Hot Stuff

I bought some genuine Tabasco Sauce today. I LOVE hot sauces. Each one is good for a specific thing. For example, Crystal hot sauce is absolutely the BEST THING to put on popcorn. Screw butter. For me it’s Crystal hot sauce made by the Baumer family in New Orleans. I happen to actually know Mr. Baumer. His boat was three slips away from the Lady Ann which I ran out at the lakefront. Crystal is also pretty damned good on red beans and rice. When I was getting ready to move to France I went out and bought five bottles of Cyrstal. The first time I went to the grocery store over in Antibes I discovered they only sold two kinds of hot sauce over there…Tabasco and Crystal.

I also like D’Elidas. down here since I’ve never seen any Malinda’s and D’Elidas is close. They just started stocking Sriracha sauce at Romero and Rey. That stuff, with a bit of melted butter makes an excellent wing sauce. I don’t care for Cholula.

Now Tabasco is interesting. I actually know where Avery Island is in Louisiana. Ran crewboats all around the place for several years, but never stepped foot on it. Here’s the thing about Tabasco…it’s good on, like red beans and rice, but it sucks on popcorn. HOWEVER, if you’re going to make a Bloody Mary, there’s only ONE hot sauce that will work and that’s Tabasco. PERIOD! Any other hot sauce sucks when it comes to making bloody Bloody Marys.

Now, when I took the bottle of Tabasco out of the box it came in I looked at the stuff printed on it. Interesting. D’Elidas is made of “Selected habanero peppers (not just any run of the mill habaneros, no siree, ‘selected’ ones), Mustard, Vinegar, Water, Salt, Onion, Xanthan Gum (whatever the hell that stuff is) and 0.1% Sodium Benzoate (mmmmm, sodium benzoate).

I first had Melinda’s sauce at a place on Caye Caulker, Belize. There was a woman there who set up four card tables on her porch and made lunches. The most fantastic thing on her simple menu was a lobster tostada: flat, crispy tortilla with refried black beans, a healthy heaping serving of lobster salad, some chopped lettuce and grated cheese topping. For a buck U.S. !
There was a bottle of Melinda’s on the table and it was FANTASTIC ! In the six days I spent anchored at Caye Caulker I had lunch there four times…(I didn’t discover the place until my second day). Melinda’s was the first carrot-based hot sauce I’d ever come across. The ingredients are: Fresh Carrots, Choice Red Habanero Peppers, Onions, Lime Juice, Vinegar, Garlic and Salt. No Xanthan gum or sodium benzoate for that girl.

Now, probably the simplest of the sauces is Tabasco. Ingredients are: Distilled vinegar, red pepper, salt. PERIOD ! That’s it. NOTHING ELSE ! The Peppers are ground into a mash on the day of harvest and placed along with salt in white oak barrels. After aging for up to three years, the mash is strained to remove skins and seeds. The resulting liquid is mixed with vinegar, stirred occasionally for a month. And there you have it.

On the side of the box is the Nutrition Facts box. There are 0 calories in the official FDA “Serving Size”. Total Fat? 0 and there is 35 mg of Sodium in that serving which constitutes 1% of your daily value according to the FDA. Compare that to a “serving” of Old El Paso Thick ‘n Chunky Salsa that contains 200 mg of sodium of 9% of your daily value and that’s per 2 tablespoons of the stuff. And you’re never getting up from the table after just using 2 tablespoons, are ya?

Here’s a challenge for ya! The FDA’s “Serving Size” for Tabasco is 1 teaspoon (5 ml). I DARE YOU to down a teaspoon full of Tabasco Sauce in one go. Ain’t gonna happen.