Food & Wine Of Hot Sauces Not The One Chip Challenge!

Some hot sauce brands exist only to burn the roof of your mouth. But NuLand Hot Stuff Company is breaking molds bringin' ridiculously fun flavors of hot sauces to the table.
Season 3 Episode 37

Be sure to try some of their hot sauces - www.nulandhotstuff.com

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Episode Topics:
The Fit Life Show, NuLand Hot Stuff Company, Small Business, Hot Sauce, Crystal Ballance, 

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

Can hot sauces be both lit and on fire? Welcome to next time, pop.

Speaker 2: 0:11

Welcome to the Fitlife Show, where we share tips and tricks on fitness, food, family and fun. Today I am extremely excited because I have wanted Crystal from Newland Hot Sauce to be here for a very long time my absolute favorite hot sauce of all time. Thank you for being here, crystal.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Well, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Well, to launch into this, I really want to know the backstory of Newland. It's the brand name, it's kind of a unique name. What?

Speaker 3: 0:46

made you come up with this? It's just spelling innu, Innu. Alright, let's get through this.

Speaker 2: 0:53

It's a long story, maybe.

Speaker 3: 0:55

Not really A deep story, actually. I grew up in Norfolk, always lived there, spent my childhood traveling every Saturday to our family farm in Pasquitank County, which is a little Norfolk side of Elizabeth City, so it took an hour to get there. We'd farm, my dad planted soybeans for market and then later we just did stuff for the family and then now it's hot peppers. But somewhere in there I owned a dental lab. I had a whole career in dentistry.

Speaker 1: 1:26

Oh, wow.

Speaker 3: 1:27

And playing around with hot sauces led to a business and a business name. And because, you know, the family farm was so centered through my dad he just passed last year, so that's the tricky part to this story. But I was saying what is a strong business name, you know? And we started talking about the farm being in Newland and the way that we call ourselves Hampton Roads. That area of Carolina calls themselves Newland, n-e-w-l-a-n-d.

Speaker 3: 1:59

And so my dad is an old farm guy. You know, worked for four, did the farming, but he could sit back and say nothing and say one thing, and it's genius and we all got.

Speaker 2: 2:09

Where in the world did he get that from?

Speaker 3: 2:12

So he was kind of pacing around the dining room. I happened to be at their house and he's like what about you have to say in his voice, crystal, what about misspelling Newland, like in you dash land? And I'm like whoa, that's cool. So, I did actually spell it in you dash land and it was in a business license by that spelling, but it was complicated having to explain what my business name was. I dropped the dash and it became Newland, just spelled out as one word, but misspelled.

Speaker 3: 2:48

So, it's an ode to my dad now. We lost him last year, so it's actually very cool because it's now something that I'm really sinking my heart into to build and grow in his honor. Wow. And I made it through that story without losing it. Yeah, it's good.

Speaker 2: 3:06

It's always neat when you have a connection other than just you know I want to make a living or whatever, when you have a personal connection to what you're doing, a passion yeah to your passion, and it's just yeah, it's that much more important in your life.

Speaker 3: 3:20

It was and it is. And you know, sadly, when he started kind of declining at brain cancer, so he started kind of losing his ability to kind of know what was happening, and almost at that time things were really starting to just take off with me and the business and I just wanted him to be able to know like, hey, I'm doing festive events now and you know, I just wish he was able to have really understood like I took this from your farm and we're going this direction with it. You know, yeah, I just want to try to keep that with me and try to go forth with it. That's really neat, that's neat.

Speaker 1: 3:58

Yeah yeah, the connection to the farming is one from that I identify with. I'm an urban farmer.

Speaker 3: 4:03

Okay.

Speaker 1: 4:04

So I grow my microgreens and stuff. So that connection with my grandparents and my dad as well, with farming is there, so the truth of the matter is I really hated it when I was a kid, because I just wanted to be a kid Right, and I wasn't the dirt crying.

Speaker 3: 4:19

Now I see the value in it and you know that your food, you know what goes into it if you create it.

Speaker 1: 4:26

So yes, knowing where food came from Very important, because so much is bastardized in the manufacturing process.

Speaker 3: 4:34

Large scale right oh yeah, yeah, I'm also very into that too. I have a background in biochem.

Speaker 3: 4:40

That's my degree and from that from early on in my life, I've always been interested in nutrition and health as well, and food is medicine, and so there's another whole side to this about meat and hot sauce, and that is most. All of them are vegan, except for one is vegetarian because of a prepared horseradish, and that's much as big babe. But I really want these here to boost healthy food Right, and so I think it does that with the flavor that heat as accent. It doesn't make you storeable. To get through your food Like.

Speaker 3: 5:16

Some of them are very challenging with levels and I don't want to be that guy.

Speaker 1: 5:20

So that's why we appreciate so much about yours when we tried them at the Hilton Village Farmers Market for the first time and I was like. I was like hot sauce. I'm just gonna have my mouth on fire for the rest of the day. You know I do it, I would ever try a public here where the kid was like you have to go try and he's like no, I was just no go To try the blueberry. He tried looking back with a bottle. He was like that was good.

Speaker 3: 5:41

See, I want to elicit that and I say too with my former career in dentistry. I was a ceramist, I worked under a microscope, I didn't get to see people. I made things for people, I created smiles. But see, this is a whole different conversation that makes people smile and I think it's cool, like I can carry on and have a better way of life than I did with dentistry and provide something like this.

Speaker 1: 6:06

Yeah, now you said, you grow your own peppers. Some of them? What kind of peppers, how much acres do you have that you grow them on?

Speaker 3: 6:13

We have a hundred acres. We don't use that much, though, for what I do. We some of that is sublet farmland, but I really only grow ghost peppers because those are the ones that are harder to source, and as I've grown the business, I'm going from making several cases at a time to many, many more at a time. I'm still making them myself. I don't send these to a co-packer. I went to manufacturing school and then I have the education that I do in biochemistry. It would have been really silly not to go ahead and do that so that I can make it myself, because when there's so much about hot sauce?

Speaker 3: 6:51

people don't know, but you cannot bottle it yourself and you have to go through all sorts of rankings to be able to do it. So, that's one of the things I did, wow.

Speaker 2: 7:00

Now something I'm curious about is I don't know a lot about vegan or vegetarian. The differences I know, like the basics, but what about horseradish would make it vegetarian versus vegan?

Speaker 3: 7:13

Prepared horseradish has an egg white product in it. It's not just grated horseradish, the stuff that you get at the store that looks kind of white in the jar, that has an egg product in it. So egg is not vegan it's vegetarian.

Speaker 2: 7:28

I don't know that they put egg in that.

Speaker 3: 7:30

Yeah, so one of the things that I have to do with the agriculture department is deal with the ingredient list.

Speaker 3: 7:38

And that's the very last thing I do. It has to go any recipe. I have to make two separate batches. It goes to a university for what's called process authority. They basically reverse engineer it and give me all the specs like water activity, ph levels. I take all that information and I have an account with the FDA so that all gets put there. But then the long thing is sending the application to the agriculture department and they're the ones who basically they're here to exact the orders of the FDA and they monitor what goes on the label. So anything that I put in that bottle. If I grab a jar of horseradish from the store like a restaurant depot and it already is made, I have to write horseradish on my label, imprint the seeds and everything on their label has to go online imprint the seeds.

Speaker 3: 8:29

So you know, I have to denote that the egg is in there and that goes on the label and it is a vegetarian product. So, anybody concerned whether they consume egg or not knows to look for things like that. You know, wow. So vegan, no egg, no dairy vegetarian can include egg and dairy.

Speaker 2: 8:50

Okay, wow.

Speaker 3: 8:52

But every other one besides my Chesapeake Bay is vegan.

Speaker 1: 8:56

Wow, so it was like the first flavor you did.

Speaker 3: 9:00

That was the roasted red pepper, and I jokingly call that my first born. So that's the flagship of the pack and I have a little order in which at my markets I do samples and some people come up and ask are they in order of escalating heat? So they know how scared to get.

Speaker 3: 9:21

I say no, they're here in order about how you taste the matter before and after one another. So I go a little light handed in the beginning with some of the fruitier ones. Then, when you get to the Chesapeake Bay one, it has my mix of old Bay horse radish, very intense flavors. I follow that with the hottest one and I follow that with the least hot and sweet.

Speaker 1: 9:41

So I kind of take you on a journey, a roller coaster, a roller coaster if you will.

Speaker 3: 9:47

Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 2: 9:48

And now I also realized you had custom flavors for, like, different events and things like. How did that start? What was your first one with that?

Speaker 3: 9:57

Okay, well, let's see. The first one that somebody asked me to create would have been for Fest events. I think that was the first one and I believe that was when I was asked to. No, actually that was the Ube. I made the Ube purple yam first. That was for a restaurant, ray Ray's. He, um, as a restaurateur, went to Carla's Beach House Cafe in Ocean View. They used to be neighboring restaurants at the ocean front in Virginia Beach and she is now in Ocean View, so they're friends and he went to her restaurant and saw all of my sauces there with her logos on them, because I do a co-label ship with some restaurants that are local to me. Um, I try to keep that in control, um, but they all said Carla's Beach House and he was very interested. He loved the Dill Pickle one.

Speaker 1: 10:46

That was so good, and he does carry that now.

Speaker 3: 10:48

but when he? Um wanted to introduce himself to me he wanted something special for him and his restaurant and if you go in his restaurant there is a live full size figure of himself, a cardboard cut out. So Ray Ray's has quite a bit of branding going on with it. So he uses Ube purple yam Um. He has a quite a bit of Filipino flair and Hawaiian flair in his um cuisine. So I married Ube purple yam. The actual yam itself is in the in the content Um, as well as some Ube powder. It helps keep the purple color.

Speaker 3: 11:27

When I add the other things to it, like there's a little cilantro, green onion, but really the main content is Ube paired with South Pacific flavors pineapple, ginger, sesame, lime. Um, that was the first one I made.

Speaker 2: 11:41

All the good things in life.

Speaker 3: 11:43

Yeah, you know and then I started, you know, wanting to take pictures of it and I thought well, what better way to show purple is on something you know white?

Speaker 1: 11:54

So I go for pot stickers.

Speaker 3: 11:56

Oh my God, that, just that was good together.

Speaker 1: 11:59

So I started going that route. You know you're getting some ideas for lunch, aren't you? Now you have lunch and dinner ideas.

Speaker 3: 12:06

Second one was what second and third one were for both um um festivals. Norfolk hot was the first one. Um, last September they had Nash Fest and that's a play on Nashville um music and food festival. They wanted to play on Nashville hot chicken. So I went with a sweet heat and truly I'd already made a hot chicken before using my honey and my carrot together Honey for the sweet sticky carrot for the heat level that you want on a Nashville hot chicken. So when they asked me to make that all in one bottle, basically I kind of went from those two.

Speaker 3: 12:46

I didn't use the same exact seasonings. You know I used just a bouncing point. So that's that one, and then the other one is the Creole for the Bayou Bon Vivant. That flavor is so good it just yeah, I've made hummus with that.

Speaker 3: 13:05

I've you know beans and rice, shrimp, all of it tacos and lastly, the other one that's been asked of me is ODU. I became an ODU vendor last year, so Go Blue is an ODU colors, and so it's a blueberry, fig and fennel with hickory, and hickory is kind of the surprise in it. It really makes it just like a jammy barbecue sauce. It does have a good hit of heat to it. It stands up to bold food and one of the really great things I made with it tenderized, boneless, skinless chicken thighs. Those are tastier.

Speaker 2: 13:43

Yes, they are.

Speaker 3: 13:44

Marinated those with the dill pickle hot sauce. And the dill is very mild, so I didn't crazily make the chicken hot at this point, but really wanted to tenderize it with flavor. So did that and then sear. I actually kind of patted that dry, put a charry dry rub on it, seared it on the grill and at the end basted it just like a barbecue sauce with that blueberry fig fennel.

Speaker 3: 14:08

Oh, so good and I made it and I made it for some friends at a restaurant, actually sanctuary taco bar. They're friends of mine and I worked with them. I went down there and dropped off a chicken. I got a call and they said oh, my God woman.

Speaker 2: 14:26

So I wish I made that for you all today. You should have done that. We need to have you come back.

Speaker 1: 14:33

That's a new layer to your episode that shows what you do with the high fives Indeed.

Speaker 3: 14:38

So those are the three that I've been asked to make.

Speaker 2: 14:41

Wow. Is there any combo that you've been asked to make or that's been suggested to you that you think can't or shouldn't be made, or is pretty much everything open to you right now?

Speaker 3: 14:53

I don't know Right now. Well, okay, I was in a restaurant a couple of days ago having dinner and a friend of mine I haven't seen in a while since before the pandemic, came in randomly and he's like I've got this great idea, I've got a bulldog and I got a sauce and you could have him with a hat on and he's cooking food and he's like you know branding and everybody has an idea that they think they I should do, but I'm like I'm one person.

Speaker 1: 15:25

I can't do it all.

Speaker 3: 15:26

So, it's not as necessarily your idea is bad. It's more like I don't think I could do everything Right right.

Speaker 2: 15:35

So that's kind of where my limit is my time, that's true.

Speaker 1: 15:39

So are you in any stores yet, or?

Speaker 3: 15:42

I'm in stores. I need to be in more of them. It's getting kind of painful because I started this out in a couple of restaurants. I still had the dental lab that I owned. Things were kind of changing in that career in the industry and I ended up selling it right before the pandemic.

Speaker 3: 16:01

I thought I was gonna go full throttle and then, of course, the whole world had to stop. So when things opened back up, they're a first thing I did. Besides, I was trying to maintain the few little restaurants I had. At that time I started doing the markets and then at that time everybody was looking to get out, but not really necessarily wanting to go to a restaurant, so the markets were killing it and I really got very involved with that. And then year two was when my dad was sick. Also, I had a helper come on and we did this divide and conquer, so more markets were happening and I was just maintaining the situation with my dad. So I really, during that time, could have spent more time getting into more stores, but I am in some and that's what I'm doing right now is trying to get into more places, because customers are going to these markets. They're also wanting to find me during the week to pick up from my brick and mortar that I don't have.

Speaker 3: 17:02

I work out of a commissary kitchen. I share it with one other truck, a food truck, and we don't have ourselves open to customers. So working on the long haul to getting to be in a brick and mortar farm market, but currently Virginia Goods and Salt and Market, ketchum Collie, gint, grab and Go. These are some of the places. Sandbridge Seaside Market. You can find a good establishment of my flavors maybe not every last one and then I have restaurants like Carless Beach House. She makes a really big deal about her retail merch shelf and she has almost every flavor, so I do a co-label ship.

Speaker 3: 17:46

So I wholesale to restaurants like hers and which, like I said, her label says Carless, with her logo and on the side panel it has an hour story about my family and manufactured for Carless by New Land so that people can look at the bottle and say all right, and there are nuances on the labels that say, oh, I've seen that before. It clicks with people. When they get to the market they say, oh, this is the one at such and such restaurant. So I kind of have little pieces going on like this around town.

Speaker 2: 18:18

Wow, and how many flavors do you have?

Speaker 3: 18:21

19 is current 18. You all know about the 19th. You don't know yet and it's in my pocket. Do you want to hear about it?

Speaker 2: 18:29

Yes, we do.

Speaker 3: 18:31

I'll put it out there, on blast, here right now, for the first time.

Speaker 1: 18:34

I'm so excited this way.

Speaker 3: 18:39

Those three this is a great segue, those three that you asked me. If anybody has asked me to make a flavor before, blocked me from doing this one that I wanted to do all along. Every time someone says OK, Ray, Ray, we'll do your ube. I'm going to put this one back here for a minute. The one that's back here finally got made. It is through the university, it is in the FDA, and we're currently waiting on agriculture to hurry up Pizza, hot sauce, y'all, it's pizza hot sauce.

Speaker 3: 19:11

And, honestly, I was a vendor at Harber Fest and I had helpers out there. I needed to check out of my tent for a minute and take a break and when I did, I was kind of just thinking about this. I had already had it in the queue, I hadn't quite solidified the recipe yet and I wanted to order any pizza hot sauce from anywhere I could find and had it delivered to me, which I did. And there aren't many, there's just a few, and one of them actually was on Amazon from Italy, and it was kind of like those little, like the little peppers that you put on sub sandwiches. It was really bad. It wasn't really a hot sauce, but the other couple it just no.

Speaker 1: 19:55

Disappointed yes.

Speaker 3: 19:58

We're gonna have a real pizza hot sauce here soon. And the cool thing about it, there's no tomato in it. It is complimentary to it, and so at my kitchen I'm growing fresh basil. So this fresh and dried basil to help each other out.

Speaker 3: 20:11

There's a cayenne pepper base, there's roasted red peppers, there's carrot in it, everything complimentary to what you wanna throw on your pizza and it not. I really wanted to think about this too, because I went many directions with it in the beginning, like adding fig and crazy fun stuff, and I was really truly just driving the cost of it.

Speaker 1: 20:32

And then, if you, think about it.

Speaker 3: 20:34

If I wanna sell it to a restaurant, I don't wanna afflict a restaurant's flavor profile on their pizza by mine, you know. So I wanted it truly not to have like its own separate identity, you know. So, it has an identity, but it is one that could go everywhere.

Speaker 1: 20:56

Wow, that is cool.

Speaker 3: 20:57

Low end to high end pizza, yeah, so yeah, I'm excited.

Speaker 1: 21:03

I'm excited too, I'm excited, so you don't know like when you'll it'll be able to be launched because of the regular, the testing and stuff.

Speaker 3: 21:11

Yeah, what is really left on it? The content of the bottle is good to go with the authorities. It's really just the label and I was told a week ago that right now they're backed up eight to 12 weeks and it just killed my soul. But I did wake up this morning to an email that she has gotten to my application on it. So it might be sooner, because I'm in their system already. I don't know. We'll see.

Speaker 2: 21:37

And now from a proof. Please tell us when it does I?

Speaker 3: 21:41

can't wait to tell you.

Speaker 4: 21:43

George is like a pizza fissure.

Speaker 1: 21:45

He makes the best pizza in the world. Oh, so that's gonna be awesome to try with your pizza, I guess.

Speaker 4: 21:52

Well, my son was a big hot pepper flake person.

Speaker 3: 21:56

Yeah.

Speaker 4: 21:57

So he loves hot sauce and so I think he would. This would be something fun for him Absolutely To kind of try on the pizza too. So, yeah, definitely sounds great.

Speaker 3: 22:08

I had somebody try it before I sent it out for a recipe and it's a very judgy New Yorker.

Speaker 4: 22:13

Cool.

Speaker 3: 22:14

So if that is anything, we'll see.

Speaker 4: 22:17

We'll see. I don't know if they compared us to kids.

Speaker 1: 22:22

Yeah, you know how kids are, yeah Picky kids.

Speaker 3: 22:25

That might be the litmus right now.

Speaker 4: 22:28

Yeah, I know right, new Yorker's great, but I mean a very picky kid. He doesn't do cheese on his pizza.

Speaker 3: 22:34

Oh, kid wins.

Speaker 4: 22:36

Do you know what I'm saying? You know it's like he does. I mean literally Wait, what's he put on his pizza? I called it a bald pizza, I will eat a bald pizza too, he loves it and it's more hot pepper flakes than anything. I mean literally. He will like Weird. I mean it's covered with like a little. I mean blanket of popcorn.

Speaker 2: 22:56

At that point you should just have a sandwich, it's a blanket.

Speaker 1: 23:00

That's a blanket of hot sauce. He probably would love that. Hot sauce, hot sauce.

Speaker 3: 23:04

I had to go to this terrible Cheky Cheese birthday party once recently.

Speaker 2: 23:08

Oh man and I learned about the pizza sandwich.

Speaker 3: 23:11

Oh, no, me neither, because it was interesting and the pizzas are terrible, but somebody legit put a piece of pizza down and a blanket of ranch and a piece of pizza and ate it and, like I, just found the origin of the pizza sandwich.

Speaker 1: 23:26

Yeah, see, instead of the ranch.

Speaker 3: 23:27

It could be those little chili peppers.

Speaker 2: 23:29

Yeah, yeah, that's so wrong, so right now, so yeah.

Speaker 3: 23:36

So I'm interested, I think it'll be good too.

Speaker 4: 23:38

It'll be fun, little flavor.

Speaker 3: 23:39

That's awesome. I wish I had brought the little prototype bottle now, but I'll come back with one.

Speaker 2: 23:45

Yeah, see, we need to be your. We need to be your pizza. So what I'll do is I'll make the pizza.

Speaker 4: 23:49

That would actually be a fun introduction yeah, I'll bring the pizza up and in there you go there you go, we can make it.

Speaker 1: 23:55

Have our first cooking show.

Speaker 3: 23:56

Yeah, don't threaten me yeah.

Speaker 4: 23:59

Hey, it's portable. I got the food truck out back right now oh my God, let's.

Speaker 3: 24:05

No, I'm kidding, not kidding. Okay, all right.

Speaker 2: 24:08

Sounds good, yeah that would be amazing.

Speaker 4: 24:11

That's what I said I can't sample any of it. Yeah, I know you You're fasting. Yeah, no, we need eaters. Yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:20

Well, this has been great. Thank you so much for coming and talking about your hot sauces.

Speaker 3: 24:25

It's been wonderful. Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 24:27

Till next time.

Speaker 4: 24:28

Till next time.

Speaker 2: 24:32

Well, folks, that's all for now. Keep your eyes open for our next episode coming soon. Or make it easier on yourself and click that subscribe button Right down there or there to the side, or there, or wherever it's put. Click it and you'll be notified the instant a new episode becomes available. Please let us know what you think of our show and what you'd like to hear on here in the future. Post them on the FitLife Show Facebook page. Till next time. This is the FitLife Show brought to you by FitBodiesUnlimited. Get fit, Stay fit.