Queen’s Question Time with Fire Dragon Chillies

Today, I am joined by Clint Meyer – the man behind the fantastic New Zealand-based hot sauce brand – Fire Dragon Chillies.

How did you get into hot sauce making?

“Back in 2005, after a few months travelling through South East Asia, I ended up living and working on Vancouver Island in Canada. The place I worked at had some ‘Deadly’ wings on the menu and it seemed like all the bars around the area tried to out do each other with who actually had the hottest wings. Back then, the hottest and most well-known chilli was the habanero. My boss got a big box of orange habaneros and told me to make the hottest sauce I could! And that pretty much is where my hot sauce adventure began!

After that, I travelled with my partner Libby through Central and South America, where we consumed lots of chillies and a heap of hot sauces! I even started to collect my favourite sauces to bring back to NZ at the end of our travels.

Once back in NZ, I started to grow chillies and make my own hot sauces and registered Fire Dragon Chillies as a business in 2008.”

The attention to detail in your products from the names to the ingredients to the labels is evident. Would you say you had a house style? Tell us some of the thinking behind your choices.

“We try to use all organic NZ ingredients and 100% NZ grown chillies in our sauces. We do have a homemade thick style of hot sauces and try to ram in as many chillies as we can while still retaining great flavour and colour! The names just seem to pop up. We try to keep a kiwi theme for most of our sauces and other spicy products!”

Would you talk us through the range of your sauces from mild to hot and tell us which is your best seller?

“Well, we don’t really do mild but our mildest is our Gourmet which is a carrot-based sauce similar to a Marie Sharps one I tried in Guatemala. We sort of put that at a mid-range 5 on the heat scale and then our sauces go all the way up from 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 10+ on the scale!

Our best seller would be our Dragons Fury – our hottest sauce in the range apart from the NZ Chilli Champs limited editions that we make as part of our National Chilli Comps that we have run since 2011.”

Is there one of your sauces/products that you are especially pleased with, or are exceptionally proud to have created?

“There are probably 2 that were/are quite unique. Our Bhuty Black Taniwha was I think the first soy and chilli hot sauce created (to my knowledge), although there are quite a few around now including your Queen Soy which I still need to try!

The other one would be our NZ Green. Libby was saying I should do a wasabi green sauce and as a chilli grower you need a sauce to use up green pods from snapped branches, etc. We use 100% NZ products including real wasabi, horopito and kawakawa which are unique NZ herbs along with lime and lots of green chillies! Our family goes through a lot of NZ Green!”

Name one hot sauce outside of your own brand that you think is brilliant.

“The first one that really impressed me was the Marie Sharps carrot-based sauce I tried in Guatemala. Man, I ate that sauce everyday and I see they are still around today and have a pretty good reputation from what I have seen! As far as NZ sauces go, I would say Al’s Laboratory makes some of the best fermented sauces in NZ.”

Describe the funniest/oddest/most entertaining reaction from someone trying one of your hot sauces.

“It’s always funny when you have a parent and a kid trying them out and the parent gets more burnt from the sauces than their kids do! Lots of people running around looking for milk, ice cream, etc., really do make for some great entertainment!”

Please tell us your most unforgettable experience (good or bad) making your sauces so far.

“Definitely getting Bhuty Black Taniwha in the eye!!! Not sure if the soy sauce made it worse or the choc superhots but that was the worst by far! Half an hour of a spasming eye which I couldn’t open and had to lie down until it eased; it was so intense! And, I have burnt my eyes many times even just sorting my seeds as I don’t wear gloves!

You can ask Johnny Scoville about that one…lol…he couldn’t believe it! I was like ‘Bro, you drank a whole bottle of 9M extract! What are you talking about? TWICE even!'”

Would you also share with us your most unforgettable experience/cherished memory selling your sauces so far?

“Having Johnny Scoville on my stand selling my sauces at our NZ Hot Sauce Festival has to be right up there! Then he competed in our NZ Champs Final later that night and against all odds finished 5th in our Final!”

What would be your dream come true with regard to your brand?

“Not too sure on that one! Hopefully, it stays with my family into the future. Also, having the UK Chilli Queen down in NZ to try and win back the World Belt in 2024 and then becoming our brand ambassador!”

Where can readers find your sauces? Do you have an online shop? Do you also trade at festivals and street markets? Are there any big events coming up?

“firedragonchillies.co.nz is our online site and we ship around the World! We don’t really do many markets at all these days as we live very rural and it’s not worth it with time and petrol costs these days!

Our NZ Hot Sauce Festival is coming up on May 27th, with a pretty big League of Fire World Title Belt Match (real shame you can’t make it this year!) plus the League of Fire Oceania Belt Match as part of the NZ Chilli Eating Champs Final.”

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about yourself or your products that we haven’t covered? Are there any upcoming plans or works in the pipeline?

“Well, next year is the year of the Fire Dragon for the first time in 48 years and so I will make a limited edition sauce for that one! And depending on what happens with all of these Chilli Eating Belts, it will be nice to get a passport again and hit a few chilli festivals and events around the World!

It’s been a long time since we got back from Argentina in late 2005, and haven’t travelled overseas since so that’s definitely on the radar for the near future!”

Check out Fire Dragon Chillies’ website & socials:

• firedragonchillies.co.nz
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• YouTube

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