Welcome to Chili Pepper Madness
Welcome to Chili Pepper Madness, the food blog run by me, Mike Hultquist, and my wife, Patty. We are both spicy food lovers and I am a dedicated chilihead with gourmet tastes.
The purpose of Chili Pepper Madness is to inspire creative cooking and fun, often with chili peppers. While we obviously focus on chili peppers, we also love spicy food of all sorts and can be found in the kitchen exploring our love of flavors, or even traveling to learn more about the cuisine of other areas when we can. For us, everything starts with spicy food and chili peppers and it all spirals from there.
Chili Pepper Madness is a special tribute to all things chili peppers, including chili pepper recipes, hot sauces, chili pepper gardening and harvesting, chili pepper types, preserving chili peppers, exploring chili pepper health benefits, as well as cooking with chili peppers.
We love chili peppers and good food of all kinds! And we want your feedback. Contact us if there is anything specific you’d like to see on our site related to chili peppers, good food, recipes and more.
Subscribe to the Newsletter and receive new chili pepper recipes, news and more, and you’ll also receive the free download – Top 10 Chili Pepper Recipes. Come on in! Here is a bit about us personally.
Mike Hultquist
Hey, everybody. My name is Mike and I am a chili pepper lover. Shocked? Amazed? It is true. It all started for me when I began to explore online my passion for cooking and chili peppers. I started a website for fun called Jalapeno Madness where I placed my recipes and talked all about jalapenos and spicy food. The desire for spicy food quickly grew beyond jalapenos and I began to embrace chili peppers of all types, from the mildest bell to the hottest of the superhots. My focus is cooking with all levels of heat and sharing those recipes and tips with you. That love of cooking grew and now I cook foods of all types, though mostly with a spicy point of view. I consider myself a gourmet chilihead.
Outside of the chili pepper world, I am a screenwriter, author and business owner.
Screenwriter
Yes, I am a produced screenwriter and am represented by Zero Gravity Management. Here is the IMDB link if you’d care to take a look: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm2478416/?ref_=fn_al_nm_1. My produced credits include the movies VICTIM, ARENA (starring Samuel L. Jackson and Kellan Lutz) and 12 FEET DEEP. I have a number of other scripts out there in the world, so please wish me luck in landing development deals for them.
Fiction Author and Novelist
I love to write fiction, mostly darker stuff, horror, thrillers. I’ve published fiction novels and numerous short stories, and have even edited an anthology. Lots more info about my fiction works at my personal web site at http://www.michaelhultquist.com. I’m also an active member of the Horror Writers Association and get to vote for the Stoker awards. I hope you’ll read my stuff one day!
Personal Interests
When I’m not cooking with chili peppers or experimenting with chili peppers, writing (screenplays, short stories, novels, recipes, cookbooks, chili pepper info), I’m happily drinking beer or watching movies or reading a good book. Yes, I love beer! We also love to travel and hike and have many friends on whom I practice my cooking.
About Patty Hultquist
Hi, everyone! My name is Patty and I am more on the technical side of Chili Pepper Madness, though I am also on the eating and tasting side, which is super fun. And, I do most of the photography. I graduated from NIU with a degree in Computer Science. I started out as a multimedia programmer and later turned to programming websites with Quist Interactive, which I still run with Mike. I am a very analytical person and that helps us keep our website humming along.
Mike and I met in college and got married right after we graduated. We’ve been working as a team and building up our Madness websites together for a long time. It is fun and the longer we do it, the morewe love it. Working on our own food blog has turned me into a foodie, and Mike’s cooking has converted me to a chilehead. Growing up I never liked spicy food, but over time it really grew on me and now I can’t get enough. I get disappointed when I get something bland. Blech!
I’ve been studying photography more and more, and our skills are growing in that area. It is not only important for your food to look good on the plate, but in your photos! We hope you want to dive into your screen and take a bite. We are both committed to learning more and more as we go along. There is no limit to better.
Working on our Madness websites has been very rewarding for me. I’m a total converted chilihead now and crave the spice that Mike cooks all the time. There is rarely a dish served in our house without a chili pepper in it, or some sort of spicy flavor blast, and I love it. And why not celebrate and share wonderful food experiences? Living with boring bland food all the time just wouldn’t be living if you ask me.
Personal Interests
I love gardening so we plant a good sized garden in our backyard each year with plenty of chili peppers, along with tomatoes, fresh herbs and more. There is something wonderful about being able to walk into your backyard and choose the ingredients for that night’s meal. I greatly adore traveling and especially travel planning. I typically start planning our next trip during the current one because it’s always great to have a trip to look forward to. While traveling I enjoy seeking out exciting and renowned restaurants, pretty much any point of local foodie interest. Farm to Table experiences rank at the top of my list. Sitting around a community table with other food lovers is an experience like no other as we collectively enjoy and talk about the meal together.
I also love to plan parties. We throw several a year, including a large New Year’s Eve bash where we do a progressive dinner cooking up fancy dishes throughout the night. We throw a Fiesta Party as well, usually once a year, and that is always popular. I enjoy feeding all of our friends with spicy food! Mike always sets up a super-hot zone for the more daring.
Business Owners
We currently own and operate Quist Interactive, Inc., where we develop web sites for clients of all sizes. We build sites like Chili Pepper Madness for other people, focusing on design, ecommerce, search engine optimization and more. You can see all of our services at http://www.quist.net.
Chili Pepper Madness is the mother web site of our very popular Jalapeno Madness and Habanero Madness sites, which are dedicated to each of our very favorite chili peppers, the jalapeno and habanero. But, we love cooking and working with chili peppers of all kinds, so please explore and enjoy.
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Michael to Michael, (my friends call me Moose)
I have been experimenting with Hot Sauce for several months writing down the formula (recipe) for each one. I found your cooking process interesting and now question if I’m doing mine correctly. I have been mixing my wet ingredients in my blender, tasting as I go along to get the flavor I am looking for. Then I add each dry item…salt, fresh ground black pepper, sweeteners and a variety of other seasonings to taste. Once I have that, I add my chili’s. I first started with the Reaper, but now I have moved up to Big Black Mama’s, Brain Strains, Scorpions, to name a few. ( I have some wonderful Death Spirals on the plant right now) Once I have pureed the mix, I simmer the batch for amount 20 minutes. My pH averages around 3.2, although the batch with the Mama’s hit 2.9. I make my own Pique vinegar.
Questions;
1) I remove the stems and the ribs of the chili. I usually remove most of the seeds. Should I leave them for more heat?
2) I often use organic apple juice and/or fresh fruit for some recipes, does this lessen the heat?
3) Once cooked, even with the low pH, should I “cure” the batch in the fridge?
4) Have you found any seasonings that did not work with hot sauce?
5) Do you have or know of a source with information on how to get a sauce to market?
6) What determines how the heat will either be immediate or is a back taste?
7) Am I being a pest? 😉
Thanks for your time.
Moose
Hey, Moose – I think your procedure sounds great. Whatever works! To answer your questions:
1. Definitely remove the stems. Seeds/innards are optional. Some people like to remove the seeds because of bitterness. See this page – Should I Remove Pepper Seeds for a discussion on that. Most of the pepper heat is in the innards, so your hot sauce won’t be as hot if you remove them. However, with superhots, the heat really permeates the pepper flesh, so you’ll still get LOADS of heat.
2. Yes, you can dilute some of the resulting heat with fruit and fruit juice. It’s a nice flavor combination, though.
3. You can enjoy the hot sauce right away, but I find that the flavors develop, mingle and mellow when they sit for a few days.
4. Seasonings are really to your own personal preference. Some people enjoy combinations that I don’t particularly enjoy.
5. I’m working on writing some information on this, but in general, you can either find a co-packer who makes your recipe and packages it for you, or find a commercial kitchen and make it yourself, then bottle it and sell it. Most people go to shows to sell their stuff and grow enough to make deals with distributors.
6. It depends on the peppers chosen. Scorpions, for example, have a very forward initial STING, whereas 7-Pots have more of a blooming heat.
7. Not at all. Thanks for stopping by! Good luck with your hot sauces.
Good morning Mike;
Aussie Graham here, I wanted to let you know that I made your Chipotle Honey Mustard over the weekend.
AMAZING !!!!!
A big hit with my group of friends and now I have to make another double batch.
Thanks mate
That’s GREAT, Graham! Glad everyone liked it!
Do you sell any pepper seeds?
Thank you
Fred, I do not, but check our Buying Chili Pepper Seeds Resource page here.
I saw that you have a substantial garden where you grow a few peppers.
I was wondering how you avoided cross pollination of your different pepper species.
Looking forward to your feedback.
God Bless
Bob, I don’t worry about it because I don’t save as many seeds as I used to, and when I do, it’s fun for me to see if I get a cross of some sort. When I want something pure for a season, I’ll just purchase new seeds or seedlings. One resource recommended growing sweet/mild peppers at distance of 150 with a barrier crop between them to avoid cross pollination, and 600 feet distance with a barrier crop for hot peppers. You can also use netting as well.
I think you guy’s are great, keep up the good work. Thanks D.
Thanks, Dennis! We love it!