On fire: Salem hot sauce company Hoss Soss wins back-to-back awards - Statesman Journal
Local hot sauce company Hoss Soss, if you'll pardon the pun, has been on fire lately: winning back-to-back awards.
Hoss Soss, owned and run by Matt and Catharine Kuerbis in Salem, has been making hot sauces since 2016. Since then, they've won a few awards, but their latest wins are two awards from the 2022 Scovie Awards and one from the 2021 International Flavor Awards.
The Scovie Awards is held as a part of the National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show. Matt and Catharine have worked the Fiery Food show with their hot sauces for the last two shows, and will be at the 2022 show. The award is named after Wilbur Scoville, who invented the Scoville scale, which is the scale used to rate the spiciness of peppers.
This year was the first time Hoss Soss entered the Scovie Awards, and they won two awards for their Nashville red jalapeno sauce. They won third place for both the "Louisiana-style" and "unique-mild/medium" categories.
"The Nashville hot chicken is southern-style hot sauce with vinegar, brown sugar, black pepper and red jalapenos," Matt said. "It's perfect for creating Nashville hot chicken."
Their award from the International Flavor Award, or more fondly known as "the Flave Awards" is specifically for small- to medium-sized businesses to showcase their products. This year, Hoss Soss won third in the fruit hot sauce category for their Pineapple Habanero sauce.
Hoss Soss had previously entered the International Flave awards and won in 2019 for third place in wing sauce with their Bibimbap sauce. Then in 2020 they got second place in Asian hot sauce with Bibimbap sauce and third place in Asian BBQ sauce with their Tamarind habanero sauce.
"The only (sauce) that hasn't won is our Guajillo," Matt said. "All of our awards are mostly third, we got a second place once, but that first place is still elusive — maybe in 2022, we'll finally win."
The company's motto, "heat you can handle," is to account for how their sauces are on the milder side, and not "meant to burn your mouth off," Catharine said. Their sauces are able to be a traditional hot sauce, but also as marinade, added into recipes and more, which sometimes can't be done with too hot of a hot sauce. Matt started off as a chef and then decided he wanted to make a hot sauce he could use on its own and within his cooking which inspired Hoss Soss.
Soss Roots
Hot sauce was something Matt started for fun as he was a chef working music festivals in Costa Rica.
"I would make sauces and tape masking tape on them and write, 'Hoss sauce' and then serve them," Matt said. "Hoss" was a nickname that Matt picked up while working the kitchens at Burning Man, which was just one of many places that he worked, including at Le Cordon Bleu in Portland as executive chef (before the institute closed in 2017).
"We then thought we could bottle the sauces and make some money doing it," Matt said. "It was an easy transition from Hoss Sauce to Hoss Soss, because I'm still a chef."
Hoss Soss is influenced by the "flavors of the world" and be sauces that deliver "complex flavors," since they can be used standalone and within recipes.
A portion of proceeds go toward the Willamette Humane Society, something they originally chose to do once in 2017, but have continued to this day.
The 2022 National Fiery Foods and Barbecue Show, which Hoss Soss will be at, takes place March 4 through 6 at the Sandia Resort and Casino. For folks who want to try their sauces, you can find them at the Salem Holiday Market at the Oregon State Fairgrounds the second weekend of December. Otherwise, check out their Facebook page or website for products and their holiday specials.
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