Looking for the science? Check out these notes from Chef Dave. Emulsifier: a substance that stabilizes an emulsion, in particular a food additive used to stabilize processed foods.  Keeps a uniform substance. In hot sauces, it is most common to use xanthan gum as an emulsifier. pH: (power of Hydrogen) It is a scale used to specify how acidic or basic a water-based solution is. It indicates the concentration of hydrogen ions in a solution.  The scale is logarithmic, to put into an analogy is like a Richter scale, each number is a ten multiple of the previous. This is important in can ..read more

Allow me to introduce myself, my name is Dave Krueger, and I would love to share my background in cooking with you. Enjoy! When I was a young boy, I was always hovering and following my mom around the kitchen... mostly because I was always eating and hungry. I grew up in a large family where she cooked dinner every night. This consisted of a lot of Italian food and what I would consider to be a common American dinner with meat, a vegetable, and a carbohydrate. Once I moved out of the house I had to fend for myself, so I started cooking and made most of my mother's staples and dishes ..read more

In every form you think of, fresh is best. Whether this comes from fresh ingredients or freshly made food, we are most fresh when we eat fresh! This is a motto that I live by which means that you will only receive the freshest product that was made using the freshest ingredients. Have you ever actually stopped to think why a freshly picked fruit tastes so good? Check out the Sauces: All the Sauces ..read more

All the time I get ideas of new flavor combinations, fusions, and accentuations.  Recently I had the idea to create a hot sauce that is as rich as I could get with umami. For those of you who do not know what umami is, let me briefly tell you. It is the fifth taste along with sweet, sour, salty, and bitter. Describing the sense of what umami tastes like is often said to be delicious, mild, subtle, lingering, and salivating-- for these reasons is why it’s thought to bring about appetite. It was first discovered in 1908 by a Japanese man by the name of Dr. Ikeda while he was traveling in G ..read more

My curiosity with Hops actually did not start from beer. In fact, I was on a brewery hopping bike ride in Anaheim and stopped at a particular brewery that had offered a hop flavored hard candy. I was surprised at how much I liked it and was also then very intrigued with hops. My second encounter with a hops flavored product that I really enjoyed happened at a culinary event. Rich Elixirs offered a tasting of their grapefruit hops flavored kombucha. These two experiences I had with hops got me started into some research and of course a desire to make a hot sauce with the beautiful aroma of hop ..read more

It’s been several years now having traveled to the Columbia River Gorge in Oregon. It’s one of nature’s great playgrounds for many wind sports and one of mine being outrigger canoeing (we surf wind waves).   Blackberries grow wild everywhere in Oregon and Washington. Having been up and down this section of the Columbia River and loving these blackberries as much as I do, taking every second of every chance I get to pick blackberries, I have learned where all the good spots and best-growing conditions for blackberries are. A few years ago I made a blackberry preserve that was absurdl ..read more

  When it comes to Culture Hot Sauce, there are a few rules Chef Dave lives by: 1. Fresh is best. I keep my ingredients whole and natural which means there are no emulsifiers, added preservatives, color stabilizers, or natural flavoring. The “fresh is best” rule for ingredients  Food has been a big passion of mine ever since I was a kid.  Throughout my life, I have gained a lot of knowledge about food which includes the science of how it works, and more importantly the culture and history of food.  My father, being a nutritionist, a roommate be ..read more

***Salsa Verde Enchiladas*** 1 lb Ground Turkey: Saute onions in skillet until softened, add garlic, then remove from skillet. Add turkey and cook until browned all around, add spices to your liking((I typically use any mixture of cumin, paprika, oregano, and black pepper(If you want more greek style add nutmeg and cinnamon but not too much of either as they are strong spices)), mix then add the previously cooked onion and garlic mixture. Once the turkey is cooked all the way through add Culture’s Masala Hot Sauce. Salsa Verde: Roast tomatillos on a bbq or a hot cast iron until a nice char on ..read more