I put hot sauce on every dish. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, there is a hot sauce application. Hot is tasty. Hotter’s tastier. Hot sauce is my culinary joy. I treasure hot sauces, I concoct hot sauces and my son and I have a hot sauce emporium. We stock our hot sauce store with every imaginable hot sauce. He is enamoured with hot sauce more than his dad so I believe that supposes we hold the hot sauce gene. We are regularly looking for original ways to process a chili and compel it to explode even more on the spice-lover's tongue.
But we run into people all the time that come from a different gene pool. They don’t eat hot sauce. They know nothing about hot sauce. They need help. So we decided to come up with a real short primer on hot sauce basics because most of these people have a short attention span and a limited grasp of facts. Probably because they don’t eat hot sauce.
In simple terms, the “hot†in hot sauce comes from organic compounds known as capsaicinoids, found primarily in the ribs and stem area of the pepper. (If you want to be grammatically correct, chili is not a pepper. Pepper is the black spice known for its place in the duo salt & pepper.) Capsaicin is the main capsaicinoid that’s causing the burning sensation and, by the way, it’s not doing your body any damage even though it’s telling your brain it is.
The hot in hot sauce is measured using an ancient (early 1900’s) system known as the Scoville scale, named after pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. An incredibly subjective, highly inaccurate system but one that everyone refers to when they’re talking about hot sauce heat. The only truly accurate way to measure hot sauce “heat†is to use a process known as gas chromatography. But most hot sauce producers aren’t going to use a very expensive and time consuming way to measure the heat of their sauces so we’re pretty much stuck with what the producers tell us. But using the Scoville scale, 16 million Scoville scale units would be the hottest hot sauce scientifically possible to reach. So if you see a bottle of hot sauce that claims a 17 million Scoville scale rating, be skeptical. On the other end of the range would be the classic Tabasco sauce which has a Scoville rating of around 5,000 Scoville units.
If you are a novice with hot sauce and unsure what to buy, take a quick look at the ingredients and see if you can recognize the chili the manufacturer used. If you want to begin on the milder end of the heat scale, try a sauce made with a jalapeno, cayenne or Tabasco chilli. Otherwise, if you’re ready to go to the searing end of the hot sauce spectrum, try a hot sauce made with either the habanero, scotch bonnet, piri-piri or datil chili.
If you’re looking for a hot sauce somewhere beyond the hottest hot sauce, then you don’t need this primer course. We’ll save our discussion on the extracts and jolokia sauces for another day.
But we run into people all the time that come from a different gene pool. They don’t eat hot sauce. They know nothing about hot sauce. They need help. So we decided to come up with a real short primer on hot sauce basics because most of these people have a short attention span and a limited grasp of facts. Probably because they don’t eat hot sauce.
In simple terms, the “hot†in hot sauce comes from organic compounds known as capsaicinoids, found primarily in the ribs and stem area of the pepper. (If you want to be grammatically correct, chili is not a pepper. Pepper is the black spice known for its place in the duo salt & pepper.) Capsaicin is the main capsaicinoid that’s causing the burning sensation and, by the way, it’s not doing your body any damage even though it’s telling your brain it is.
The hot in hot sauce is measured using an ancient (early 1900’s) system known as the Scoville scale, named after pharmacist Wilbur Scoville. An incredibly subjective, highly inaccurate system but one that everyone refers to when they’re talking about hot sauce heat. The only truly accurate way to measure hot sauce “heat†is to use a process known as gas chromatography. But most hot sauce producers aren’t going to use a very expensive and time consuming way to measure the heat of their sauces so we’re pretty much stuck with what the producers tell us. But using the Scoville scale, 16 million Scoville scale units would be the hottest hot sauce scientifically possible to reach. So if you see a bottle of hot sauce that claims a 17 million Scoville scale rating, be skeptical. On the other end of the range would be the classic Tabasco sauce which has a Scoville rating of around 5,000 Scoville units.
If you are a novice with hot sauce and unsure what to buy, take a quick look at the ingredients and see if you can recognize the chili the manufacturer used. If you want to begin on the milder end of the heat scale, try a sauce made with a jalapeno, cayenne or Tabasco chilli. Otherwise, if you’re ready to go to the searing end of the hot sauce spectrum, try a hot sauce made with either the habanero, scotch bonnet, piri-piri or datil chili.
If you’re looking for a hot sauce somewhere beyond the hottest hot sauce, then you don’t need this primer course. We’ll save our discussion on the extracts and jolokia sauces for another day.
About the Author:
By Jay Potter, hot sauce connoisseur, spreading the love and warmth that comes from hottest hot sauce appreciation.