Chef Ali Shirazi loves testing his limits daily at Original Juan
The concoctions arrive in jelly jars and glass bottles — barbecue sauces and brining mixtures that have been in the family for generations. The recipes are handwritten, typed or never put down to memory at all. Still, each comes with the same plea. You are the first to see this outside of the family. Please help me bring this to market.
Chef Ali Shirazi runs the test kitchen for Original Juan, the specialty-foods manufacturer at 111 Southwest Boulevard, where he has developed thousands of products over the past three years.
“I always say, ‘Yes, I can do that.’ It just sometimes takes a few tries,” Shirazi says.
In his defense, it’s not that easy to make harvest apple barbecue sauce, salsa that rings in at over 1 million Scoville Units (the scale to determine whether something will incinerate your tongue), and hot sauce from pumpkin seeds.
