SavorThis hot sauce brand has been expanding from a restaurant staple to a household name. Anney and Lauren get in their feels about the science and history of Cholula.
Hello, and welcome to Savor production of iHeart Radio.
I'm Annie and I'm more In Vogelbaum, and today we have an episode for you about Chilula.
Yes, the Hot Sauce sponsor.
No, not a sponsor, yep.
Yes. Was there any particular reason this was on your mind? Lord?
I think the last time I was down a condiment rabbit hole, which you know happens, I flagged this as being an interesting story and didn't want to do it at the time because we had done too many America's related episodes in the recent past, and so we've but we've come back around to it, and here we are.
Here we are. Oh, I mean also Hot Sauce. Yay, love Hot Sauce, and I love Chilula. I have three different types right now. Yeah, what's your favorite? Like I like the original of the most, but some of this history was really interesting to me because oftentimes I feel like when we do this banter at the top, I'm late to the game, and I don't want to say I don't want to be that person that's like I do about it before everyone else. That's not true, but I was just I was just kind of surprised at some of the research I was reading because I feel like I had this in my household when I was growing up. My dad loved it on eggs. So chilula has just been part of my life for a long time. So I was sort of surprised that some of the stuff we're going to talk about in terms of when it got really popular.
But I.
Love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. It's my like go to standard hot sauce. Like, if I just want this hot sauce, it's not going to like blow my face off or like you know, just kind of a.
I just want a hot sauce. Chilula, that's the one. It's a good one. It's a good one. My go to is Yuku Techo. They've got the black label one, which is really smoky. That's my personal favorite. But if I'm in a restaurant, unless I get a wild hair and go for like a Tabasco serracher or something like that, I'm probably going to reach for chilula.
Yeah, And if you've listened to the show for a while, you know we have a lot of hot sauces in our lives. I have hot sauces for specific occasions and taste.
Like different ones. You have like a spectrum of hot sauces.
Oh, I have an entire shell that's just hot sauces, and if some of them, I'm like, this is for only this occasion. I feel like it brings out this. But yeah, Chilula, I feel like it's a good around.
Again, not a sponsor, just the thing that we enjoy, not as well.
I mean clearly, clearly. Yeah, we have done past episodes on different hot sauces or hot sauce adjacent Sure.
Yeah, we had that Saracha episode. We did an update on that one. There was a whole episode about the hot sauces of Louisiana.
Sabby. Yeah, I feel like you could even kind of ad Garum in here.
Sure, sure, yeah, I mean I mean Ketchup is also like like all of these are or worths to shear sauce, Like you know, they're all vaguely adjacent also different chilis.
Yes, absolutely, yeah, and I mentioned this I think every time we do. Yeah, no, it's delightful. Please do.
So.
Back before food Stuff became Savor, and back before food Stuff the podcast existed, there was food Stuff, the video series.
That was that Annie was producing, but I was not attached to it was our friends Kristin Conger and Ben Bolin on camera, Yes.
And they did one about hot Sauce and in it it had our good friend Joe McCormick of Stuff to Blow your Mind, who was also in our Dungeons and Dragons group, the Hot Sauce Boss as he was called in that video, and it has a really fun clip of him trying a ghost pepper, a Carolina reaper pepper, excuse me, and it going very badly, very badly. But one of the recent times we were hanging out with Joe, he had he was growing some and he cuts them up for us to try. And I didn't try it because I was the dungeon master and I was like, the last thing I need is to blow myself out, to lose my facilities, my faculties. But everybody seemly really like it, and I a friend of the show, Dylan, super producer Dylan, he went back for more.
Yeah, yeah, I just I had I had just little pieces. I just kind of nibbling on and I feel like I feel like there was some suffering ad Jason, but I thought it was great. I was like, oh yeah, certainly not worse than that heck and death chip.
Geez, which is what something we did for the show's next stuff, and that it was very it wasn't tense, It wasn't tense. It was it was thirty minute cool down period. Yeah, yeah, it was that.
You'll know what I mean, right, that like stunt chip. They'll only sell you like one.
And it comes in like a coffin.
Coffin shaped package. Yeah, it's actually hot, it's quite warm. I don't, I didn't. I did not enjoy the experience.
I had the smallest piece, so I was okay, we split it into three. But anyway, we like hot stuff here, So Chilula was always around our office, I will say. But I guess that brings us to your question. Sure, Chilula, what is it? Well?
Chilula is a brand of primarily hot sauces known for being flavorful and not like too too hot, made with chili peppers, vinegar, and a number of seak ingredients. They recently were acquired by McCormick and Company and now also produce other sauces and seasonings and prepared products. And I don't have a cool metaphor or simile. I guess it would usually be for y'all because I forgot, I forgot to put one in. My cat knocked a full dish of curry out of my hands like she was like she was stealing a dribble earlier today, And the curry went everywhere, including on the cat. And so it's been a weird day.
Yes, yeah, but you know what would make that better? Chilula? Not on the cat.
Oh no, I would never suggest such a thing, all right anyway, So Chilula, their original formula supposedly has not changed in over one hundred years. It uses apple cider vinegar as a base, to which it adds a smattering of seasonings, likely some form of garlic, onion, carrot, cuman, and black pepper, plus these stars of the sauce, fresh picked, ripe red, sun dried chili peppers, and that original formula specifically uses arbol and pekin peppers arble peppers, Both of these peppers we could do whole episodes on. But arble peppers are essentially these long, skinny like mild ish chilies ranging right around twenty thousand scoville units, so like spicier than a serrano, less spicy than a cayenne. They look a little bit like green beans, though they're allowed to rip into bright red for things like chilula. They're sort of smoky and vegetable in flavor. If you've ever seen a wreath or garland made of these, like skinny chili peppers, they were probably dried ar bull peppers because they dried to this like really nice, like deep scarlet red, not kind of dirty purplish the way that the way that sub peppers do. Pekin peppers are pretty spicy, very small chilis ranging around sixty thousand scoville units, so like spicier than cayenne, less spicy than habanaro. In general, they look like like little round Christmas lights, and they're sort of fruity, smoky in flavor. And these are actually only semi domesticated. They're pretty finicky to grow commercially, but do grow wild in parts of Mexico and surrounding areas, and in general they're more often foraged than grown. I believe chilula uses mostly long running family farms, or at least they used them before they're big buyouts that led them to be owned by McCormick. I haven't been able to find updates, so yeah, that's the original Chilula's extra hot blend just uses a different balance of the same peppers more pecan.
I assume.
They do have several other flavors of hot sauces. A chipotle one made with yes chipotles plus guahua arbol and pecan plus some sugar for like a mild level of heat. They've got a green pepper flavor made with jlapanos and peblanos for a medium heat. There's the more or less self explanatory tequila and lime which is medium, chili lime which is mild, and chili garlic which is also mild. Those all us blends of the above peppers. And then they have a sweet hobanaro which is hobenaros and pineapple for like a really hot sweet heat which sounds delicious and I can't have it, so y'all report in. They also now make a couple of wing sauces, which are basically hot sauces that have been filled out with like butter or sugars and are meant for coating wings with like it says on the label. They have powdered seasoning mixes meant for cooking you know, your proteins or vegetables with like a like fruit taco night, some jarred sauces, and some frozen burrito bowls. Yeah, they're packaging includes an illustration of like a old timey Mexican lady on the label, and their consumer line Hot Sauces have this this flattened bulb shaped wooden cap made from apparently local Mexican beechwood. The product is from Mexico, Yes, but they do also have food service lines that come in everything from like little individual packets to like sixty four ounce kitchen tubs that's like one point nine leaders. It's like half a gallon, which is a lot of hot sauce. It's kind of kind of exciting to think about.
Well, speaking of what about the nutrition.
Okay, I've said it before, I'm gonna say it again. You probably should not consume hot sauces in quantities that make a nutritive difference in your diet. Annie is denying this. Annie is denying this information.
I'm just questioning. I'm just thinking about things, that's all. I'm not denying the information your face said otherwise.
I will say though, like generally, hot sauces provide a huge flavor bang for like a tiny caloric buck and provide like a non negligible amount of micronutrients that that may help your body do stuff, So that's pretty cool. Also, they make you feel something, which the Savor team officially finds useful.
I like that.
Yeah, yeah. Uh. For more about the science of heat, I think we got into it in our some of our hotchs, like like maybe habanero jalapeno that was Sabi episode, a little bit in Black Pepper, but but very basically the cap say usin and hot peppers connects to the same nerve endings that tell your body that you are literally on fire. It doesn't hurt you in the same way that fire would, but it can make you uncomfortable because your nervous system is going help, alert, help, please move away from that stimulus. It's bad, but we've decided that we like that because humans we get up to stuff.
We do. Indeed, I recently was at hang out with some friends and we were eating some food that I would say it was like kind of spicy, but it was spicy, and I was over there like, oh, it's so hot, this is great, and my friend next to me was like, I can't eat It's so funny. The like different yeah, reaction.
This is the thing that I love because I do have right like like within my friends group, people who will order it, who will order food like the hottest that someone will make it, and people who are on the other hand, like you put a little bit too much black pepper in this for me, I need you to back off next time.
So yeah, yeah, it was just interesting because I was like I felt it and she was not, and a lot of people are into it. We have to say, we do have some numbers for you. A couple of numbers. Okay.
So as of twenty eighteen, before McCormick bought the Chilula brand, nearly ninety percent of the chili peppers that the brand used were sourced in Helisco, Mexico. At that time, their sauces were being mixed and bottled in a larger local food production facility called Sane almost nine million bottles a month possibly SNAE. I'm not I didn't look up how to say that out loud. Say it's an acronym. Here we are, And as of twenty three estimated that Chilula's original formula Hot Sauce was the best selling made in Mexico. Hot Sauce in the world, which they estimated about themselves. So maybe take that with a grain of hot sauce.
Yeah, yeah, Well, to be honest, Lauren, there's quite a lot in their company history that I would say we should take.
The dash of hot sauce. But it's all interesting.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, And we are going to get into that as soon as we get back from a quick break for a word from our sponsors, and we're back.
Thank you, thank you. Okay, so again, see some of our chili pepper episodes and you can all so see us talk about how chili peppers is kind of confusing, but anyway, the chili peppers that are used in Chilula most likely originated in South America.
Generally speaking, peppers are from the Americas. It is believed, though, that pecan chilis are one of the predecessors of all cultivated capsicum peppers.
So pretty cool. That is pretty cool. Also cool. This sauce is named after the ancient city Chilula in modern day Mexico. The city is over twenty five hundred years old and is home to the largest pyramid in the known world. It is reported to be the oldest inhabited city in Mexico. However, the hot sauce is not and was not made there. No, the chilula recipe most likely was developed over one hundred years ago in Chappala, Jalisco, Mexico. So this is where we get into some of that murky company history I was talking about. There is a popular, likely apocryphal tale told about how the sauce was invented. It involves the woman on the label known as La Chila. Sometimes this title is also attributed to Camilla Harrison. Allegedly, she both cooked for the Jose Quervo family and incorporated a lot of chili's into her cooking. So Chilula like, they didn't go further than that.
They're like, there was this lady. She might have been a specific lady, Kamia Harrison. She might have just been some of Buela hanging out using local chilis and came up with the sat sauce.
Some people have really strong opinions that it was not Camille. I have to say, but yeah, that is a popularly told story. And continuing the Jose Quervou connection, the story goes that the company ended up licensing the sauce that she made in the early days it was primarily marketed and used in sangrita where people would take a shot of tequila and then the chaser would be a mixture of juices in chilula. And this was very popular to do in the early twentieth century.
Still exists today. Yeah, that doesn't need to be chilula necessarily hot sauce, but yes, okay.
So by this.
Point in the early twentieth century, the Quervo family and their brand of tequila were already huge. Like they were the first tequila producers to bottle their spirit as opposed to just selling it in casks in the eighteen eighties.
So yes, jumping ahead. Chilula first debuted in the US in nineteen eighty nine, sold in Austin, Texas. In the following decade, Chilula ended up in stores across the Southwest. And if you remember, in past episodes we've done on things like Tamale's, we've discussed how this time period in the US saw real explosion of tex Mex cuisine in the Southwest, especially, so Chilula got caught up in that. In nineteen ninety eight, Jose Cuervo Company hired a well known Houston, Texas chef to go on a tour and hype up Chilula, crafting dishes that involved it, sharing them on TV and with food editors. They also launched an ad campaign claiming that it was the quote perfect compliment and put out a booklet with twenty two recipes featuring Chilula.
Okay, Around twenty ten, a local Jalisco restaurant group opened the Chilula themed restaurant in Tequila, Mexico, like right down the street from the Jose Quervo plant in the tourist district. And I think it was that decade, the twenty teens that they first introduced a couple additional flavors of hot sauces beyond the original.
And then here's the fact that dominated my search results at first. Note I was so confused. In twenty seventeen, a lot of stories circulated that the person on the front of the label looked like Bob Saggitt, the actor seen him in Full House. Perhaps Saggot himself even commented on it, saying, I don't remember posing for this. I can kind of see it if I look hard like squint. Sure. Yeah, it was a fun people seemed like they were up fun.
Yeah, Yeah, The Chilula brand was acquired by the private equity firm EL Catterton in April of twenty nineteen. No word on how much they paid for that, but Catterton had previously grown brands from like PF Chang's to Kettle Brand Snacks to a Farira candy company, and so they like kind of know what they're doing, and the firm sort of immediately began trying new things to boost Chilula's brand presence around the United States.
Well they did. Indeed, that year, the brand hosted an artistic event called Taco Topia.
Artistic in scare quotes there, Yeah, it's it's you know, like it's a brand marketing photo op installation. It launched it south by Southwest and hit a few different cities, Yes, yes, and.
It featured a lot of opportunities for Instagram pictures. There were three D installations, interactive art in a section where people could try samples of Chilula and just to say, in the backdrop of one of these art pieces it read party like a guawk Star. There were many of these.
There were lots of neon, lots of large I think there's like a big taco you could sit on like you were, like you were riding a.
Ball a well, you know, in a couple of boys, Lauren, We've accidentally been timely in this one because south By Southwest is happening right now, happening, and we're currently wrapping up depending on when you listen to this, I guess, but also we are at the five year anniversary, however you want to call it, of the pandemic, and here comes some pandemic numbers. In early twenty twenty, in response to the pandemic, Chilula started offering smaller bottle sizes to give people a chance to try it out, which I actually have some of these so cute.
They're so small, yeah, like a little like two bouncers, yeah yeah.
And then to boost dipping restaurant sales, the brand partnered with various companies for collaborations, including Texas based chain Golden Chick for a chicken sandwich that included mac and cheese and Chilulu. Very I can see during the pandemic, when I'm very stressed, I would want that quite bad. Dell Taco was also a collaborator. They created individual packets and a hands free dispenser for restaurants. In response to this pandemic as well.
Yeah.
This was when, you know, like suddenly having a bottle of a thing just just being left out on a table or a service bar for multiple customers to put their grubby little hands on suddenly seemed real gross.
So yeah, they were.
They were coming up with different solutions.
Yes, yes, well. Also in twenty twenty, in November, the McCormick Company acquired Chilula for eight hundred million dollars.
Yeah. At the time, their annual net sales were approximately ninety six million dollars, so not a bad investment, I would say, Although at the time in the United States, Chilula products were mostly only found in restaurants. Only an estimated four percent of American homes had Chilula on hand as of twenty twenty, so despite the brand's popularity, McCormick started figuring out how to grow that. For example, during twenty twenty one, they expanded their online marketing and sales of the brand to capitalize on you know, like at home cooking and dining. They introduced Sauce's spice mixes and their tequila flavor Hot Sauce in twenty twenty three, and then frozen foods in twenty twenty four, and responding to the hot hot sauce culture of the Internet, they launched their Extra Hot flavor in January of twenty twenty five. It's odd to me that that was like the last one, Like they didn't occur. It didn't occur to them to come out with like a hotter one until last, Like that seems like the first step to me.
But well, we're not in charge, no, you know, for better or worse, for better or worse. No, No, that's what I was saying at the top. This kind of surprised me, how late in the game. A lot of this was, especially because, as we've discussed in a lot of our previous Hot Sauce episodes, the hot hot sauce culture of the Internet is real, Like people want these hot sauces, carry them in their bags, take them with them. It is. It's kind of surprising to me, but you know, yeah, clearly they're innovating and offering more flavors and leaning into that. So we'll see, we'll see what's up next, what's up next for them?
Yeah, I am also right, like I feel like I remember this brand from going back further than I probably actually remember it. I feel like early two thousands. I remember it being kind of everywhere in restaurants that I went to.
Yeah, honestly, like when you put in a lot of these more recent notes, I was like, is my memory right? Because I remember my dad having it, I remember him using it, and you know, memory is failable, as volable as everything. But all these numbers made me think, like, hmm, mixing it. I could have sworn. I remember the label, I remember the top, the iconic top. I don't know anyway, I've always gotten it because my dad used it so much. So whether it's a fake memory or not, here I am.
Oh the world may never know. Yeah, I'm still tripping over bear and stain Bears. So here we are.
There's a lot of things from childhood to re examine, indeed, But I think that's what we have to say about Chilula for now. It is.
We do already have some listener mail for you, though, and we are going to get into that as soon as we get back from one more quick break for a word from our sponsors.
And we're back. Thank you, yes, thank you, and we're back with listeners. Mhmm, that's us.
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
The coyotes outside of my window.
Agree with you.
As they should. As they should, Lauren. Have you made friends with coyotes?
Certainly not. They're coyotes. Don't make friends with the coyotes. You don't make friends with salad, and don't make friends with coyotes.
Period O. Got it? Wise words from savors. Speaking of wise words, Bart wrote, Bart, your self appointed and utterly unofficial Ireland correspondent here with an on the ground report on soda bread. My mum bakes a mean whole grain Irish soda bread, and our local bakers do fantastic white Irish soda breads. They are both very distinctive because soda makes CO two much less vigorously than yeast, so the air pockets are much smaller, giving a much denser but still wonderfully soft bread. The taste is also distinctive because the soda itself adds a flavor, and without yeast there's not yeast poop, so all these traditional bready flavors are absent. The perfect slice of whole meal soda bread has a nice bread of local butter, a slice of smoked Irish shamon, topped with a slice of tomato to bring the acid that could be followed by the perfect slice of white topped with a generous spread of butter and a doalt of homemade raspberry or strawberry jam, and a nice fresh cup of tea. In my twenty one years living here, I've never seen care added to soda bread that sounds like the kind of fusion you'd get in a place like New York, where Irish and Jewish cultures meet. Caraway is seen as very exotic here. It's an important staple in my pantry, But I'm a blow in. I love adding it to cabbage dishes. Roasted shredded cabbage made by tossing the shredded cabbage with just olive oil, black pepper, and a teaspoonful caraway seeds, then spreading it out thin and roasting for twenty five minutes, stirring often, then finishing with a tablespoon of cider vinegar, white wine vinegar, or lemon juice is amazing. The Internet has led me to believe the caraway and traditional cabbage dishes somehow counters the cabbage's notoriously gassy reputation. I tell myself, it works, but I may well be kidding myself. Well you may well be, but you might not be Yeah, I mean that.
Yeah, we were saying caways got some hypothetical like more research needs to be done, potential digestive aid kind of kind of situations going for it.
So yeah, maybe it's a solid maybe. Also, thank you so much for being our unofficial Ireland Yeah, spoilers, we might be talking about Irish soda bread soon, so listeners send in your thoughts. Yeah, your chips or whatever. But that does sound delicious that everything smoked fish maybe?
Oh yeah, yeah, all three of the I mean, first of all, I'm such a fan of giving leafy greens a good roast. It just brings out the bitter flavors that are my favorite. And then going like that in reverse, always yes to bread and butter and fresh jam with nice tea. And then of of course smoked salmon and tomato. Yes, and oh cream cheese is my preferred dairy spread. But butter isn't bad in that case, not mad about it.
Oh yeah, that all it all sounds delicious. Also, yet, thanks for because my original query was I'd always thought carrataway was in Iris soda bread, and then when I did a brief search on it, I just got so many mixed results, and that wasn't our current topic, so I was no, not today, Yeah, push that off to the side. But from my like brief research I did in that moment, I think you're correct. It sounded like it was a offshoot from Ireland and not specific too iREAD.
Yeah, and maybe like an old timey thing where people are more into They were like, ooh, caraway, Yeah, let's put it in everything, kind of kind of trend that we see sometimes with these herbs and spices.
Absolutely well, definitely, if you've got any more thoughts or other listeners.
Need to make bread, that's gonna be great. Yes, Casey wrote, I was just listening to the recent pesto episode. I knew the etymology of the word meaning to pound with mortar and pestle. The clue is in the word pestle. Yes, but I was surprised to learn that original pesto recipes didn't incorporate basil or considered it optional. Twenty years ago, I worked at a restaurant specializing in handmade fresh pasta and everything else made from scratch. Shout out to Wiley's World Rip. They made their pesto by the gallon, sourcing the basil twenty five pounds at a time from local farms in the summer, and freezing the finished pesto for later use. As you reported, a layer of olive oil floated on top of the pesto sealed it and prevented oxidation, preserving all that luscious summer goodness to be enjoyed in colder months. They used walnuts instead of pine nuts, but no cheese as so to accommodate vegan diners, instead offering a generous ramkin of fresh shaved palm on the side of the plate. In your episode, Lauren mused on other potential less Italian iterations. I make a fabulous Thai peanut pesto using toasted peanuts instead of walnuts, plus lime zest, chili flakes, a dash of fish sauce and coconut milk as the emulsifier. I got the idea from the restaurant. On busy nights, when there was no time for dinner break, I would grab a thick slice of their homemade her bread and top it with equal shmears, a thick Thai peanut sauce and bright green pesto, cramming it in my mouth as discreetly as possible. While whirling through the kitchen and back to the white station.
Yum.
Even now, I love a quick lunch of peanut butter and pesto on toast with a drizzle of seracha. I always have a jar of pesto on hand, courtesy of my happy little garden, where the basil patch yields ridiculous quantities every year, even with making no less than ten varieties of pesto every summer, with variations including citrus, hazelnut, sun dried tomato, caper, blue cheese, roasted red pepper, roasted garlic, harisa or gauchi jang or anything else I can think of, then portioning it into jelly jars and freezing for gifts and no fuss winter dinners. I always give away at least as much basil as I use. I d stem, wash and dry the leaves, pack them into ziplocks, and post them for free on our local buy Nothing group, which is apparently a hotbed of fellow pesto enthusiasts. I've met many of my neighbors that way, and sometimes they offer their abundance in return, whether it's peaches, tomatoes, or eggs, just goes to show. Even tending your own garden can help create community.
I love that.
So, yes, that's so sweet.
Yes, So I posted in one of my local groups about they were giving away tomato seeds and I was like, only I could grow tomato. I don't have space, but I would. I would love this. I think this is fantastic.
You could grow a little little small tomatoes, like little like cherry style tomatoes in like a in like a pot on the ground or you know, like a solid table kind of situation. You could you could grow some of those in a window, but I mean they wouldn't grow tremendously, but you can do it.
I'll think about it, Yeah, think about it. But I was very excited to see that post, and I'm sure people are very excited to see your posts.
Very happy right free basil, oh man, and look at all these varieties.
This is fantastic, Oh my gosh. And that you're that thie basil thie pesto sounds yes.
Oh that sounds so good. And I've also never thought of making of like branching out of kind of basic peanut butter toast situations. But now I'm like, oh no, oh no, do I need to do this, like immediately.
That sounds delicious to me, and no, I love peanut butter and I love pesto, I love hot sung. This is amazing. How have I not done this? Oh? Yes? Yeah.
Also shout out to every server who has ever like hunched weirdly in the middle to back of a kitchen and like shoved food in their face on their way in the middle of a circuit.
Yes, we see you see. Thank you. We appreciate your service. We do, we do, we love, we love the pesto. Thank you. Thank you so much to both of these listeners. Writeing in if you would like to write to as you can, or emails hello at savourpod dot com.
We're also on social media. You can find us on Blue Sky and Instagram at saver pod and we do hope to hear from you. Savor is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening, and we hope that lots more good things are coming your way.
