In This Installment:
Oso Rojo Umami Bomb
Yeah, I guess some of these products are on the spicy side of things, but there’s a good reason for it: the older I get, the more I like spicy foods.
I didn’t as a kid, but as I age and as my taste buds start to wear down a little bit, a little bit of heat can go a long way in making everything taste better. You see, there’s a real physical effect of spicy foods in that it can actually make your taste buds constrict and “poke up” through any kind of rich foods that you’re eating.
In short, hot things make things taste like things. I have a friend that says that about salt, and he’s right, but this is also right too.
The story of Oso Rojo, though, is a bit interesting, at least in terms of all the food stories I encounter. It was originally founded by Cameron Ayers, a chef that came up in the food scene around Denver, Colorado. He crafted the hot sauce for flavor, not heat. In otherwords, Cam’s vision was to enhance your meal, not overpower it. That’s why he titled the sauces after the flavor he’s going for (in the case, umami) instead of focusing on the nuclear heat level of whatever crazy peppers he could find.
Business blossomed after COVID and eventually the hot sauce business was becoming a heavy lift for Cam and his small team. He wanted to scale up and reach more folks than just Colorado, but it was a bit outside his comfort zone. That’s when he found Sarah McDowell and Andy Hopkins—two long time friends who were crazy for Cam’s sauces.
Cam passed along the hot sauce business to Sarah and Andy so they could help it reach a wider audience. I’m not sure I would have had the chance to taste this sauce if it didn’t get out of Colorado, so we have Sarah and Andy to thank for that, but Cam for creating the sauce in the first place!
Umami is the fifth flavor (like the fifth Beatle) and basically boils down to “savory,” but it’s much more than that. It’s that sort of meatiness that comes from eating steak and the bit of salivation that happens up in your cheeks. It’s the flavor of seaweed snacks. It’s the flavor of parmigianio-reggiano and a bunch of other foods we might not consider, but have umami in spades.
This small jar can add that big flavor to any and every dish you creat. Vegetables are great with it, but so is soups, grilled meats, sandwiches, burgers, caseroles, leftovers. Wherever you’re looking for a boost of flavor, this is what you should reach for. I’ve been reaching for it in my kitchen and I suggest you do the same.
Pure Hatch Green Chiles from New Mexico
We’ve featured roasted Hatch Green Chiles on our sandwiches since at least the late 90s when I was working on the sandwich line (the #75 Leo’s Friendly Lion is a personal favorite), but this is the first time I’ve been able to share them, jarred, with you.
At the deli they came in 5 lbs tubs. Too much for our needs.
We “found” these chiles thanks to the work of Jackson Konwinski, the tea, wine and beer buyer for Zingerman’s Deli. Jackson has been around since he was a teen, I think, and he’s been traveling all over the country and beyond to see and learn about food. That’s what took him to the Hatch Chile Fesitival in Hatch, New Mexico over Labor Day weekend two years ago. They hold the festival during that time every year, so it’s pretty easy to plan around.
Jackson was there tasting, learning, and discussing the magical chile with all the growers, vendors and cooks in attendance. After a weekend’s worth of research (and some tired taste buds) Jackson struck up a relationship with The Fresh Chile Co. and we were on our way to finally bringing a retail size jar of chiles to you.
Why did we settle on this jar? To my mind, these chiles truly capture the unique flavor that’s made them famous. Unlike red chiles (or the chiles in the Oso Rojo hot sauce) Hatch chiles are closer in flavor to a green pepper: crisp, bright, a little sweet…yet with the added depth of flavor that leaves folks calling it earthy, a little smoky, and subtly spicy.
There’s a process for getting the chiles from the field to the jar:
The chiles are hand-harvested and rinsed before being roasted over flames that char and blister the skin. After roasting, the chiles cool and their skin is removed and the seeds inside are scraped out, leaving the soft, supple chile ready to flavor your next dish.
Start using the chiles in sandwiches like we do. The flavor will come through without dominating the whole experience. Next, try chopping up the chiles a bit more and tossing them in with your morning eggs. Great with tacos, obviously, and it’s a flavorful garnish for meats and grilled foods in general.
It’s seasonally appropriate to enjoy these chiles this time of year. All you have to do is seize your next chance to use them.
Phoenix Farm 5 Spice Marinade
This is an historic occasion. In your installment, you are holding the first ever product grown and processed at Zingerman’s Mail Order!
That’s right…our little corner in an industrial park has gardens all around it. We’ve created an edible landscape that other people who work in our area like to come and visit. At lunch time, it’s common to see engineers and accountants and managers sitting on the benches and chairs we’ve set up “in our garden.”
Hey, when you work in a place that’s not that pretty it’s a good idea to improve it. After all: we spend a lot of time in that warehouse, we might as well enjoy being there!
That’s when Steve Caird entered the picture. Steve had a whole career at the University of Michigan before retiring and spending time in our Service Center helping customers ship delicious food. But there are some perks beyond the food to working at Zingermans. One of the things we want to do is to help our employees find their passion. For Steve, that passion is gardening. He was a master gardener at home and had all sorts of ideas for our campus.
As we were growing and looking at our space, we looked to Steve for a plan and for extra work. Eventually, Steve moved out of the service center for good and spends all of his time managing, plotting, and harvesting our gardens.
(I should probably mention that we use a lot of the produce that Steve grows for our employee meals we serve for lunch. So we can all attest to the quality of his crops!)
Admittedly, not all of the ingredients in this marinade came from our garden, but Steve grew the produce: rhubarb, garlic, and ginger. He produced the marinade in our kitchen with the help of another part-time Zingernaut/gardener, Tara Stowe and her company Botanical Pursuits. Heck, even Nora Myers—our import supervisor and general jill of all trades—helped get everything necessary for the label.
So when I say this has been lovingly produced in our very own kitchen by our very own folks, I’m not just whistling Dixie. Here’s what Steve has to say about the marinade:
“This is from a recipe that has been floating in and out of our culinary interest for a lot of years. Gail (his wife) would make it and its original intent was as a marinade. We no longer eat meat but the flavor is pretty unique because of the 5-spice blend in it. We rediscovered that it tasted pretty good with soy curls. We tend to make it differently each time, trying to get more scientific because of this potential.
If you don’t mention it contains rhubarb people don’t worry. One mention of rhubarb seems to stop people from trying! My thought is that we tend to have a lot of excess rhubarb each year, it is thriving really well. And garlic is ours and I used Aji Colorado dried pepper from last year’s sun dried pepper collection for the heat in this batch. It can add a deep smokey taste.”
Sorry, Steve. I told ’em about the rhubarb.
Indian Spiced Garlic Chutney
Remember how I mentioned Tara Stowe in the previous piece? Well she’s at the heart of this one, too!
Tara has been working in and around Zingerman’s for nearly twenty years now. She started with us at Zingerman’s Mail Order (many people get their start with us during the holidays) and now works at Zingerman’s Candy Company, handling their packaging and some of their deliveries.
But her true passion is found in the garden and in her kitchen, where she takes the fruits of her labors to create delicious concoctions that she shares with me and with you.
Many of the recipes Tara uses come from turn of the century cookbooks she’s collected over the years. We’re not talking Betty Crocker circa 1976, but ingredients and techniques that Laura Ingells Wilder would have recognized.
That’s not to say that Tara assuages modern conveniences and safety measures when creating her chutney…on the contrary. She made each and every jar in a USDA certified professional kitchen (ours) and it’s passed muster. Still, it’s a lot of work for one woman to handle.
…and she grows a lot of garlic. And since everyone loves garlic (my kids tell me) this chutney should find a home in your pantry. Tara roasts the garlic low and slow and this adds a roasty not to the garlic as well as caramlizing the sugars in the cloves. This tempers that pungent bit of fresh garlic and turns it into a slightly less pungent, sweeter version of its original self.
Spices like cumin and coriander combine those warm, herbaceous, savory notes to the chutney. They softly accentuate the spicier notes without being overpowering or out of place. Now is the perfect season for such flavors as this chutney is amazing with grilled veggies or proteins. You can even mix it with yogurt to make a marinade or even a dip or slather it on a burger. Very exotic.
I’m just glad to share the products of our passionate, and talented staff.
Double Strawberry Cotton Candy
This one is just straight up fun.
We taste and sample all sorts of products in all sorts of categories with all sorts of flavors and creations inside. But, admittedly, cotton candy isn’t really on our radar.
Maybe it’s just how I grew up. I remember walking through this supermarket as a kid and seeing neon pink and electric blue bags of cotton candy hanging in the aisles. I always wanted some. My mom wouldn’t get me any, and there we are.
I guess it’s because cotton candy seems to be a confection squarely aimed at the younger generations. They like things sugary, and they like things neon-colored, I guess. So when this cotton candy came across our tasting desk, it was hard keep our beliefs about cotton candy out of the room. Nostalgia is a powerful motivator—especially in food. Heck, people buy our coffee cakes because they remember grandma making them when they were young. I doubt their grandmas made coffee cake as good as ours, but that’s beside the point.
But nostalgia for the confections of a county fair might be harder to pull off.
But then we tasted the cotton candy, and we were immediately transported back to being kids on the midway throwing rings around a cone, hoping to win a goldfish. The nostalgia worked. And this time the cotton candy was much better than we remembered.
Don’t worry, this isn’t pretentious cotton candy. You don’t eat it with a fork, or something. No, this is as good as cotton candy can get: the essence of strawberry, imbued into spun candy strands, packed tightly into a re-closeable pouch. The bag has heft, if ethereal confections of sugary filaments can have heft, but somehow it does. It’s not just whimsy, it’s a treat.
It’s so good we’ll be featuring it in our catalogs in February 2027…but you get to taste it first. Just one of the perks of this club.
Sliced Calabrese Salami from Indianapolis
In Calabria, near the bottom of the boot of Italy, they love chiles and spicy things and they seem to put it in everything. I learned that the hard way during a “buyer’s tour of Italy” and my tongue is still numb.
And even though this salami was made in Indiana, not Italy, its spirit and flavor hit the bullseye. It’s still illegal to import Italian salami to the States, but there are a handful (and growing) of charcuterie maestros making meats as good as—and in some cases better than—the stuff from Italy.
This one is made by Turchetti’s in Indianapolis. Founded by George Turchette—a man from the music world who fell in love with butchery—and his wife Amanda DeVary in 2017, they started as a whole animal butcher shop where nothing was wasted and every piece found a home in something.
The pandemic came—we all know how hard that was on restaurants—so George and Amanda pivoted to wholesale charcuterie and closed the restaurant. Now—in my humble but informed opinion—they’re one of the finer salumeries around, winning awards and fans all over the country with this salami.
They certainly won my adulation.
As I mentioned, Calabria likes the heat and the salami that carries its name is no different. It’s the type of heat that warms your cheeks and lingers. It’s balanced by a bit of sweetness from red wine and anise, which beckons you to contemplate and experience each bite as if it’s a little adventure in eating. At least it beckoned me.
Taglierini Egg Pasta from California
Back in 1967, Eduardo Morettoni and his wife Marcella opened up a small restuarant in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge. The legend goes that their frest pasta was so popular they started making extra at home and selling it out of their garage.
Eventually, the pasta became such a big deal that they closed the restaurant and focused on the wholesale production (Jeez, I didn’t realize how similar that is to Turchetti’s story).
It was popular then for the same reason it’s popular now: fresh ingredients, expert care, and time. 60 years later those are still the hallmarks of the Eduardo’s Pasta.
Like all pastas (at least the good ones) low, slow drying is the key to capturing the peak flavor and best texture. First off, let’s look at how larger, more industrial producers make pasta:
- Make the dough in large mixing machines that can handle thousands of pounds of flour at a time.
- Roll out the dough (inside a large machine, of course).
- Squeeze the dough through plastic dies (like that old PlayDoh factory we had as kids).
- Blast the dough with hot air in a short amount of time to “dry” it
- Package, send out of the door.
That whole process will take place inside a big machine and after a few hours and you’ll have thousands of pounds of finished pasta.
Now here’s how they do it at Eduardo’s:
- Mix farm fresh, cage-free eggs with durum semolina wheat flour to make the dough.
- Roll out the dough in large sheets.
- Squeeze the dough through bronze dies, not plastic. This gives the noodle a rougher texture, good for grabbing sauces.
- Gently hang the noodle on drying racks and place into a low temperature walk-in oven (I guess you’d call it an oven) to dry
- 1-2 days later, take the pasta out and package by hand.
A couple of differences there, but two stand out in particular: the bronze dies and the long time to dry. Bronze dies are traditional and made to last for many, many years. They are expensive, but they give the pasta a rough texture when extruded. The plastic dies of industrial producers leave the noodle smooth and shiny with very little texture.
But time is the biggest differenciator. When you look at the industrial production versus Eduardo’s production. I think you start to see why. If it takes Eduardo two days to make a batch of pasta, think how many batches the industrial producer can do in the same amount of time. 15 times more? 20 times more? They’re going to be selling pasta before Eduardo’s is even done making theirs.
But that’s what we’re paying for when we get artisanal pasta. That’s what we’re looking for: slightly nutty, almost bread-like flavor, and a wonderful toothsome bite. Eduardo’s Pasta has been hitting those notes for more than 60 years, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.
Date Mooncake from Knoxville, Tennessee
The Mid-Autumn Festival, aka the Moon Festival, aka the Moon Cake Festival is an important harvest holiday celebrated throughout Southeast Asia, but especially in China.
Coincidentally, the Mooncake Festival happens on September 25, 2026, the very day you receive this installment!
The legend attached to the festival is about the Moon Goddess and her famous archer of a husband. The goddess drank an elixir that made her immortal and she floated up to the moon. Her husband was so distraught he’d leave her favorite fruits and confections out every night trying to lure her home.
And so for the Mid-Autumn festival they celebrate with mooncakes, which I’m sure you’re shocked to discover are shaped like the moon and represent prosperity and family. They’re pretty dense, too, so you can cut them into wedges to share instead of chomping down on a whole cake (but you can do that, too).
It’s made with a light pastry shell wrapped around a dense, sweet paste of dates and sugar. They’re sweet, but not overly so, and they are rich but not cloying. It’s an interesting combination of flavors and textures and every time I take a bite I’m reminded how unique and different a pastry this is from our more American fare.
So raise a cake to the moon and hope for a prosperous year!
Whitney Cheese from Vermont
We’re very close with lots of producers around the country and around the world, but we’ve very tight with some…Jasper Hill Farm in Greensboro, Vermont is definitely one of our closest cheese friends in the country.
To me, they’re like American Spoon—the preserve and more makers in Petoskey, Michigan. You see, I can basically sell anything American Spoon makes. They’re that good. The same goes for Jasper Hill Farm. They don’t make a single cheese that I wouldn’t proudly serve to my friends and family. When it comes to Jasper Hill Farm, the hardest part is whittling down their selection to the ones we really want to sell. It’s like picking which friends you’re kicking out of the lifeboat. I hate it.
Sometimes, though, the stars align and I can feature a Jasper Hill cheese in an installment like this. I’m sure you’ll be able to find Whitney cheese at your local cheesemonger (or on their website) so if you love it you can get more…just not through me.
I love mountain-style cheeses like Comté and Gruyère. They manage to be firm yet creamy at the same time, and they have huge flavor that often hints at notes of rich beef broth accentuated by bright fruity notes like apple. So I’ve been itching to bring Whitney back to our shelves for a while. The fact that it’s won “best in show” at the American Cheese Society conference in the past has nothing to do with it (though it certainly doesn’t hurt!).
Whitney is made from the raw milk of Jasper Hill Farm’s own herd of grass-fed cows. The outside of the wheels are rubbed with a magical melange of naturally cultured brine and spent yeast from a nearby winery, imparting a fruity, floral, funky aroma to the paste inside. Soft, a little sweet, nutty, with lovely buttery notes that linger into a savory finish.
An easy award winner in anyone’s book. Eat it on a cheeseboard alongside cured meats or dried fruit, or melt it on top of roasted potatoes.
Cow’s milk, Unpasteurized (Raw), Traditional rennet