Hot Sauce

Just to start off, this is the first thread I've created in the JCC since Summer, 1999. I've been trying to think up a topic that has never been discussed here in Community. I know. Fat chance. But here goes.


I consider myself a 'chilihead', or in simpler terms, someone who enjoys very hot foods. Really hot foods. The hotter, the better. I eat jalapenos like candy. When I order nachos at the theatre or at the ball park, I get funny looks when I tell them I want more jalapenos.

As a matter of fact, I am happily married for 14 years to a wonderful woman who just happens to be Thai. For your information, Thai food is famous for it's exceptionally hot and spicy cuisine. Need I say more?

If it doesn't burn twice, there's not enough spice.

Ok. Now let's talk Hot Sauce. Just to give you fair warning: If you are the type of person that thinks Tobasco is too hot, I will shake my head and laugh at your expense. Ok, I admit that I do like Tobasco, Cholula, and other Louisiana style sauces...but these are not hot at all. They add flavor, sure, but very little heat.

I just recently started collecting hot sauces. For those who are daring enough, the real HOT hot sauces aren't going to be found at your local grocer...you'll probably have to find a specialty store, or order them online. If you are new to eating extreme hot sauces, I must insist that some of these can be quite dangerous to the unaware or uneducated. Many of the sauces I have use warnings and disclaimers on the label that state that they shouldn't be used by people with heart or respiratory problems. No kidding. I'm talking seriously hot here.

Can you 'Eat the Heat?' The Hot Sauces listed below I have personally tried and are my current favorites:

1. Dave's Gourmet 'Insanity' Sauce -- (who doesn't?) This is the original hottest sauce. Nowadays, there's several sauces that are hotter., but this is the trendsetter. The tastes of tomato, hint of garlic and herbs dance on the tongue for a split second, then the heat assaults you like a blow from a sledgehammer. Not for the squeamish.

2. Dave's Gourmet 'Total Insanity' Sauce -- The heat level is a notch below the regular 'Insanity', but with a hint of garlic and lime juice. Good flavor, great with chicken.

3. Endorphin Rush -- Same heat level as 'Total Insanity' above. Great to heat up your BBQ or mix into your hamburger before grilling.

4. Pain is Good Batch #37 -- This is for those who, like myself, love garlic. Lots of Garlic. This doesn't disappoint - Not as hot as the above sauces, but the heat from the habaneros will easily bring any newbie to their knees.

There are several more I have purchased for my fledgling hot sauce collection, that I yet to try. Here's a partial list:

Mad Dog Inferno Sauce
Mad Dog 357 (this one scares even me - 357,000 Scoville units)
Dave's Gourmet 'Ultimate Insanity' Sauce
Spontaneous Combustion
Crazy Jerry's Mustard Gas
Acid Rain
Pure Cap (500,000 Scoville units, so hot it's classified as a 'food additive')

And of course, I have one or two with names that are unsuitable for print here.


What's your favorite(s)? If you are an amateur, expert with hot sauces, or even a serious collector, let's hear what you've got.

 

My constituion isn't built for hot sauce consumption. I can take the burn going in, but I can't take it going back out...

The last time I ate Drunken Noodles I bit into this one itty bitty seed and cried for almost two hours.

So my host sauce of choice is Grey Poupon.

 

I love spicy stuff myself, but don't get to try it out much as the school food isn't known for its spicyness. I can handle just about everything I've tried, but I really haven't gone into "superhot" sauces, so dunno if I can take those. Probably, with a little practice; my dad most likely hasn't tasted food for years because he puts so much hot stuff on everything.

I do have to have something non-spicy to eat along with hot food. I tried to eat a crushed red pepper pizza once and my tongue was really unhappy with me after two pieces with no breadsticks or whatever in between..

 

i like to be able to actually taste my food. however i've recently moved up a notch on the heat scale. i've switched from hot taco bell sauce to fire.

 

But, of course!

Guns, I think that was your first experience with the Thai chili pepper...otherwise known in Thailand as the 'Kee Nu' (Rat Dropping - heh). I love these little guys. They're very small, about the size of a fingernail. Very hot. Just to give you an idea, here's a chart:

[image=http://www.originaljuan.com/images/heatgauge.gif]

Your standard Tobasco sauces rates at 2,140 on the Scoville scale. Jalapenos run up to 5,000 SKU (Scoville units). Thai chilis range from 80,000 up to 100,000 SKU. For someone not expecting it, that's a major 'Ouch!'

 

I'm a spiceman myself. The spicier the better.

I work on the theory that if your throat isnt burning 30mins after eating, it just wasnt hot enough.

 

Spicey food rocks going down. Going out is another story.

I got this one sauce call "The @#$%ing Hottest Sauce" and the label does not lie. Real hot, but not flavor. I need flavor in a hot sauce.

 

There we go. That's my kind of heat. I am building up the tolerance to capsacin (the chemical that makes hot foods hot) to the point that I can almost use Dave's Gourmet Insanity like ketchup. It will give you at least 20 to 30 minutes of sizzle. When I want to add flavor, I'll add some "Blair's Original Death Sauce" or my trusty "Pain is Good #37. Heat, but great flavor.

Anything as hot or hotter than Dave's Insanity is, truthfully, not being added for the flavor, just heat. A teaspoon of Dave's Insanity will really spark up some good homemade chile con carne, without adding that heavy vinegar and salt you get with Tabasco and the like. I'll primarily season with the herbs, spices, peppers, but not with the hot sauce. I like to use hot sauce to give it heat, without having to overburden the chili with massive amounts of vinegar.

I yearn for the burn.

 

Qui-Gon -- I am SO glad that someone ELSE knows about Endorphin Rush!

Question though... doesn't Endorphin Rush skip peppers and go pretty much straight to synthesized capcasin? I had thought that was the point... or maybe it was a distilled, stronger version?

 

As a Fire sauce aficianado (sp?), I can tell you that it is really no hotter than regular Taco Bell Hot sauce. The only difference is that it has garlic in it.

 

hi. I'm from NEW MEXICO, the CHILE capital of the world! That's the one thing I miss the most about home (I'm in south lake tahoe now)...it's the chile fix.

It's all about the Habanero.
If you want fresh, hot green chile from Hatch New Mexico, check out the Chile Addict...a great site to order your chile fix online. Try the thermonuclear hot sauce!

 

dp4m: Yes, Endorphin Rush and other sauces in its catagory are so hot because they use Capsaicin extract to ramp up the heat -- even more than you could with just using more peppers.

 

dp4m: Yes, Endorphin Rush and other sauces in its catagory are so hot because they use Capsaicin extract to ramp up the heat -- even more than you could with just using more peppers.

Right, just checking... (I THOUGHT that's what I remembered)...

Though, to be fair, I think the Dave's sauces still use some actual peppers in their sauce as well...

 

You guys will have to indulge my Aussie naivity, but what are these hot sauces for? We dont really have much in the way of those....do you just add a bit to the meals you are cooking to spice them up? Or are they actually like simmer sauces that you use as the basis for cooking food (like an equivalent of buying a vindaloo sauce)?

I usually just end up adding buckloads of chillies to my food...bolognaise, burgers, all sorts of stuff. Gives it great zing. And then when eating out for Chinese or Indian, I just go for the hottest on the menu...and then get them to make it hotter.

 

Yes, they use peppers. Believe it or not, Dave's Gourmet Insanity's primary ingredient is 'Tomato Sauce'.

Go fig.

 

Dagsy, The hot sauces I listed above; the Dave's Gourmet Insanity - or better yet, Dave's Ultimate Insanity (250,000 SKU) or Mad Dog 357 are perfect in cooking for adding heat, heat and more heat to your dishes. Start off with a drop...taste, and add more. If you dare.

 

You all are crazy... it's like bungee jumping with your taste buds.

 

LOL. I'm in tears.

Gundark = funny

 

Yeah you can add them to almost any dish, from Tex-Mex dishes like chili, to burgers to chicken to sauces, and on and on and on.

I say, if my eggs aren't orange, there's something wrong with them . The more heat the better, but it better have flavor too. Tobasco and a lot of the lower end hot sauces have way too much vinegar in them for my taste, but they get the job done in a pinch.

 

I tried Daves Insanity sauce. A drop no bigger than a nickle on one side of a nacho chip. It brought to my knees! I thought I was going to die, that stuff is nuts.

I have also tried Endorphin Rush, same amount, horrible pain but I was able to remain standing.

 

You tried a nickel-size dollop of super-hot sauce on a single chip? Have you gone completely insane??

 

Hot sauce and other spicinesses make me sweat entirely too much. And I sweat enough as it is. Stupid sweat.

Amazing.

 

Erp...hot sauce is not my kind of stuff. I kind of like Thai food, which is spicy, but it doesn't taste like Pepper Puree.

 

Zaxxon, believe it or not, it gets hotter still. Much hotter. These hot sauces can't be tested by the drop. Sauces this hot are tested by using a toothpick, dipping it in the sauce, and then running the toothpick across a chip or cracker.

Dave's 'Ultimate Insanity' is twice as hot as the regular 'Insanity' sauce (90,000 SKU) and Mad Dog 357 is hotter still. I hear that Dave's 357 is almost too hot for even the toothpick test! I own it, but have yet to muster the courage.

The hottest sauce on record is Blair's Caldera, measuring over 10 million SKU! For comparison, pure capsacin runs at 16 million SKU.

(If you can still call it a sauce - the FDA says it's a food additive, which can only be purchased by reading and agreeing to a waiver)

No way I'm touching that one! It's sold mostly as a collector's item.

 

...

What would one do with such a sauce? Use it for dispatching people you don't like?