Feelin’ Hot Hot Hot Portland woman carries her fiery disposition over into her line of chili-based sauces

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If you’re looking for Hot Love, Firegirl.com has it. Ditto for Pleasure and Pain XXX, Jump Up and Kiss Me, and Pain Is Good.

And no, this isn’t some porn site.

It’s the brainchild of Mary Going, self-proclaimed chili-head and creator of one of the leading hot-sauce sites on the Internet. What started as a hobby more than 10 years ago has turned into a full-time business for Going, who recently moved her base of operations from a tiny office in Portland to a suite in a former shoe factory in Westbrook.

“I’m really excited for people to be able to come in here and see how they interact with the sauces,” Going said as she looked around the room.

The walls are painted a glowing melon shade called, appropriately enough, Fired-Shrimp Orange. On one side, thousands of small bottles line tall shelves, containing brightly colored potions that range from mild to insanely hot. Among these are Going’s own concoctions: the Psycho Bitch line, which she bills as “PMS in a bottle,” along with sauces produced by hundreds of other companies.

“The fiery-foods industry is very macho and I wanted to come up with something strong and feminist,” Going said.

Each Psycho Bitch bottle is emblazoned with a portrait of Firegirl, a jacked, butt-kicking superhero who fights injustice (and dull food), whenever need be. She’s a cross between Wonder Woman and Popeye, except Firegirl guzzles a bottle of hot sauce, rather than a can of spinach, before coming to the rescue. Though Firegirl isn’t exactly Going’s alter ego, the inspiration for the character comes from her own experience.

“In the real story there wasn’t any hot sauce,” she said, laughing.

When Going first moved to Maine, she worked the night shift at a mid-Maine truck stop that could get a little raucous when the bars closed. One night, tips started disappearing from tables, and Going overheard a man telling his friend about it. Something came over her. She knew she had to do something – anything – to stop it. So she marched over to their table and dumped a pitcher full of ice water on his lap.

“I told him if he ever did it again it would be hot coffee,” she said.

He didn’t do it again.

Going’s always had a fiery disposition, but her taste for hot foods came late. She grew up in South Carolina in a household where the cooking was anything but spicy.

“Our diet was very bland,” she said. “I had never eaten anything hot.”

That is, until she took a road trip to New Mexico in 1991 and tried some jalapeno jam. She returned and spent the whole summer trying to re-create the flavor, but it was hard. She had moved to Maine, and back then, you couldn’t just walk into the local grocery store and buy jalapenos. You were lucky if you found anything other than green bell peppers.

“I had to start with a seed to get the jalapeno jam I wanted,” she said.

While working as a software developer in the mid-’90s, Going started dabbling in Web design and created a site full of chili pepper growing techniques and facts. Other fiery-food enthusiasts asked her to design their sites and hot-sauce makers sent Going samples so she’d mention them on her site.

She didn’t know much about sauces then, but she learned quickly. And the niche market she initially catered to has grown in the past five years.

“I see more and more people trying hot sauce and getting excited about it,” Going said. “I think people really are experimenting. The Internet is a huge factor in that. In the last 10 years, hot sauce and other ethnic or interesting foods have grown in popularity.”

She now sells more than 800 sauces, salsas and spice blends, and she knows which flavors complement each other. Some taste good in meatloaf. Mango- and pineapple-based sauces taste great on – yes – ice cream. Soy-based sauces work best with rice or Asian dishes, while a cayenne-based sauce may be better with chili. Going has even found a way to incorporate hot sauce into the chocolate shakes that the latest diet she’s on, Body for Life, requires.

“Chocolate and hot go together very well,” she said.

And cream cheese is the equivalent of jeans for hot sauces: It goes with everything.

“Bagels and cream cheese should not be eaten without hot sauce,” Going said. “Milk-based products cut the heat. A good way to taste hot sauce is with cream cheese.”

While novices may think all hot sauces taste like Tabasco, there are many variations in flavor. Some have a fruit base, others are simple mixes of peppers and vinegar. Green chilies taste different than red, jalapenos taste different than habaneros. Some sauces get their flavor chiefly from the pepper, while others rely on a mix of spices, garlic, mustard or some other additive.

The variations aren’t restricted to flavor, either. Each sauce has a different level of heat, measured in Scoville units. For example, a jalapeno pepper registers at 5,000 Scoville units. Blair’s 3 a.m., the hottest of the food additives that Firegirl sells, registers somewhere between 1 million and 2 million Scovilles. It’s called a food additive because it’s a blend of peppers and extracts and it’s too hot to be called a hot sauce. It comes with a disclaimer, because the source of the heat, a chemical compound called capsaicin, is an irritant.

However, most hot sauces are harmless, even beneficial.

“I would say use caution with the extracts,” said Marcia Kyle, a registered dietitian and media representative for the Maine Dietetic Association. “If you’re just looking at a blend of spices and vegetables there shouldn’t be a problem.”

Kyle says one of the chief benefits in hot sauces or other pepper-based products is the phytochemicals they contain, which have cancer-fighting capabilities. They also work as antihistamines, which is why people often say hot sauces “clear out their sinuses.” When it’s hot outside, they cause you to sweat, using the heat to cool you down. And they’re a guilt-free condiment for dieters.

“I look at it as a nice way to spice up food if someone’s eating a low-fat diet,” Kyle said.

It’s no wonder one of Going’s favorite hot sauces is called Alternative Medicine. But she also favors 99 Percent, Mountain Man Roasted Garlic and Corn Chipotle Sauce, and her own Psycho Bitch Chipotle.

“They range in flavor so that you really can have many favorites,” Going said.

Going’s partner, Martha Rynberg, likes “whatever is in the refrigerator” in their Portland home. But their 2-year-old daughter, Olivia, has a clear favorite.

“Highway to Jalapeno is her hot sauce,” Going said.

A 2-year-old eating hot sauce? Sure. Going and Rynberg taught Olivia how to taste the sauces so she knows what’s too hot. But Going’s fiery tastes seem to be rubbing off on her daughter.

“She can take it spicier than some of our friends can.”

For recipes, chili facts or sauces, visit www.firegirl.com or stop by Firegirl’s new retail store in the former Dana Warp Mill on Lincoln Street in Westbrook.