By her reckoning, Deb Vogt of Georgetown has entered the Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce contest every year since the beginning, 12 years ago. Although she’s garnered a few honorable mentions, she hasn’t quite managed to snag a trophy yet. Does she find the series of near misses discouraging? Seemingly, not in the least. She waxes enthusiastically about the good time she has each year. “I enter the contest for fun, and I enjoy getting the feedback on my hot sauce. But that’s not the whole deal and I don’t lose any sleep over whether I win or not. I always buy ristras, I get into the music, and you sure can’t beat this event for unusual crowd-watching. And besides, you get a cool T-shirt.”
When asked if she changed her recipe from year to year, Vogt said firmly, “Nope. This is my signature dish. I like it, my friends like it, and I keep hoping that one of these years, the judges are going to go for it, too.”
For the past several years, Vogt has entered two variations of her sauce: “hot and hotter.” In 1997, both versions earned honorable mentions. She admits that the moment of turning in her entry to the judges is the best part of contest, the pinnacle of anticipation.
Vogt first got into hot sauce when her family moved to New Mexico when she was a teenager. The love affair didn’t happen gradually, either. “From the first taste, I knew I was a total Mexican food junkie. I just loved the hot sauce, and I still do. I like to think I can cook, and I work on learning new things all the time. Mexican food is my specialty.”
Vogt has lived in the Austin area since 1978; until recently, she worked as a project manager for Dell Computer. Currently, she’s taking some time off to, as she puts it, “seek out new and unusual ways to have F-U-N!”
When I asked Vogt if she were entering her salsa in this year’s contest, she answered, “Well, of course!” in a shocked tone, as if any other course of action were quite unthinkable.
You go, girl. There’s more than one way of being a hot sauce queen; demonstrating such tenacity, spirit, and confidence seems like a winning combination to me. — MM Pack
This article appears in August 23 • 2002.
