WHO IS EZRA LOUIE AND WHAT IS SLOW HEAT?
A number of years ago – a couple dogs, one or two careers, and a few towns ago, let’s say – an ambitious vegetable garden was planted with hopes of a big yield. The gardener was inexperienced, but enthusiastic about the project, and he tried his best to make it a success. Of the dozen or so varieties of veggies he planted that year, only a handful turned out slightly better than disastrous, with the exception of only one – the jalapenos – which were as bountiful as anyone could have hoped for.
If you’ve ever grown peppers, you already know the reason for their success in the young man’s garden was that a pepper plant tends to be hearty as a weed, and you probably also know that the output of a healthy pepper plant tends to be absolutely prolific over the course of a growing season. The young man had way more peppers than he knew what to do with.
So, he thought he’d make hot sauce. And he made lots of it. He made batch after batch after batch, and he carefully labeled each one in its respective container and made note of every nuance that went into every concoction. And let’s say for the sake of the story that maybe every batch he made came out a little lacking – absolutely terrible, in fact, one might say. But ultimately, what might have come from all that trial and error that year (about a thousand years ago, I believe) was the budding of a lifelong passion for what the young man believed in his heart at the time, and still does to this day, to be alchemy. And he never stopped chasing it.
The end result is Ezra Louie, an uncommonly flavorful, just hot enough, hand-made small batch hot sauce. It’s made entirely with fresh ingredients and lots of love. There are a few key components of this sauce that make it deliciously different from anything else you’ve ever had:
1. There are three different types of chili peppers in this sauce that all have very distinct flavors and heat qualities. They hit your palate in layers. That’s where the term “slow heat” comes from. It doesn’t punch you in the mouth, but rather eases onto your taste buds nice and gradual-like.
2. We smoke about half the peppers that go into it, but we don’t smoke them all the way dry like a chipotle. It’s more of a smoke infusion so there’s juuuuust the right amount of smokiness in there.
3. There are also fresh mangos, carrots, garlic, and Vidalia onions in there, too. And paprika and a little bit of brown sugar and… well, you can read the ingredients on the label for yourself. It’s all fresh. We think you’ll agree, the blend of flavors is unique and delightful. There’s nothing else quite like it.
4. We age the sauce for a minimum of six months prior to bottling so those flavors have enough time to settle into themselves. Some say it just keeps tasting better the longer it sits around!
In short, Ezra Louie is a unique hot sauce with exactly the right amount of heat and a bold, delicious flavor. It’s great on tacos, eggs, wings, crackers and cheese, pasta dishes, burgers, soups, pizza, greens, and just about anything else you could come up with to put it on.
Oh yeah, and Ezra Louie is also me (kind of). Before I was a novice gardener turned hot sauce enthusiast, I was a little kid with a red and white shirt my Grandmother made for me. I never asked why, but she had “Ezra Louie” stitched on the back. I always liked the shirt as well as the name she made up for me, so I decided to keep it going with this sauce.
Thank you for your interest! Hope you enjoy!
