Hot sauce pairings

[jdbower]

We all know that chicken and fish go with white while real meat goes with red - that's easy. How about hot sauce? I've found that fake pizza (Sanny and other New Jersey-ites should know that the bready mess sold as pizza elsewhere in the country is not really pizza!) goes well with Tabasco. Italian food needs crushed red pepper (except, for some reason, lasagna which is better with Morton's Hot Salt). Rice-based dishes are often better with the infamous rooster sauce, and this is also an ideal breakfast condiment. Buffalo sauce makes a great all-around dipping sauce for meats, chips and pretzels.

What pairings have you guys found? Not that I'd be looking for an excuse to try new hot sauces, of course, I'd just hate to find out that Joe Perry's Boneyard Brew is great on apple slices any later than I need to

[gadgetgeek]

Re: Hot sauce pairings

We all know that chicken and fish go with white while real meat goes with red - that's easy. How about hot sauce? I've found that fake pizza (Sanny and other New Jersey-ites should know that the bready mess sold as pizza elsewhere in the country is not really pizza!) goes well with Tabasco. Italian food needs crushed red pepper (except, for some reason, lasagna which is better with Morton's Hot Salt). Rice-based dishes are often better with the infamous rooster sauce, and this is also an ideal breakfast condiment. Buffalo sauce makes a great all-around dipping sauce for meats, chips and pretzels.

What pairings have you guys found? Not that I'd be looking for an excuse to try new hot sauces, of course, I'd just hate to find out that Joe Perry's Boneyard Brew is great on apple slices any later than I need to

Really good question... answer in process....

.

[Sanny]

Well, hot chili oil goes well with Asian food, of course. Dumplings/pot stickers/noodles, and Asian soups. For example, I put a healthy dose in some hot sour (heavy Chinese type, not light SE Asian) soup I made a week or so ago, and it was MOST excellent.

[gadgetgeek]

Well' date=' hot chili oil goes well with Asian food, of course. Dumplings/pot stickers/noodles, and Asian soups. For example, I put a healthy dose in some hot sour (heavy Chinese type, not light SE Asian) soup I made a week or so ago, and it was MOST excellent.[/quote']

We here in the Atlanta area are gifted with a robust population of many ethnic types. We have a huge contingent of Korean folks, as well as a bigger than normal group of Vietnamese and other SE Asian populace. I say gifted because there is so many diverse restaurants to try that one lifetime is not enough. Our top picked "foodie" restaurants (see Tom's Picks on atlantacuisine.com) include some hole-in-the-wall Asian restos as well as some been-there-forever- places that, at least for the foodie community, serves up delicious food nearly every day. I will say that most of the pairings that we have talked about here, have been explored in the restos in our HOT list...

Come on down and let me take you on a restaurant or grocery store jaunt, to see what could be/would be/is, available in the greater Atlanta area.

a 6 hour cruise would take in a good portion of the neighborhoods and ethnic areas so you would get a good cross-section of the ethnic availability here in the Deep South.

[gadgetgeek]

Well' date=' hot chili oil goes well with Asian food, of course. Dumplings/pot stickers/noodles, and Asian soups. For example, I put a healthy dose in some hot sour (heavy Chinese type, not light SE Asian) soup I made a week or so ago, and it was MOST excellent.[/quote']

I asked this question on atlantacuisine.com and got this comment from a notable chef that has a lovely Asian wife.. Here is what Chef Lamar said....

++++++++++++++++++++++

Pickapeppa, Tiger Sauce and Cholula are for

fowl and pork dishes. Tabasco, Srirracha and Texas Pete are good for

pasta as well as chicken and beef. Mae Ploy Sweet Chili is for chicken and fish.

Habenero Tabasco and just any Habenero sauces are for shell fish and beef,

they kill chicken and fish. Lamb requires a more subtle approach like that

found in Tiger sauce, banana chili ketchup and hot mango chutneys.

Dipping sauces are best in the form of roasted Thai bird chili with soy and

yellow rock sugar to calm the after taste. Fresh wasabi for tuna.

Smoke salts and pepper salts all depend on the region of origin and the

foods particular to that region. Of course, I did drink a bottle of Red Rooster Hot

Sauce when I was about 3 and that made all things Southern fried chicken amazing

up until the age of 30, after which I rediscovered Tabasco original and green.

There is so much to go on here, I'm sure there's a whole 'nother huge set

of combinations West of the Mississippi and even inside the Perimeter.

++++++++++++++++++

[Saucier]

Dave's Insanity Sauce

Now Dave's is the hottest sauce I have found. Hoever it does indeed have a great and very complex flavor lurking about in it.

I mix a bit with my soy sauce (high octane, not that crappy low sodium stuff) and dip sushi in it. It is the best.

A tiny dollop about the size of a qtip head in one of the small dishes used for sushi is about right. If you get it on your fingers, you should refrain from rubbing your eyeballs for a day or so.

I leave a bottle of it at our favorite sushi joint, and they have it on the counter before I can sit down.

Over the years I have had six or so new sushi guys ask me if they could taste it. Now who am I to deprive someone of such an experience?

One guy poured a lump about the size of jelly bean in the web of his hand and licked it up. He managed to say "this isn't that hot" before it hit him. He ran to the sink screaming something in Japanese, and had his mouth under the faucet.

We were laughing so hard we about fell off the chair. He disappeared into the back room, and we later found out he went home for the night. The owner was laughing too, and informed me that I had ruined yet another new sushi man.

Next time we went in, I politely offered him another taste, he smiled, bowed and politely said no. He said something in his native tongue to the owner which I am sure I wouldn't want translated

I have never drank a whole bottle of tobasco or anything but I did squirt some pepper spray (the kind you squirt at bears and bad guys) on a salad one time on a dare. It was hotter than hell but it was a matter of pride so I did eat it all without complaint.

It did make me sweat like a call girl in a pew I must admit.

Dave's is like 100,000 Scoeville units. They also make another version that is 300,000. It comes in a little wooden coffin with caution tape on it. Its way too hot!

[primeats]

I had a similar experience with Dave's Insanity sauce.When a food broker came into my shop several years ago this was one of the product samples I was given(being a Tabasco man, I was skeptical). Well I did very nearly the same thing as your Asian friend did, tipped the bottle up onto a thin deli tissue and placed the small drop onto the center of my tongue( I was way too smart to put it on the tip of my tongue).After I uttered the exact same words " this isn't so hot" I watched the eyes of this food broker widen a bit as my face must have turned the color of a blushing schoolboy. When I was actually able to speak, it was in a very low grumbly/husky voice--"oh wow" . I started hiccuping, and proceeded to down a pint of buttermilk, this stopped the hiccup's. "I guess you don't want the hot sauce then" was the response from the broker. I replied in my still horse voice"I'll take two cases".

One dip of a toothpick in Dave's Insanity sauce swirled in a large bowl of pasta/with sauce was still way too hot for my family, it was just right for me however. I can't even imagine the heat from the bottle that comes in it's own coffin.

[Syzygies]

We've been fermenting our own hot sauce for years, in carboys and fermentation locks from a beer making store. Same process as making sauerkraut or kimchee, we use live juice from one or the other to start the fermentation. Main issue is to set the initial pH low enough to evade botulism risk (a standard way that homemade sauerkraut goes wrong) with a few TB of white vinegar per gallon mash, confirmed with a $100 pH meter.

After a month or two we double the volume with white vinegar, and let rest for a few more months before bottling. My hot sauce fanatic friends prefer the best batches of this homemade to what they can buy. My wife only finds homemade acceptable; she won't use commercial at all.

We find there are three components of flavor (to simplify) in variations on Tabasco. Some chiles (thai are the extreme case) come across as pure heat. Anything in the habanero category takes the blend in a second direction. And bizarre crosses (it's really hard to grow more than one variety of chile and keep the lines pure) from our favorite Farmers Markets lend a depth of flavor missing e.g. in the Thai chiles.

We number our blends #1, #2, ... #7 and do reach for specific bottles all the time, but it's hard to explain any system we might have to this, except remembering the three modes above. Perhaps our label should include barycentric coordinates, via a dot in a triangle...

Dave's Insanity is spiked with extract. Same idea as port -vs- wine, it's fortified and I don't count it as in the category.

[gadgetgeek]

Hot Sauce, Home-Made and Tasty...

We've been fermenting our own hot sauce for years, in carboys and fermentation locks from a beer making store. Same process as making sauerkraut or kimchee, we use live juice from one or the other to start the fermentation. Main issue is to set the initial pH low enough to evade botulism risk (a standard way that homemade sauerkraut goes wrong) with a few TB of white vinegar per gallon mash, confirmed with a $100 pH meter.

After a month or two we double the volume with white vinegar, and let rest for a few more months before bottling. My hot sauce fanatic friends prefer the best batches of this homemade to what they can buy. My wife only finds homemade acceptable; she won't use commercial at all.

We find there are three components of flavor (to simplify) in variations on Tabasco. Some chiles (thai are the extreme case) come across as pure heat. Anything in the habanero category takes the blend in a second direction. And bizarre crosses (it's really hard to grow more than one variety of chile and keep the lines pure) from our favorite Farmers Markets lend a depth of flavor missing e.g. in the Thai chiles.

We number our blends #1, #2, ... #7 and do reach for specific bottles all the time, but it's hard to explain any system we might have to this, except remembering the three modes above. Perhaps our label should include barycentric coordinates, via a dot in a triangle...

Dave's Insanity is spiked with extract. Same idea as port -vs- wine, it's fortified and I don't count it as in the category.

Very interesting... it's flavor I'm always after first and heat second. I have never made hot sauce, but do make kraut and kimchee.

May I post your answer on another food board and see what reaction I get?

.

[Syzygies]

Re: Hot Sauce, Home-Made and Tasty...

May I post your answer on another food board and see what reaction I get?

Sure. Post a link here so the curious (e.g. me) can follow the discussion.

[Syzygies]

A few more notes on procedure (you may edit this and the previous into one post, if you like):

I wash and stem the chiles, then blend them a small batch at a time in what my wife calls the "boy blender", a VitaMix VitaPrep. Pricey, but a killer appliance. Like all blenders, it takes more liquid than I want to make a loose enough mixture for the blender to work. I sieve the results into a bowl, reuse the liquid for the next blender batch, and move the blended solids into a bowl large enough to hold the entire load of chiles.

This liquid should be spring water, or filtered water that has sat for a while; the chemicals in tap water could discourage the fermentation.

The recycled liquid begins to resemble Dave's Insanity Sauce; one could save it for immediate use. It isn't representative of how the final hot sauce will come out. I dump it into the big bowl, then kimchee or sauerkraut juice (make sure it is active, not pasteurized) then enough water for a loose mixture.

Now I adjust the pH. Various sources (confirm this yourself!) cite a pH of 4.4 to 4.5 as low enough to avoid a botulism risk. I aim for an initial pH of 4.2, which only takes a few tablespoons of white vinegar per gallon of pepper mash. This doesn't inhibit further acidic fermentation if the kimchee or sauerkraut juice is active.

I sterilize my carboys (there's a great detergent sold specifically to prep carboys for making beer) but this may not be necessary.

Now, move the slurry to a large carboy, leaving 1/4 to 1/3 space for worst case expansion if the fermentation takes off too fast, and move to a cool location for the best, slowest fermentation. (Pointers from your kimchee experience would be nice here.) Use a fermentation lock like one uses for beer, a hollow rubber cork with a plastic one-way doohickey water trap. Air gets out, air doesn't get in.

A friend had one batch go seriously off after he overfilled the carboy, blamed the fermentation lock for being such a pain under this duress, and replaced it with cheesecloth. I have long been fearful e.g. of mold but it has never happened, using fermentation locks. Instead I often overfill my one gallon carboys, wanting any mold to be within easy reach. Next year I'm half-filling a 5 gallon carboy, the hell with worrying about overflows, clearly I don't have to worry about mold.

After perhaps 6 weeks, I mix the mash 1:1 with white vinegar (commercial recipes would go 1:2) and blend it again into a finer puree. I let this sit for months, then bottle. It's easy to buy hot sauce bottles 144 at a time over the web, very cheaply. (My friends would love a carry-on legal sample size, one actually checks luggage just to travel with my sauce!)

The choice here is to filter as finely as possible through cheesecloth before bottling (this came closest to replicating fabled, long-gone Ortego hot sauce) or through just an ordinary sieve to leave more body, our preference but a matter of taste.

We make labels on laser paper that are sized nicely to apply using packing tape, and seal the caps with electrical heat shrink tubing and a heat gun. The ideal size just fits when fresh, but shrinks over time; wet the tubes for an easier time sliding them on.

Oh, yeah, wear gloves when handling this many chiles.

[ThreeDJ16]

Hey Syz, your process sounds interesting. I dabble some making my own hot sauce (nothing intricate or in depth like yours). Generally start by blistering the chiles, tossing the skins and seeds, then blend the remainder with vinegar and salt. Love the flavor of serrano chiles and blend with jalapeno because it takes so darn many. Sometimes add dried chiles also. Knock out the seeds, rehydrate, and then scrape the goody off the skins.

My question is what does fermenting the chiles do for you? Is is strictly a flavor changing aspect or is there another purpose?

-=Jasen=-

[Syzygies]

My question is what does fermenting the chiles do for you? Is is strictly a flavor changing aspect or is there another purpose?

I won't do anything year after year for kicks, unless it comes out better than I can buy. I buy wine. I buy beer. I make limoncello. I make hot sauce.

We experimented with "extracts" in the spirit of yours, although yours are more advanced. With the one exception of a cooked, Caribbean-style sauce from Fatali peppers (a yellow habanero only 4x as hot and great flavor) all of these sauces tasted raw, unfinished, nothing like the best examples of a Tabasco-style sauce. So we looked into Tabasco methods.

Several years in a barrel, scrape off the black crud, hmm... These are methods from a different century. Translate old-school European wine-making in oak barrels to California steel-tank fermentation, somehow I came up with my procedure as the essence of the old-school Tabasco procedure.

Yes, it is about the flavor! There may be a preservation aspect, as we don't cook the sauce afterward. It's live, or at least could be, if not for all that added vinegar. Classic mode of food preservation: Rather that cooking and adding chemicals to prevent any bugs, just pick a bug and let it win. We do add chemicals, if you count vinegar and sea salt, but if any bug has a chance, the bug we introduced in fermentation has a pretty strong foothold.

Still, we couldn't sell the stuff without cooking it.

[dub]

back to food pairings-I like using Tabasco Red on canned fruit,like pineapple or peaches or on strawberry/banana mix at the local cafeteria eatery.

I also like vanilla ice cream with chopped pickled jalapenos in it.

I also think a touch of minced habaneros adds to pineapple/cheddar/ritz cracker casserole.

The new Tabasco Sweet is my newest fave-used it to liven up a bowl of chitterlings just the other day. I think it'd be a decent rib glaze straight out of the bottle. Tab Green is definitely a great marinade as is-especially for chicken.

For stupidness,I have a bottle of the 1,000,000 Scoville brand. ONE DROP flavors a tub of storebought pimento cheese to a tasty heat level. It's also useful for pest control.

dub(capsaicin is my friend)

[Amphoran]

I bought a liter of pure capsaicin oil (and also mustard oil) from an essential oils supplier some years back, as part of the recipe for an oil-base spray that will definitely keep critters from fouling a lawn or garden bed for weeks. Its so dilute that people can't smell it.

I tried using it (highly diluted in light olive oil) in hot sauces, but it was just too potent to be able to control well. It definitely had a very strong warning on the label. Given how strongly we react to it, a very interesting fact is that birds do not react to it at all! Their nerve endings are different, and they can eat seed soaked in the stuff without flinching, and with no damage.

Mike

[Amphoran]

I hope hot mustard stories aren't considered off-topic!

About forty years ago, my dear, departed grandmother, a spirited and adventurous old bird, moved to the town near our farm, and we took her out to a good (for the time) chinese restaurant. This was her first introduction to this type of food. The first course was chinese barbecued port, served with very hot Chinese mustard and sesame seeds.

We explained the procedure to her - dab the pork in a little mustard, and dip it in the sesame seeds so they adhere.

She replied "Oh, I LIKE mustard!", and before anyone could stop her, she formed her little slab of bbq into a scoop, scooped up about a tablespoon of the mustard, dabbed it in the seeds and popped it all into her mouth.

After about two and a half chews, the pennies popped off of her eyes and steam began to jet out of her ears. She spat it out, stuffed her napkin in her mouth, and rocked back and forth in her chair for a couple of minutes, going "oooooooh! ooooooooh! oooooooooh!".

Suddenly, she pulled the napkin out, looked up brightly, and chirped " You know, my sinuses haven't been this clear in years!", and went back for another dose.

My kind of lady!

[Sanny]

Given how strongly we react to it, a very interesting fact is that birds do not react to it at all! Their nerve endings are different, and they can eat seed soaked in the stuff without flinching, and with no damage.

Mike

Yup, and keeps squirrels out of the bird feeder, too. I used to get hot pepper flakes by the gallon and add to the seed in the feeder. Take THAT!

So, there's a pairing - squirrel and red pepper.

[U2PLT]

Squirrels

We have a problem here in Texoma Land next to the Red River....our Squirrels have slanty eys.....