The Daily Sauce :: A Daily Sip of Hip

November 18th, 2005 edition of The Daily Sauce: Food and Wine. Visit Our Food and Wine Archive.

Gringo Salsa … Smokin’!

George “Gringo” Hubbard makes his salsa the old-fashioned way, in small batches with peppers – 5,000 of them to be exact – that he grows in his back yard.

That ain’t no mere patch of peppers. To get the flavor combination he likes, Hubbard grows 10 types of sweet and hot peppers for his 10 varieties of salsa. He even uses fresh onions, celery, preservative-free processed tomatoes and a ton of fresh lime and lemon juice to take the edge off. For the smoked salsa he uses white oak, along with hickory and apple woods, and smokes the peppers low and slow for 20 to 24 hours before simmering the salsa for 8 hours.

Hubbard bottles about 2,600 jars a week, but the next step may be fully automated fillers. This year he doubled the number of stores, from Burlington, Iowa to Ste. Genevieve, selling his salsa.

And it just keeps growing.

Sauce Pick: Gringo Salsa
Price: About $3.99 per jar
Where to get it: DiGregorio’s Italian Foods, 5200 Daggett Ave., St. Louis and area locations of Dierbergs and Straub’s.
Info: Call DiGregorio’s at 314.776.1062 or visit www.dierbergs.com or www.straubs.com for location information.

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