Our Story

Finding the perfect recipe for this chili verde sauce took Russell Barnes over 20 years and many pots of good chili verde, until he finally found the perfect ingredients of spices and sauce. We have won numerous awards at the Celebrity Food Show/Best Food Event, including Grand Champion, a $10,000.00 award. That picture is us with our big check!

Finding the perfect recipe for this chili verde sauce took Russell Barnes over 20 years and many pots of good chili verde, until he finally found the perfect ingredients of spices and sauce. It started out as a quest to recreate a chili verde burrito he would buy near his job in Glen Avon. He would make large (LARGE) pots of his chili verde sauce and serve it up to family, friends and co-workers at Angelus Block where he words. The recipe has changed so dramatically over the years that none of the ingredients for the Sancho Blanco Chili Verde Sauce is from Russell's orginal recipe. He just kept trying different things and almost everything different improved it.

Russell loves chili verde and always says, "Everybody does red chili and they're all really close to each other. With chili verde, if you go to 100 restaurants, they have 100 chilies which are totally different."

Sancho Blanco Chili Verde Sauce is red, not green. The term chili verde refers to the green chili peppers used to create the mouth-watering concoction. Soon it became the most requested dish at each potluck held at work, and requests from friends wanting to know when he was making another pot. Of course, there was always plenty to go around. People started asking if they could buy the sauce from him, but he would just make his chili and give it away when requested.

We were sitting out on the patio one day and talked of trying to jar my spaghetti sauce. We (Patti and I) have jarred our fresh tomatoes and made jellies in the summertime. Russell wanted to know if we could jar his chili verde sauce. We said we could - we simply needed a recipe to follow. Patti worked diligently alongside Russell in the kitchen. As Russell would put items in the pot, Patti would record the measurement of the ingredients.

Patti assisted in the search for a food trade consultant who in turn helped us start a small business where we could sell the single produce - in mild, regular and hot varieties. We playfully refer to the mild as "sissy" and the hot as "macho".

The name for the business started out as a joke. Everybody called Russell "Sancho Blanco" at work and we named our chili that as a joke. In order to "brand" our name and sell our sauce, we started competing in the International Chili Society Chili Cook Offs. We soon started winning awards for "Peoples Choice" giving out samples for our chili verde. We started selling several cases at each cook off and each bottle came with our contact information. We have repeat customers who now buy by the case so they will always have some on hand.

We have collected recipes from our loyal base of customers and compiled a recipe booklet showing different ways to use the sauce besides chili verde. We have won numerous awards at the Celebrity Food Show/Best Food Event, including Grand Champion, a $10,000.00 award!