISON

N ot my wisest move, I admit. I’m walking through exhibitor aisles

at Albuquerque’s annual National Fiery Foods & BBQ Show on
an empty stomach. Among the hundreds of hot sauces avail-
able to sample, I choose a bottle named The Last Dab as my first. For
the uninitiated, this superhot blend with Pepper X gained infamy on
the YouTube talk show Hot Ones, where celebrities taste a drop of the
scorching sauce on a chicken wing. Clocking in at a scary 2.69 million
Scoville Heat Units, The Last Dab, I’m warned, means business.
I plop a tiny bit on my tongue. The burn is instant, yet not a debili-
tating shock to my New Mexico chile–battered palette. But moments
later, the Pepper X takes its diabolical root and the intensity ramps way
up to sweaty, eye-watering punishment. I’m choking, kicking the floor,
and wondering “Who on Earth finds this fun?” A healthy number of the
roughly 20,000 show attendees per year, it turns out.
Not everyone here comes to ignite their taste buds for bragging
rights. Lining the aisles are tables laden with samples of mild-to-spicy
hot sauces, salsas, dry chile seasonings, beef jerky, mustards, jams, dip
o peppers
Red serran
and soup mixes, cookies, chocolate, popcorn, and even peanut brittle.
NEW AFRICA/STOCK.ADOBE.COM

Barbecue is big, too, with vendors selling dry rubs, sauces, smokers, and
flattop grills. As you might imagine, the show does not attract your typical
wine swirl-and-sniff crowd. The atmosphere is more rock concert than
cheese-nibbling soiree.

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Dave DeWitt, founder of the
National Fiery Foods & BBQ
Show. Right: Exhibitors sell
everything from salsas
to wing rubs.
Light My Fire
Dave DeWitt—author, food historian, and so-called
“Pope of Peppers”—started “The Hottest Show
on Earth” in 1988 with just 47 exhibitors and 500
attendees. Word spread like wildfire among “chile-
heads,” as pepper fanatics are known. Now it’s
said to be the nation’s largest spicy foods trade
show, with 135 exhibitors from around the globe.
It presents the annual Scovie Awards to spicy food
purveyors in 125 categories—from wing sauces to
Cajun dry rubs.
DeWitt retired in 2023 and sold the show and its
production company, Sunbelt Shows, to his long-
time friend and Burn Blog contributor, Mark Masker.
I later email Masker to ask about his history with
the show, its future, and the current nature of the
hot sauce business. Specifically, why are many hot
sauce makers trying to murder my taste buds for
heat’s sake?
In 2010, Masker rode a curious on-ramp into the
spice lane, one that sparked from his barbecue
meat-smoking hobby. “I tested my pitmaster skills
on a used $20 smoker, but it died soon after,” he
says. “I had seen directions in a book on how to
build one from a trash can. So after getting all the
30 | AAA EXPLORER JAN/FEB/MAR 2024
The atmosphere
is more rock
concert than Scoville Scale
cheese-nibbling In 1912, Wilbur Scoville developed
a test and scale to measure the
soiree. chemical compound responsible
for spiciness. The higher the
Scoville Heat Unit (SHU), the
hotter the burn.
Pepper X
2,693,000
Joe Marcoline of
Taos Hum Hot
parts, I busted out the tools and built a smoker, then Sauce surveys his
pepper kingdom.
custom-painted it with a flame job.” Left: Caribbean and
A journalist at the time, Masker submitted a habanero peppers
Ghost pepper
how-to article to DeWitt, who ran it on his website. 750,000–1,500,000
Masker soon expanded his smoked-meat horizons from over-the-top hot sauces. Co-owner
by entering and judging barbecue competitions Jerean Camuñez Hutchinson tells me that’s
and writing extensively on the subject. As for hot by design. “We prefer taste profiles that are
pepper sauces, Masker says, “I didn’t have much a little more moderate, flavor-focused, and
experience with spicy food up to that point. But appealing to everyday use versus the one-
when I attended my first show in 2011, I got drawn time ‘Try this to see if you can tolerate the
in by the variety and the enthusiasm of everyone heat,’ ” she says. Habanero
involved. Now I grow chiles in my backyard.” 1000,000–350,000
Moving forward, Masker has no plans to relo- Make It Stop!
cate the show from its home at the Sandia Resort At the Taos Hum Hot Sauce–Make It Stop!
& Casino, but he aims to better spotlight the booth, husband-and-wife owners Joe and
show’s cooking demos with Albuquerque cus- Loe Marcoline invite me to visit their organic
tom grill maker Disc-It. Case in point: I discover a chile farm northeast of Española to see first-
FROM LEFT: COURTESY DAVE DEWITT; KIMBERLY MASKER
chorizo-cooking demo on the exhibition hall’s back hand how they cultivate a Chocolate Trinidad Jalapeño
patio only by happy accident. It pays off, neverthe- 2,500–10,000
Moruga Scorpion pepper. It registers 2 million
less, with samples of warm, delicious breakfast Scoville Heat Units and, as Dirty Harry would
tacos. Masker also plans to revive the College of
FROM LEFT: ELI ELLISON (2); LINDA LAM
say, will “blow your head clean off.”
Chile Knowledge, a seminar for those looking to So on a sunny August morning, I drive up
launch or expand their own hot sauce business. a bumpy dirt road that dips in and out of dry
Back indoors, I stop by La Posta Chile Company, arroyos framed by fluttering cottonwoods to
the recently launched bottled salsa and hot sauce Taos Hum’s off-the-grid Walking Trout Farm,
offshoot business of Mesilla’s famed La Posta restau- named for a local legend about fish walk-
rant (since 1939). I smile at the familiar earthy taste ing across dry land from the Rio Grande to Bell pepper
of Hatch Valley chiles and am relieved by the break 0
spawn in the farm-adjacent Rio de Truchas.
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 New Mexico product that’s pepper
From top: Val Romero,
“the King of BBQs,” forward, not all water and vinegar
pours samples of his
sauces for festival
and thickened with xanthan gum.”
attendees; Cin Chili & Also deserving credit is the
Company, a Houston-
based purveyor of hot unique microclimate of the farm,
sauce; Albuquerque which is surrounded by thou-
native David Ruiz
dresses up to promote sands of acres of pristine federal
New Mexican Martian land. “We’re up about 6,500 feet
Salsa.
on the west-facing slopes of the
Sangre de Cristo Mountains,” Joe
says. “But we still get air moving
down the slope all night without
our plants freezing, so we get a
growing season extension.”
The season begins with plant-
ing in February and ends with a
December harvest. As Joe talks
and walks me through humid,
tunnel-like greenhouses planted
with rows of leafy pepper plants
and shows off his hand-built
chile-roasting drums (peppers
are smoked with applewood), his
infectious zeal has me plotting my
own backyard chile garden.
Of Taos Hum’s current dozen
Mark Masker, president and
“We’re trying mild-to-superhot sauces, my owner of Sunbelt Shows
(center), with the Swamp
favorite is the Raw Green. It’s also
to make a truly Loe’s go-to. “I love it because it
Dragon hot sauce team

local New Mexico

has a flash of heat up front and
doesn’t change the flavor of at the show that’s made him cry uncle. He

product that’s your dish,” she says. This year, the couple recalls sampling blistering Carolina Reaper,
is excited to debut new smoked sriracha scorpion, and ghost pepper sauces at

pepper forward, and green apple chile sauces. I ask Joe if

he’s ever heard the mythical “Taos Hum,”
the CaJohn’s booth—on an empty stom-
ach. “I was cool for the first 10 minutes,”
not all water for which the business is named. With a he recalls. “Then the heat kicked in for
laugh, he echoes the company’s tagline real. What started as a minor abdominal
and vinegar and At the barn, I’m met by Joe, Loe, and their excited, and says, “No, but I know how to make heat got more intense, as if a gigantic tod- 35th National
Fiery Foods
thickened with tail-wagging rescue dogs. it stop.” dler was using a magnifying glass to focus
sunlight on my tummy.” & BBQ Show
Joe is easygoing and quick with a joke, yet pre-
xanthan gum.” cise when discussing farming. This meticulousness Burn, Baby, Burn It got worse. “The fire grew and grew. I Where:
comes from his professional career as a geohydro- A newbie on the tonsil-torching scene, I get was trying to keep my cool as I walked off Sandia Resort
—Joe Marcoline, logic engineer. The couple bought the property in the impression that superhot sauces, pro- the show floor. Then my body said, ‘Nah, & Casino,
we’re done walking. Have a seat on the
owner of Taos Hum Hot Sauce 2010 and spent a few years growing vegetables to duced solely for their “go big or go home” Albuquerque
sell at the Taos Farmers Market. Their first batch appeal, are simply a fad. Masker explains, floor.’ A few minutes later, Sandia’s casino
When:
of Taos Hum chiles yielded about 500 bottles “Superhots hit the industry well before the security and an EMT showed up to check
March 1-3
of sauce. Today, they crank out roughly 50,000 Hot Ones show, and they’ll be around long on me. I wasn’t in any danger. I just shouldn’t
ZUMA PRESS INC/ALAMY STOCK PHOTO (3)

after. What I have seen trending is produc- have done this before breakfast,” he laments Admission:
bottles annually, hand-mixed in a Taos commer-
ers trying to balance flavor and heat while with a laugh. $15.50
cial kitchen and bottled by Albuquerque’s Apple
Canyon Gourmet. still using the hottest peppers because they Planning to brave superhot sauces at this
fieryfoodsshow.com
Joe attributes their rapid success to a farm-to- know anyone can pump capsaicin into a year’s event? Consider yourself warned.
sauce. The flavor profile is what makes or
KIMBERLY MASKER

table approach. “We grow 100% of our peppers

and make our own vinegar,” he says. “Our non-chile breaks a product.”
fruits are grown here or on our neighbor’s certi- Recounting my bout with The Last Dab, ELI ELLISON is a writer hiding out in the hills
fied organic farm. We’re trying to make a truly local I ask Masker if there’s any particular sauce of Santa Fe.

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