Hot Sauces

Is Tabasco your idea of hot sauce? Tabasco is a good starting point. I love the Chipotle flavor and I have a soft spot for the simply old original red Tabasco. But once you become a real chili head, you find that only a serious burn will make you smile. The first really hot sauces that I ever found were Inner Beauty and Dave's Insanity Sauce. Inner Beauty was a Jamaican kind of hot sauce, made with Scotch Bonnet, the Caribbean version of the Habanero Chili Pepper. This is some seriously hot sauce and I love the fact that it came in a flask and had a screaming mask on the label.

Dave's Insanity Sauce has turned it’s original hot sauce into a hot sauce empire. Dave’s has several kinds of hot sauce that are even hotter than the first one and all kinds of spices and other things with the Insanity brand on them. This is a real hot sauce that is not to be taken lightly.

Blair’s Death Sauce seems to be the world champ of hot sauces at the moment, with something like two million Scoville units. That’s hot.

There are now hundreds of hot sauces and new ones hitting the scene all the time. The names now sell the sauce more what is in the bottle: Hot Bitch on The Beach, Hot Buns on The Beach, A-Bomb, Slap Yo Mama Sauce, Elvis Hot Sauce, Vampfire Sauce, and too many other silly names to list them all. There are also what might be called classic hot sauces, Melinda's, Gold's, Emerila's, Prudon's, and just about anyone else that has a recognized name and is in any way associated with food.

Tabasco itself has several flavors of sauce now, from the Original Red to the Fiery Habenaro and very Green Jalapeno. Chipoletle is my favorite, as it is the most like a designer hot sauce and the least like Tabasco. I love Tabasco, but I don't love it on everything.

Almost any Mexican, Tex-Mex or Seafood will be improved with a dash or two of hot sauce. For me the hotter, the better, is usually the rule. But even I don't like the chemical burn of some of the Uber Sauces. I just want it to taste hot, not actually do physical damage. But it is that whole Endorphin thing that makes fiery foods so popular. Break out in a sweat and fan your mouth and soon enough you feel pretty damned good. Of course, eating itself is a very good feeling. So eating something very hot is wonderful.

On the other end of the spectrum from the fiery sauces, are the mild ones. These sauces are not truly hot, but they can be very flavorful. I love the burn, but I also love a lot of the clear sauces that just have tabasco peppers floating around in them.

There are hot pepper eating contests, but I am not really into that kind of pain. They can be fun to watch though and there are often a lot of hot sauces, salsa and jarred fiery concoctions of one kind or another at these events. That makes them worth going to, even if you don't want to try and set a world record.

I like hot sauce on all kinds of foods, not just Mexican. Habenaro hot sauce is wonderful in Boston Baked Beans. Just add some of Carr's Pepper Water Crackers and it is a little slice of heaven here on earth. Clams are good with a splash of Tabasco or any of the very vinegary sauces. French Fries are best when soaked in a hot sauce, any really, and then covered with a good coarse salt and fresh cracked pepper.

Of course, if you want to make your own sauce and have a stab at the never ending hot sauce market, first come up with a cute name. Most of the ones with Pain and Fire have been used, but there is always room for one more. To make a good real hot sauce, you need some fresh, or fairly fresh hot chili peppers. I prefer to stick with one kind of chili pepper per sauce, mixing them up just makes a kind of mottled mess. A standard recipe for an all-purpose sauce:

Six Habenareos-Or whatever hot peppers light up your life. Sliced thinly.

One Onion-chopped coarsely.

One bottle of Vinegar-I like Apple Cider Vinegar Myself

One Carrot-chopped finely.

Juice 1 lime.

A large sauce pan, a blender, a strainer, a funnel, and some clean sterilized bottles to put the finished product in. .

Heat the vinegar and lime juice, add the chopped onion and diced carrot. Heat until it boils and then lower the temp to low. Let it simmer until the carrots are soft. Pour into a blender, add Habenareos and puree until smooth. Strain the result and pour into the bottles using a large funnel.

It is fun to use Photoshop or Illustrator and a good printer to make some shiny labels for your little bottles. Your name is flames is always a good place to start.

Some recipes call for cooking the Habaneros at the same as the sauce, but I’d advice against that. The fumes from cooking chilies have a teargas like effect that is no fun at all.