Want to add a little bit of spice to your next catered event? Then Jason Wyrick is your “go-to” guy. Jason founded Devil Spice, a Phoenix-based catering company, in 2004 and says, “Too many people have been served bad vegetarian food over the years, and I know that has certainly turned a lot of people away from being vegetarian. Well, Devil Spice is dedicated to changing that by providing you with top-notch vegetarian meals!” Doing just that, Jason not only provides gourmet vegetarian cuisine for every type of catered affair but also offers his services as a personal chef and teaches cooking classes. Business is hot, and so are the zesty vegan roasted red-pepper chili and dark, spicy salsas that Jason specializes in and sells online. His vegetarian chili is so good that it was even featured at PETA’s recent star-studded 25th Anniversary Gala and Humanitarian Awards Show in Hollywood. Jason prides himself on “creating dishes that wow even the most ardent meat-eater.” Some of his signature dishes include Mango-Chipotle Soup, Barbecue Sandwiches, and Pumpkin Risotto.

Chef Spotlight:
Jason Wyrick

Chef: Jason Wyrick

Age: 32

Restaurant or company: Devil Spice Inc.

Do you have companion animals? If so, can you describe them?
I have four very sweet (usually) kitties. Tiger is a big fat orange cat who will eat anything and likes to play fetch with bottle caps when he’s not being lazy. “The Kitty,” originally named Maggie (but as the years passed, I kept calling her “Kitty,” so that’s the name to which she learned to respond), is a little gray Maine coon who likes to curl up on my lap. Oradi, also affectionately referred to as “Neuradi,” is a long gray-and-white cat with a lot of spunk. Last, there’s Mystic, an all-black cat (save for the white patch on her tummy), who likes to be petted but will tell you very emphatically when she is done.

How long have you been a chef?
About a year and a half.

What type of cuisine do you focus on?
While I don’t have any particular focus, I’m good at creating dishes that wow even the most ardent meat-eater, and I’m definitely influenced by the Southwest, as that’s where I grew up.

Do you have a specialty?
I make a great vegan roasted red-pepper chili and several dark salsas of varying spiciness.

What are the most important elements in cooking great vegetarian cuisine?
I think not only do you have to have the right mix of flavors, but you also have to have good timing. There are too many times [when] I’ve seen great ingredients used together, but the textures were bland or just simply wrong, and a lot of that is due to bad timing. Good vegetarian food is so tasty that if one pays attention to those two elements, it’s hard to go wrong.

What is the key to getting meat-eaters to enjoy vegetarian food?
I think there are three types of meat-eaters. The first ones are the ones who will appreciate a good meat-substitute dish. For those people, you have to provide something with a lot of substance and a lot of strong flavor, but nothing too off-the-wall. The second type eschews meat substitutes because they don’t taste like the real thing. The key to getting these types of people to enjoy vegetarian food is to make a dish that they could still consider a main course, such as pasta with portobellos. Again, it helps to have bold flavors and a lot of substance. The third type is those who have decided they will not like it because it doesn’t have meat. The best way to get them to come around and enjoy vegetarian cuisine is for them to hear some of their other more open-minded meat-eating friends and family enjoying the food you fix.

What, in your opinion, does the future of plant-based cuisine hold?
In the U.S., I think we’ll find ourselves treating, through diet, more and more people with the diseases of affluence, like heart disease and, particularly, diabetes. I’ve found that as I talk with people about these diseases and the role [that] diet plays in them, they are much more amenable to exploring plant-based cuisine than I found people to be when I first became vegetarian nine years ago.

Do you have a favorite cooking method?
I strive to make vegetarian cooking accessible and [to] get people involved in the process, so whenever I teach a class, I get the students to help me. One of the easiest things to teach them and have them do right away is the sauté-and-deglaze technique. It’s easily duplicated, easily retained, and when they do it, they get so thrilled accomplishing the new “gourmet” technique that they just learned. Seeing that joy come from a method as simple as a sauté-and-deglaze makes that one of my favorite techniques.

Where did you train to become a chef?
I have no formal culinary training. I’ve learned through experimentation, by watching other highly skilled chefs, by taking private classes, and by trusting my instincts. In some ways, I feel very fortunate that I learned this way, because I had total control over my culinary education and did not have to learn by cooking meat.

What are your favorite ingredients to work with?
Chilies! They’re so versatile. You’ve got mild chilies, hot chilies, and make-your-mouth-a-fiery-inferno chilies. You can stuff them, grill them, sauté them, roast them, make them into sauces, use them in desserts, use them as accents, use them as condiments, and even use them as the focus of the dish. You can use them fresh, dry them, smoke them, and turn them into chili powders. Plus, they’re found all over the world, so there is a plethora of different flavors of chilies available. I particularly like to use several types of chilies in a sauce to give it an intriguing, complex flavor.

In your opinion, what vegetarian dish or type of food is most frequently poorly prepared and why?
Tofu. There are a lot of wonderful dishes that can be done with tofu, like making a chocolate mousse (yum!). However, it’s often just thrown into a dish and cooked with everything else without regard until it’s a white mass of tastelessness.

If you were stranded on a deserted island and could only eat one kind of ethnic food, what would it be?
Ethiopian. Not only is it full of flavor, it’s full of good nutrition! Plus, I wouldn’t need a spoon or fork. :)

Do vegetarian restaurants face any special obstacles that meat-based restaurants don’t have to face?
Vegetarian restaurants and businesses have a problem in that vegetarian cuisine is still somewhat stigmatized, so their product is a stigmatized food. However, I think serving only vegetarian food gives a business instant marketing to [its] town’s vegetarian community, and that provides customers for the business. I’ve even seen bad vegetarian restaurants flourish because people would go there simply because it was a vegetarian restaurant. The trick, then, is to get the word out to the vegetarian community that the business exists.

Can you give us one great cooking tip for aspiring vegetarian chefs?
There are very few of us (compared to nonvegetarian chefs), yet there is a large demand for us, and that gives a vegetarian chef instant value. Use that value to your advantage. Stay skilled and creative, and you’ll have a thriving career.

What are some ingredients that you recommend vegetarians and vegans have in their kitchens to cook with?
Here is a list of the very basics that I like to keep around: olive and sesame oils, a block of tofu, jasmine rice, spices and herbs (salt, pepper, cayenne pepper, cumin, basil, rosemary, oregano, and paprika), pasta, a can of either garbanzo beans or kidney beans, onions, and a small supply of in-season, fresh produce (enough to make about two days’ worth of meals). I also recommend keeping tortillas or pita bread handy, and I always keep a couple of tomatoes around. For a drink, I try to always have some sort of tea available and sweet agave nectar.

Are there any newer vegetarian products on the market that you are particularly fond of?
While Follow Your Heart’s “cheeses” aren’t exactly new, they’re new to the Phoenix area, and I was very, very happy to see them show up on the store shelves here. They’re great for showing vegetarians that it’s easy to go vegan. I’m particularly fond of the jack “cheese.”

Have you had any noteworthy comments from or experiences with diners?
I catered my first party last year, and it was a nerve-racking experience, as the guest list kept growing far beyond my comfort zone up to the day of the event. After a day of preparing meals, which included a garlic soup, a salad, my roasted red-pepper chili in a bread bowl, and almond-butter apple boats, dinner was finally served, and the host brought me out afterward. It was twilight, and the yard where the dinner took place was dimly lit with soft, white candles. After the host introduced me, everyone started applauding loudly. It was the first time that had ever happened to me. When the party was over, I had people begging me for recipes, and I even had job offers from a few local restaurants because of it. That’s the most moving experience I’ve had as a chef.

Choose one area to give some specialty tips for:

• How best to prepare tofu:

I love using tofu in nontraditional ways, and my favorite way to use it is to make desserts. Here’s a way to use it to make an easy-to-prepare chocolate mousse:

Take one cup of sweetened vegan chocolate chips and put them in a metal bowl. Heat up 1/3 cup of soy creamer, and pour it over the chips, quickly stirring until you have a ganache (that’s a chocolate sauce). Add in a cup of firm, silken tofu, and blend until it is nice and smooth. If you have a hand-held blender, you can fluff up the mousse by oscillating it up and down, which adds air to the chocolate. Once you are done with that, it should have the texture of a pudding, but after an hour of refrigeration, it will have the texture of a mousse. Remember, the more air you can add to it, the more mousse-like it will be. Top your mousse with a cherry and some slivered almonds for an extra flare.

The great thing about this tofu technique is that you can also use it to make desserts like flan and “crème” brûlée.

• Mango-Chipotle Soup

• Barbecue Sandwiches

• Pumpkin Risotto > click to view image

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