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hot-sauce Hot Sauce Snob

Scorch Garden

Scorch Garden

I make sauces, but before that, i ate sauces.  I still do, but it's hard to find something i can get behind.

Frank's Red Hot was my go to in the 80s, i had outgrown Tabasco in my early teens and until the 90s there wasn't much of a hot sauce market so choices were limited.
Now that i am experienced in gardening and cooking (not just sauce but in commercial kitchens), my pallet has changed.

I pretty much write off any sauces that have:
  • extracts
  • thickeners
  • sugar
  • preservatives
  • colorings
  • a filler vegetable like tomatoes or carrots as the second ingredient
  • a $5 or less price tag
I consider them basic and impure.
My other issue is since i've been into super hots since 2015, nothing is as hot as it claims to be on the bottle.  That's my fault, but still, when something says XXX HOT and the hottest pepper that is listed is habanero...WTF???
 
Maybe i'm the odd man out here, which i'm fine with, but does anyone else share my views?
 
 
 
 
Yup, dont buy condiments at all, allot of stuff has gotten thin in flavour. Started making my own Ketchup/Mayo/Mustard long ago, no my sauces beat anything available in the stores here. Most stuff now contains Canola oil (Canadian Oil), not healthy stuff.
 
I agree I make my own hot sauce with actual spices added and no carrot or tomato as filler as well. Tastes better than store brand.
 
Ive tasted some very good sub $5 hot sauces. Marie Sharps has a couple under $3 at our market that are exceptional for that price.
 
This is pretty typical of her ingredient list
Ingredients: Select red habanero pepper, vinegar, fresh carrots, salt, onions, lime juice and garlic.
 
No i dont totally share your views.
I dont mind a little sugar added as long as its not HFCS.
I like carrots in hab based sauce. Im more concerned about the kind of vinegar used. Most use cheaper white distilled vinegar instead of something like cane or rice vinegar. I dont expect a less expensive sauce to be using highend Chardonnay vinegar. Im more of a vinegar snob and very aware of what a really good vinegar costs. I have many that are WAY more expensive than most sauce.
 
I do make an effort to avoid most sauces with artificial coloring other than annatto and i also try to avoid preservatives other than ascorbic acid. I use both in mine sometimes.
 
:welcome: scorch garden!

You have come to the right place to find other chileheads with a heat tolerance like yours.


Regarding your OP, I think you are eliminating a ton of sauces without really understanding how all those ingredients can be used to make a blazing hot sauce.

Have you heard of-
Heartbreaking Dawn's
High river sauces
Cajohn
Hellfire sauces

Just to name a few that I know make blistering sauces.

I have one in the arsenal made with 7 pot Jonah and moruga scorpion.

it also has brown sugar, pineapple juice and ginger. It also has something made with 16mil crystalline capsaicin, not extract. You probably wouldn't even consider it. Shame...


Look up.those other sauce companies. They have sauces made with some of the hottest peppers. -coughnothabaneroscough-

I think when you find some sauces made by the great sauce craftsmen and women here on thp and also on some fb groups, you will realize there are tasty super hot sauces that will put you in the fetal position sweating bullets. In a good way..

Edit-spelling. GrrRrrr fricking autospell
 
Scorch Garden said:
  • a filler vegetable like tomatoes or carrots as the second ingredient
Click to expand...
 
Also you know second ingredient does not always mean filler or even second most in some cases...
 
You would pass on this:
 
Vinegar, Carrots, Ghost Peppers, Scorpion Peppers, Reaper Peppers
 
But let's say this is the percentages:
 
Vinegar (25%) Carrots (23%) Ghost Peppers (20%) Scorpion Peppers (19%) Reaper Peppers (13%)
 
That's 100% and in order of the amounts.
 
Look what you have there. 
 
52% Peppers, 25% Vinegar, 23% Carrots.
 
It's last!  ;)
 
Walchit said:
So if the best sauce ever was 5 dollars you wouldnt eat it though?
Click to expand...
 
I'd more than likely try it, but as far as regularly using it, it depends on the ingredients.

Ill judge a sauce on 3 criteria:
  1. Ingredients
  2. Flavor
  3. Label
If i can get passed #1, then its all up to #2 if it makes it onto my table.
 
The Hot Pepper said:
 
Also you know second ingredient does not always mean filler or even second most in some cases...
 
You would pass on this:
 
Vinegar, Carrots, Ghost Peppers, Scorpion Peppers, Reaper Peppers
 
But let's say this is the percentages:
 
Vinegar (25%) Carrots (23%) Ghost Peppers (20%) Scorpion Peppers (19%) Reaper Peppers (13%)
 
That's 100% and in order of the amounts.
 
Look what you have there. 
 
52% Peppers, 25% Vinegar, 23% Carrots.
 
It's last!  ;)
Click to expand...
 
I'd try it, hoping the sweet and carrot wouldn't come through very hard.
When you have flavors you don't necessarily care for, they tend to stand out when you encounter them.

I have a bottle of Melinda's XXX Hot that i will never finish.  Very strong on the carrot flavor which detracts from the savory and heat.
 
And FDA requires that ingredients be listed in descending order of amount, so if carrot is the second ingredient, it's the second greatest amount in the recipe.
 
 
Scorch Garden said:
 
And FDA requires that ingredients be listed in descending order of amount, so if carrot is the second ingredient, it's the second greatest amount in the recipe.
 
Click to expand...
 
I see you did not read my post carefully enough.
 
I showed you how carrots can be listed second, but they can actually be the least. When listing individual peppers it was second. When combining all of the peppers it was last. And some manufacturers list individual peppers, some just say peppers. So don't always go by labels. They can trick you. Read it again. I did not change percentage amounts when I made it last I added up the peppers.
 
salsalady said:
:welcome: scorch garden!

You have come to the right place to find other chileheads with a heat tolerance like yours.


Regarding your OP, I think you are eliminating a ton of sauces without really understanding how all those ingredients can be used to make a blazing hot sauce.

Have you heard of-
Heartbreaking Dawn's
High river sauces
Cajohn
Hellfire sauces

Just to name a few that I know make blistering sauces.

I have one in the arsenal made with 7 pot Jonah and moruga scorpion.

it also has brown sugar, pineapple juice and ginger. It also has something made with 16mil crystalline capsaicin, not extract. You probably wouldn't even consider it. Shame...


Look up.those other sauce companies. They have sauces made with some of the hottest peppers. -coughnothabaneroscough-

I think when you find some sauces made by the great sauce craftsmen and women here on thp and also on some fb groups, you will realize there are tasty super hot sauces that will put you in the fetal position sweating bullets. In a good way..

Edit-spelling. GrrRrrr fricking autospel
Click to expand...
 
I am well versed in how ingredients interact with each other in different amount and preparations, not limited to hot sauce.  That's what i base my standards on.
I want a sauce that is clean and whole, that uses as few refined ingredients as possible. 
 
It's so easy to make a sauce that is blazing hot, just throw extract in. It's easy to make a sauce that is sweet. just add sugar.  Make it thicker, xanthan gum.   
That's not needed.  If the sauce isn't hot enough, use hotter peppers.  If you need more sweet, fruit juices.  Not thick enough?  Cook it down.  
 
The crafting comes in the blending of peppers and herbs and other whole ingredients.  The challenge is to not use refined products but search out ingredients that have flavor profiles that support the heat and tang of the pepper and vinegar.
 
That being said, extracts, sugars, preservatives, thickers, and all that, are inexpensive so yea, if you don't go the route of whole ingredients, you can make a $5 bottle of sauce and it can taste great.   Reapers and Scorpions are more expensive than habaneros.  Heat energy to cook down a sauce costs time and money.  Preservatives make a product so it can sit in a warehouse longer...i'm just not into that.
 
I have experimented, researched, and thought about these things and that is the conclusion i have come to.

 
 
My example also shows that vinegar listed first does not always mean it has mostly vinegar. It it mostly peppers in that example. And many sauces list peppers like that. Individually. So that may scare vinegar people off thinking it has a lot because it's listed first.
 
The Hot Pepper said:
 
I see you did not read my post carefully enough.
 
I showed you how carrots can be listed second, but they can actually be the least. When listing individual peppers it was second. When combining all of the peppers it was last. And some manufacturers list individual peppers, some just say peppers. So don't always go by labels. They can trick you. Read it again. I did not change percentage amounts when I made it last I added up the peppers.
Click to expand...
 
I did read it, and i get it.  
 
Listing % of ingredients is not typical of US based companies.  I normally see that with imports or companies that originated in countries across the pond.  A lot of Indian products list the ingredients by % and rather than saying 'calories' they use the term 'energy'.
 
I do see the marketing angle of splitting hairs to single out each pepper used, but as far as the FDA is concerned, a pepper is a pepper and can be lumped together as they all have equivalent nutritional values.  Same with verbiage such as "natural flavors" and "spices".  You can list out what those spices are, but the FDA is only concerned with nutritional equivalencies of like ingredients.  
 
That and the FDA does not require label approval prior to going to market.  It has the authority to regulate what goes on the label and enforce the regulations, but you don't have to submit to them prior to putting it on your package.  Ive seen hot sauces out there with a sodium of 20mg, per tsp, but salt is not listed as an ingredient.  More than likely, no one at the FDA will ever see it.
 
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