Photo by Lucie Monk Carter
This past year saw Jordan Ramirez get engaged, get married, create his own hot sauce, start a supper club series, leave his job as a Whole Foods team leader, learn the butchering trade to work at the new Iverstine Farms Butcher shop, and buy a house. By Thanksgiving, he’ll be a first-time father. He describes this, succinctly, as “a whirlwind.” For his commercial endeavors, Ramirez has chosen the brand name “Southern Wild,” encompassing the hot sauce and other products he expects to create as well as the supper club series hosted each month at Slash Creative on Government Street. “Southern Wild” can apply to anything, and for the limitless Ramirez, that’s the whole point.
We sat down recently to talk about his cooking, his butchering, and his hope to invest back in Baton Rouge. Find excerpts below.
On his hot sauce
It’s a vinegarless hot sauce. Most have a vinegar, or they’re fermented. Mine’s olive oil based. It’s simple: peppers, vegetables, olive oil, and salt. It’s the process of making it that’s unique.
With a vinegar-based sauce, you have that bite up front, with your spice; and it goes away from there. Since this is olive-oil based and has a creamier texture, it’s a slow build. The flavor stays longer. You get the flavor of the vegetables, the saltiness, the olive oil; and it stays with you. It’s a slow-building heat, but it’s not overpowering. It’s not a punch in the face.
On the “Southern Wild” brand
I didn’t just want to do hot sauce; I wanted to do other things—like pop-up dinners. I thought I’d have pop-up dinners, and I wanted to make other products. I needed a primo brand that’s an umbrella of everything. Then “Southern Wild” came along. I thought, that’s just what I’ll call everything! Southern Wild Foods is the brand.
It’s just whatever I wanna do. I’ve been into pickling things lately. I found this really cool vinegar. I have this habit of going to Vinh Phat or going to random places and finding crazy things I’ve never tasted. Unique things. So I found this vinegar—I don’t wanna say what kind!—and I ended up using it to make pickles. I started spicing it and pickling and realized, Holy crap, this is good! I had people taste it. They were like, “What’d you make it out of?” It’s just not a traditional vinegar.
[You might like Food Flight!: Becoming familiar with the international groceries of Baton Rouge.]
On working with the LSU incubator
I had no clue how to even approach bottling or selling, then somebody told me about the LSU AgCenter incubator. I had a meeting with them about my product, and it’s been kind of a year of getting everything in line. They do all the nutritional testing, and they give you a list: You need to get a business license, you need to set up a tax ID and an LLC, you have to brand your product. I had to tell them step by step how I made it, the ingredients. So they were able to give me a nutritional panel, like a legit nutritional panel. They did all that for me, which is really cool because putting all that together on your own isn’t easy.
On the food he cooks
I always have these ideas—like I said, I go to Vinh Phat and just buy random things to try out—so I had this idea to do an Indian-spiced boudin [for the first Southern Wild Supper Club]. You know, biryani, that Indian rice dish? I thought, let’s stuff that in a boudin. And it was freakin’ awesome! I used traditional liver and pork, but I made a spice base and ended up using basmati rice. It’s just good, especially for a boudin. Squash blossoms were fresh at the market. I knew Allison from Fullness Organic [Fullness Farm] because she worked for me at Whole Foods. I asked her, “What do y’all have right now that’s cool?” She said, “We have squash blossoms!” So I did goat cheese and ricotta stuffed squash blossoms. And the boudin had Southern Wild sauce.
I have a handful of hot sauces I wanna make too. I was in Amsterdam the New Year’s before last. Have you ever had stroopwafels, those little caramel cookies? I was like, these are delicious. What if we took these and stuffed them with candied bacon? So I got home, got on Amazon, and bought a stroopwafel maker. I made bacon-stuffed stroopwafels.
On his new role as the Iverstine butcher
My challenge has been to find uses for everything. If we’re throwing stuff away, it needs to be absolutely [because] we cannot use this for anything. Using the fat for something, using the bones, making stock. I got some bones the other day, cleaned them, and made succulent planters out of them.
We’ll have pigs, cows, sheep, turkey, and chicken. We plan to get in hogs and beef once a week and break those down for the week. We actually process chickens at the farm in Kentwood and have fresh chickens twice a week.
People forget, if you eat chickens from a grocery store. You eat chickens that have been processed, frozen, boxed, shipped, exposed to all these elements. We process chickens Friday at the farm and have them fresh on Saturday to sell at the market. If you cook one of those chickens—we have older people come up and say, “This is like the chicken I used to eat when I was growing up.” Once you taste it, you realize this is what chickens are supposed to taste like. It’s good chicken.
On investing back in Baton Rouge
I’ve always talked with my wife about investing back in Baton Rouge. I almost moved to Austin six years ago, before I met her. I’ve been in Baton Rouge ten years; it’s time to go. But I met her, and she owns a business here. She owns Mod Salon. I met her, we started dating, and I thought, I’ll stick around a little bit. Well, if I’m going to stick around, I gotta do something else. I wanna own my own business. One of my wife’s clients told her about the incubator. She’s pushed me along the way. She understands the opening-the-business aspect of it. She showed me the things I needed to do that maybe she didn’t do right the first time. She’s helped a lot behind the scenes.
As slow as it’s taking us, Baton Rouge is starting to grow. So it’s cool, the aspect of being part of a scene that could potentially happen.
Iverstine Butcher will open at 4765 Perkins Road this fall. Follow along with Ramirez' projects at southernwildfoods.com or iverstinebutcher.com.
