The sweetest onions make the best hot sauce
I came up with the idea of smoking onions in the summer of 2016, when my husband and I were testing out our new smoker with the "will it smoke" game. Pro-tip: Smoked bananas are ... not good. Smoked walla-walla onions, on the other hand, are just bliss. Walla-walla onions have a high sugar content that caramelizes in our smoker, creating a well balanced, robust and versatile sauce.
Our senator, Bernie Sanders, was running for president. We heard the term "Feel the Bern" for the first time and knew that we had to make a hot sauce to donate to his campaign (although we donated from our personal funds because Bernie doesn't take donations from businesses). Smoked onions created a nice double meaning of the word "burn" so we made this simple red sauce with just jalapenos, smoked onions, vinegar and salt.
Feel the Bern started as a fun summer project, but had developed such a following by the time Bernie's campaign was over that we re-launched it as Maple Wood Smoked Onion. In 2018 we got the call that it had been chosen for Season 7 of Hot Ones (our first of three - so far - Hot Ones runs). And it has been our top seller ever since. If I could eat only one hot sauce for the rest of my life, this would be the one.
