He brings the heat to cooking

Self-taught chef David Ashley stokes America's appetite for hot sauce.

By Jennifer Wolcott | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

from the June 27, 2007 edition

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Sudbury, Mass. - Never before have I tasted hot sauce off a toothpick. But when my mouth caught fire 10 seconds after tasting "Inferno," one of the hottest of hot sauces in the world, I understood why David Ashley, maker of Mad Dog hot sauces, had urged me to sample his sauce with a toothpick rather than the plastic minispoon I'd used to taste his other, milder sauces. He also insisted – in a stern but kind tone – that I place the toothpick in the center of my tongue, by all means avoiding my lips and the tip of my tongue. He also placed a tall glass of milk in front of me, explaining that a swig of milk is the best way to cool off the burn.

He's done this before, I realized. I wasn't his first victim. There must have been some hapless tasters in the past who had pursed the toothpick between their lips and regretted it. Ah, yes, I noted: Each of his colorful, playfully self-illustrated sauce labels features a warning. Some are light-hearted ("Not for pussycats"), and others downright dire: "Warning: This sauce is very hot – use it at your own risk."

"What other business allows you to torture people for a living?" he jokes.

"Inferno" is not even the hottest of Mr. Ashley's line of 15 bottled sauces, which he launched in his kitchen in 1985 at the urging of friends who couldn't get enough of his homemade barbecue sauce. He also produces a sauce dubbed "357" for its 357,000 Scoville heat units – a scientific grading system for the heat intensity of chili peppers. That's a big leap from Inferno's 89,000 "Scovilles," as industry insiders call them.

Though he's turned on the heat since his early days at the stove, Ashley's favorite is his more tame "Green Amigo," a blend of habanero peppers, onions, garlic, cilantro, vinegar, and lime juice, which one can eat by the spoonful. "It's an everyday sauce that's great with anything, especially eggs," he says.

But as long as the market demands tongue-scorching sauces like 357, this self-described chief alchemist and founder of Ashley Food Co. plans to deliver. "It doesn't have to be hot to be great," he says. "But because lots of people want it hotter and hotter, I respond to that. I have to go where the market goes."

Already this year his company has sold $100,000 worth of Mad Dog 357: The demand for heat shows no signs of cooling.

Ashley says it's partly just a "macho thing," where people want to show how well they can handle spicy blends of habanero, jalapeño, or Scotch bonnet peppers. The popularity may also have something to do with consumers' heightened tolerance for highly spiced foods as a result of increased world travel and exposure to ethnic cuisines at home, where the restaurant scene has become more diverse than ever.

Whatever is driving demand, responding to the market has served Ashley well over the years. When the hot-sauce trend was really sizzling in the 1990s, he was selling to about 2,200 stores worldwide. He now sells through 200 large distributors, not stores, but overall it amounts to a slight decrease in sales. Ashley attributes that to "a funky economy" and also his shifting priorities. In addition to running his own business out of his basement in a Boston suburb, he has a wife (who can't stand hot sauce) and a 9-year-old son (an avid fan). He's spending more time at the baseball field these days – but has no plans to shelve the sauce.

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