Hot Pepper Sauces

HOT PEPper SAUCes

A list of hot things to be found sometimes in the Grobius kitchen

[This is hard to read on the background, but that is intentional -- if you like hot sauces that much, you should make the effort to try]

  • TABASCO
    • The classic Louisiana hot sauce (the green version doesn't add much to the original, unfortunately, should have been better)* [Tabasco Web Site]
  • TRAPPEY'S RED DEVIL
    • Standard stuff, but nice and cheap (also Vitarroz, et al., your 89c stuff)
  • TRAPPEY'S INDI-PEP
    • Not bad for an American version of a West-Indian hot sauce
  • OLD WINDMILL
    • Now this is the real stuff (from Barbados); it's yellow and will blow your head off
  • THE "S" BEND
    • Barbadian, like Old Windmill; made from Scotch Bonnet peppers and hot as hell
  • SUPERIOR "S" PEPPER SAUCE
    • Trinidadian; try a dab--"oh, this tastes kind of sweet....ah....aaargh"
  • GOYA (Salsa Picante, Hot Pickled Peppers, etc.)
    • A whole line of products that are pretty good to use in Hopping John, etc.
  • PURE HELL
    • From Colorado, and it really is Pure Hell! A little dab'll do ya!
  • TryMe's CAJUN SUNSHINE, TIGER SAUCE, HABANERO PEPPER SAUCE
    • A nice little trio from New Orleans; try one for variety [Habenero peppers are nice and hot but have an odd undertaste--Scotch Bonnets are supposedly better]
  • OSO HOT (from New Mexico)
    • Truly hot, but has that slightly unpleasant Habanero aftertaste; mix into a dish with lots of rice and it's delightful (thanks, Kirsten)
  • CHOLULA (Mexican)
    • Fairly hot; put it on Tacos (stay ethnic)
  • SYLVIA'S HOT SAUCE
    • From Harlem; obviously to be used with Soul Food (contains vegetable stabilizers, whatever that means)
  • TIPAROS FISH SAUCE
    • From Thailand; technically not a hot sauce, but one can't do without it; this stuff is so salty (and also smells of rancid fish) that your eyes will tear--classic definition of what a hot sauce should do
  • COLEMAN'S vs. S&B ORIENTAL MUSTARD Powders
    • Make your own, depending on what it's to be used with; much better than anything in tubes or jars [Coleman's is unmatched for real meat dishes like roast beef]
  • WASABI, HIME'S JAPANESE HORSERADISH, etc. (also Powders)
    • Mix with water and serve with fish; the runnier the mixture, the better; foulest sashimi in the world will taste good with this, you'll be sweating from the eyelids so hard that you won't notice
  • INDONESIAN PIRATE'S PASTE
    • Courtesy of the late David Ham; unfortunately, I've lost the recipe (you have to make this from raw ingredients)--this stuff is HOT! and foul-smelling, like a kind of rotten fish, garlic, brie, and red pepper mix--better by far than Marmite
  • HOMEMADE CURRY SAUCES
    • Get the separate ingredients in Little India in NYC; make it as hot as you like for Vindaloos, etc. Couldn't tell you what to use, just put in lots of coriander
  • EDEN HOT PEPPER SESAME OIL
    • You need this, and Chili Oil, and fermented Soy Sauce, and Thai Peanut Sauce, and all those other things, for any Oriental cooking
  • DYNASTY (& Other Brands)
    • Chili, Garlic, Plum, Szechuan, etc. pastes; ditto
  • PICKAPEPPA (Jamaica)
    • This is actually a steak sauce, and that's another topic entirely (Worcester vs HP vs A1 vs Daddy's vs West Point, etc.), but every kitchen needs steak sauce
  • ADAM'S RANCH GARLIC-STUFFED OLIVES
    • What is this doing here? Except in a few circumstances, I hate olives. This is one of the exceptions. Best eaten out of the jar, but you could chop them up and add them to a hot-sauce meal
  • MISCELLANEOUS:
    • (This is getting out of hand as friends and acquaintances dump more and more hot sauces on me, so I will just list a few that had the requisite arousal of the taste buds and the appropriate burning sensation in the throat and perhaps unfortunate after-effects the next day when it becomes time to do one's business)
      • Melinda's XXXXtra Reserve (Vintage 1996)-- Habanero sauce
      • Shur Fine Louisiana Hot Sauce-- Haven't even tried this yet
      • Watkins Sauce Chaud aux Poivrons Calypso Hot Pepper Sauce-- Say what? This is a sweet-tasting pepper sauce with a good kick
      • Watkins Jalapeno-- A puke green version of the classic, but very salty
      • Daytona Bike Week Hot Sauce-- Hell, we were in the area last Fall; it's not bad
      • Marie Sharp's Habanero Pepper Sauce-- From Belize, and contains crushed carrots -- absolutely fantastic, but you really need an iron throat for this (and watch out: if you get a piece of carrot stuck between your teeth, you will be tasting this for days); this one ranks right up with Old Windmill for hotness (belongs up in the main list, but I'm still writhing from the Web Page quality assurance test and don't feel up to moving it at this time, can hardly breathe at the moment)
      • Inner Beauty 'Real Hot Sauce'-- A steak sauce of a sort, appallingly hot [ingredients: mustard, Scotch bonnet peppers, pineapple juice, papaya puree, cider vinegar, orange juice, canola oil, spices, molasses, honey, brown sugar -- a recipe for disaster -- delicious]
      • Vitarroz Salsa Picante-- good on tamales and things of that sort, goes very well with shredded iceberg lettuce

How to taste test a hot sauce

  • Put a dab on your left little finger and suck (wimp!) -- but at least you will know if it contains cyanide without killing yourself. Whenever I get a new hot sauce that I'm going to add to this page, I do the Little Dab'll Do Ya test, also sampling everything else on this list (if I still have any left) as a basis for comparison; Marie Sharp's has just left me gasping in the most recent test, the day after St. Patrick's Day 1997 -- just a pinprick of this stuff will send a small kid or dog or cat to the hospital.
  • Pour some on the palm of your hand and lap it up -- this will tell you for sure. You will also detect any underlying tastes (such as Habanero peppers) that might turn you on or off
  • Try it with a spoonful of rice (you always have some left over from the last time you did Chinese) -- this will tell you if you like it with that sort of dish
  • Ditto with beans (Pinto, Boston Baked, Black-Eyed, Lima, whatever) -- you might have to sacrifice a small can of them and if you do it's best to test several sauces at once, a spoonful at a time with water between the samples, doing it right out of the can (do NOT cook beans first, unless they are dry beans, in which case you have to go through the whole rigaramole)
  • Be daring and actually try it any concoction you are making; be liberal in its use, no half measures (don't put anything else in except garlic, which should be put into EVERY concoction)
  • Go all out and experiment (like the way you discovered when you were a kid that peanut butter goes well with things like onions, pickles, apples, bananas, and even sauerkraut) -- for example, a mixture of mint jelly, mustard powder, and Tabasco is excellent with lamb dishes. SERVE THIS TYPE OF SAUCE ON THE SIDE--DO NOT COOK IT INTO THE DISH!!!
  • If you can't stand it (I mean the dish, not the sauce), throw it out, even if it cost you a lot. If you hate the sauce, give it to somebody who says they love hot sauces (it becomes their problem then). [God, I wish I could have done something the time I demanded the hottest curry in York, England saying I could stand anything; unfortunately, the lava route is not refundable. Wish I knew now what was in that, since my stomarch has hardened with age.]
* I was in College with McIlhenny Jr but he never talked about hot sauce--his future was assured. Also was in High School with Oscar Mayer Jr, and he never mentioned hot dogs--his future was assured too. I just write pathetic web pages and programs that screw people out of their medical benefits...but really dig Hot Sauces.

THE CAPSAICIN STORY

This Important Information Is Courtesy of Yankee Magazine (© Aug 1997)

Just to give New England its plug, hot peppers raised there are actually hotter than the ones raised in tropical climes, because the difficulty of growing them up north challenges the plants and makes them concentrate their strength. Note also that like a lot of other things, Columbus got this wrong by calling them 'peppers', even though he 'discovered' them for Europeans -- they are not of the same genus at all as Italian peppers.

The active chemical ingredient in the 23 known species of Chile Hot Peppers is the compound Capsaicin (which when you replace one nitrogen atom with oxygen becomes ginger). It is concentrated in the seeds and whitish membranes toward the top of the individual pepper, so if you want to wimp out when using the vegetables in your cooking, you can always scoop out those parts -- or you can be perverse and just use the scooped-out stuff all by itself. Here is a list, by hotness, using the so-called "Scoville Unit Scale" (1912), as modified by a new computerized reckoning (ASTA, or American Spice Trade Association units):
  • Red Savina (200-350K ASTA, 10 Scoville) --
        [haven't had the pleasure of these yet, I don't think]
  • Scotch Bonnet & Habenero (100-300K ASTA, 10 Scoville)
        [nice and hot, but I don't like the basic undertaste]
  • Thai (50-100K ASTA, 9 Scoville)
        [these are those things that cause so much surprise in that cuisine]
  • Tabasco (30-50K ASTA, 8 Scoville)
        [we all know this pepper; tends to be salty, though]
  • Serrano (5-15K ASTA, 6 Scoville)
        [don't know these by name, but I'm sure they are used commonly]
  • Jalapeno (2500-5000 ASTA, 5 Scoville) --
        [surprisingly mild!]
  • New Mexico Red Chile (500-1500 ASTA, 2-3 Scoville) --
        [standard Salsa stuff]
According to Yankee, the hottest pepper sauce of all is called "Dave's Insanity Sauce," which I haven't seen anywhere.

The experts behind this article (David and Susan Henderson) have confirmed something I only discovered by chance -- if you can't stop your tongue from burning after a sampling, eat a teaspoonful of peanut butter -- something about the fat in peanut oil drawing off the capsaicin molecules (butter, real butter that is, also works, but not as well).

Update: My best hot sauce buddy is trying to kill me, having provided a bottle of Blair's "AFTER DEATH -- Feel Alive Sauce" that by the way doesn't come with a drip-thingy, just pours out of the bottle. It actually turned a plate of paella with lots of rice into something practically inedible. One mouthful -- whoosh -- not even the most devoted hot sauce fan should try this without extreme care, except on an aged uncle or aunt who is leaving you some money and is paralized by a stroke.

I would like to try this sauce (courtesy Neal Stephenson's The Diamond Age): "...a tall bottle with a paper label printed in an ancient crabbed typeface. 'McWhorter's Original Condiment' was written large, and everything else was too small to read. The neck of the bottle was also festooned with black-and-white reproductions of ancient medals awarded by pre-Enlightenment European monarchs at exhibitions in places like Riga. Just a bit of violent shaking and thwacking ejected a few spurts of the ochre slurry from the pore-size orifice at the top of the bottle, which was guarded by a quarter-inch encrustation....If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this:

Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle greese, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activiated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings."
Yummy!

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