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NAFEM19.Feb8

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Food Equipment News Friday, February 8, 2019 3 8 Jellies Made with a Hunk of Burning Love By Lorrie Baumann Some like it hot, and Rose City Pepperheads is burning to please them. The company's pepper jellies have won a pair of grand championships at the Scovie Awards, the annual awards pre- sented by the National Fiery Foods & Barbecue Show, for a total of more than 50 Scovie Awards and multiple Hot Pepper Awards. Rose City Pepperheads celebrated its 20th anniversary in December, 2017, and the product line that started with seven flavors of pepper jellies sold at local Portland, Oregon-area farmers markets has now grown to nearly 40 flavors based largely on peppers that Owner and Jelly Artisan Susan McCormick grows on her urban farm in northeast Portland. Rose City Pepperheads' Raspberry Habanero won the grand championship Scovie Award for 2019, and Sneaky Ghost won the same award for 2019. McCormick started her pepper jelly career in 1997, when she adapted a bell pepper jelly recipe she'd found in an antique cookbook for the hot peppers she was growing in her garden. "They just used to make jellies with green bell pep- pers – no spices back then," she said. "I made it for family and friends, and they just wanted it." Mango Madness was her very first product and is still today her top seller. McCormick was running the Beaverton, Oregon, farmers market at the time, so it was a natural step for her to sell Mango Madness at the farmers mar- ket along with other jellies that she'd already been developing. "I started with seven flavors and did pretty traditional – Red Jalapeno, Holiday Jalapeno for the holidays," she said. "People loved it so much outside the holidays that we creat- ed Rage n Jalapeno, Raspberry Jalapeno, Apricot, Double Dare – which is mango and habanero blended together in a really hot form," she said. "It's not the hottest one I make anymore. It makes the best hot wings ever." In those early days, she was making her small-batch, hand-poured artisan pep- per jellies in her garage, but she built her own commercial kitchen 10 years ago. She was using peppers grown in her home garden until one of the neighbors who was selling the pepper jellies offered her the lease on a couple of acres of land in the heart of northeast Portland, just down the road from her house. She now farms that land to grow all of the peppers she uses in her jellies. "I love to farm," she said. "The peppers are picked by hand. My staff helps me. My husband helps me. My customers help me. I grow other pep- pers that people use around their house- hold, and I allow them to take home stuff when they leave, so it's kind of fun." Scotch Bonnet peppers from this year's crop are going into a jelly that's newly launched, and McCormick is also growing ghost peppers, scorpion peppers and Carolina Reapers, named the hottest chile pepper in the world by the Guinness World Records in 2013. Rose City Pepperheads customers use the jellies over cream cheese with crackers and in marinades for chicken, shrimp and fish, McCormick said. "Often customers say it's their secret sauce," she said. "Bars use it in cocktails as an alter- native to simple syrup. These are just right on the border of a pepper jelly and a sauce, so you can easily marinate with it." Rose City Pepperheads jellies are lower in sodium than many alternative sauces, since McCormick's recipes have no added salt. "I'm one of the very few companies that does not use sodium in the product," she said. "I can't believe how many people look for a product that doesn't have sodium in it." Twelve-ounce jars of the jellies retail for $8.99 to $11.99 at gift stores, gro- ceries and bars around the country. For more information, visit www.rosecity pepperheads.com or call 503.329.8081. Dress It Up Dressing Glamorizes a Salad By Lorrie Baumann Dress It Up Dressing is a line of salad dressings originally designed to accom- modate the dietary needs of a family member who was cutting down on added sugars. That happened when Sophia Maroon's father was diagnosed as pre- diabetic, which inspired Maroon's moth- er, Suzy, to pay really close attention to what her family was eating. Maroon's mother couldn't find a sugar-free salad dressing that she liked, so she invented her own recipe. Years later, Maroon was still mak- ing and serving her mother's red wine vinaigrette salad dressing, and when she started thinking about a career change in 2012, the idea of that salad dressing kept resurfacing, according to Taylor Bagen, who is now Dress It Up Dressing's Brand Development Manager. She started making the salad dress- ing and selling it to friends and family, who were placing orders in such vol- ume that she had to keep going back to her local Whole Foods store to pick up the wooden clementine boxes in which she was packing her jars for deliveries. One day, the Team Leader at Whole Foods asked her what she was using all those boxes for. When Maroon explained her salad dressing project, she was invited to let Whole Foods in on the action. "When Whole Foods tried the dressing, they said 'We don't sell anything like this, and we should.' With that endorsement, Sophia got seri- ous and started formalizing Dress It Up Dressing," Bagen said. "She was right – the response was phenomenal." A few years later, Dress It Up Dressing has added Ranch, Caesar and Sesame Tahini dressings to the original vinaigrettes, for a total of seven vari- eties now in the line. All are made with the same kind of quality ingredi- ents that character- ized the original dressing created by Maroon's mother. They use no xanthan gum or other fillers. "We make sure that the ingredients for the dressings are all things you can recognize, pronounce and you probably have in your kitchen," Bagen said. Four of the dressings are completely sugar free, while the others have less than 1 gram of sugar per tablespoon. Olive oil is the base for all of the dressings, with a touch of sesame oil added to Sesame Tahini for its flavor. Five of the dressings are vegan, and all of them are gluten free. " W h e n Sophia start- ed out mak- ing Dress It Up, she did- n't set out to make them gluten free, low-carb, Whole 30-compli- ant or any of those things. She really just recreated her mom's classic recipe using simple, pure ingredients, and by doing it, the product ended up checking all those boxes anyway," Bagen said. "We like to emphasize that that's the beauty of clean, whole food. When you use real ingredi- ents, you automatically set yourself up to be accommodating to all kinds of special- ty diets." "It then translates into being incredi- bly versatile. They're wonderful as a dip or marinade or to drizzle on top of a rice bowl," she continued. "It has really replaced so many products in my kitchen that were just clogging up space." The new Sesame Tahini Dressing won a 2018 Good Food Award as well as a sofi Award. "That was really exciting for us, and we saw a lot of growth follow- ing those awards," Bagen said. The company has also been recog- nized as a certified B Corporation, with third-party accreditation for its social and environmental efforts as well as standards for public transparency and legal accountability. "That allowed us to balance our profit with our mission and our purpose," Bagen said. Dress It Up Dressing's mission is to be a com- pany that benefits employees, the com- munity and the planet by supporting food education, the local food movement, sus- tainable farming practices, effi- cient food distri- bution and access to healthy food for children, she said. A good example of this is the com- pany's partnership with D.C. Central Kitchen, a community kitchen with a mission to use food as a tool to strength- en bodies, empower minds and build communities. The D.C. Central Kitchen partners with Washington, D.C. public schools with the goal of getting healthy food to kids at school, and Dress It Up Dressing provides salad dressing for the effort. "They get their vegetables at lunch; they taste much better, and they're not covered in sugar and unhealthy oil," Bagen said. "The mission to improve child nutrition is fundamentally impor- tant to our company. We think it's neces- sary to instill healthy eating habits from a young age so these habits just become second nature as they continue to grow." The Dress It Up Dressings are pack- aged in 10-ounce bottles that retail for $7.99. They're currently distributed in 27 states across the country with the goal of establishing the products as a truly national brand. They're currently sold in Whole Foods, Central Market in Texas and at all the Fresh Market locations and are soon to be available online through Kroger Ship, and Amazon. For more information, visit www .dressitupdressing.com.

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