Hi, welcome to Wanke's Yankee Hot Pepper Products.  My name is David, my friends call me Chile, feel free to do the same. I have been a professional chef for over four decades. Back in the early 1990's at the restaurant I was working at, I was introduced to true, authentic Mexican cuisine, it was love at first bite!

 I started playing (chefs play with food when we get bored) with chile peppers, making salsa's, hot sauces, mole's etc. for the restaurant. I even started growing some at home, you know ,the familiar ones, Jalapenos, Habeneros, Hungarian wax, Italian cherry etc.  Well, that playing turned into a passion. My tolerance for heat has grown tremendously! Today I have over 300 square feet of growing space, I cultivate approximately twenty varieties each year. I don't grow the familiar any more, I look for exotic, new, ultra hot chiles.   

 While at the restaurant the owner bought me a smoker to play with (did I mention, we like to play?). I started off with smoking ribs( when I took over the kitchen they were boiling them, UGH!)  That progressed into Canadian bacon, Carne Seca, smoking beans, anything I could get my hands on. Another passion arose. Between the ribs used, the rubs I made, the BBQ sauces concocted, the woods used, I didn't duplicate a single rib for over a year for our  Friday night “Rib Fest”.  

 Then in the mid 2000's I took over the kitchen in a nearby town as Chef/ Pitmaster we were doing over 200 racks on a Friday night I was in heaven!     I will do anything with chiles such as cookies, brittles, gummies, fruit leathers,  infused horseradish, salad dressings, Bloody Mary mixes and have even brewed coffee with Ancho chiles. Yup a true fanatic!  

 So today I have a steady line of hot sauces (award winning Jalapeno), the spring of 2016 saw the birth of my BBQ sauce line. Not much later I came out with my rubs, and assortment of spicy jams. I am constantly in R & D of .So stay tuned for more spicy foods from Chile in the near future. 

  Thanks for taking the time to read this, hope I haven't bored you, but if you're a chile head you weren't. 

 Sincerely, 

Chile  

 (David W. Wanke)