I like feisty condiments.  Things that lurk in the fridge patiently until a sandwich or casserole or breakfast plate needs a little oomph.  In my fridge, they don't have to lurk long, unless they're waiting their turn in line.  I have about ten hot sauces in the fridge right now, including two that my boyfriend made in a fit of experimentation last year.  Since I have only five different mustards in the fridge right now, this makes hot sauce the clear winner.

There are the perennials - Tabasco gets replaced the moment I run out, sometimes before.  It is too intrinsic an ingredient in everything from chili to scrambled eggs to macaroni and cheese for me to be without.  I'd almost sooner be without onions, but that's another story entirely.  Trappey's Red Devil cayenne pepper sauce is a surprising favourite - it is mild, pleasant, and very tasty, particularly on omelettes.  Since it is unavailable here in British Columbia, I try to pick some up whenever I happen to be crossing the US border, usually on my way into Bellingham on non hot sauce related business.  The holy trinity of foreign grocery purchase for me seems to be Red Devil, stone-ground grits, and Coppola Claret.  I get some strange looks from cashiers, let me tell you, especially if they notice that I'm Canadian.   In Bellingham, I can buy them all at the same store, which makes the whole must-stop-at-the-store factor much more bearable, unless I get hypnotized by the bogglingly large snack food aisle.

I've become quite fond of Nando's extra hot Peri Peri sauce, although I don't consider it a powerful sauce.  It has a strong lemony flavour that is uncommon in hot sauce, which gives it a unique character, and a place on the shopping list.  Bufalo Chipotle, a thick, dark brown sauce from Mexico rounds out the must-haves.  I use it, undiluted, brushed over chicken or ribs before baking or braising, to extraordinary results.

I do not require a hot sauce to burn my throat and tongue to a char in order to appreciate it, as witnessed by the rather mild Red Devil.  However, I do particularly enjoy the flavours of some of the hotter peppers, habaneros in particular.  Habaneros have a flavour that is instantly recognizable, if you can taste anything over the incredibly fierce glare of heat that they produce.  As one of the hottest peppers in the world, there are a lot of people that simply cannot or will not deal with them.  Yet, for all their fire, the heat in habaneros is here for a good time, not a long time.  The duration of the heat on the palate is mercifully short.  Hot sauce makers in the Caribbean often use habaneros, and often blend them with carrots, pineapple, or some other sweet ingredient that mitigates some of the heat. 

The very hottest sauces, though, are uniquely aimed at the knuckleheads who prize ability to withstand searing pain over flavour.  Hence addition of pure capsaicin oil (also called hot pepper extract) to increase the power of a sauce whose flavour no one will ever know.  One of the better known "killer" sauces, Dave's Gourmet Insanity Sauce is aptly named.  Not only does it feature hot pepper extract, it also contains soybean oil - virtually a guarantee that the oils from the chiles will cling to the inside of your mouth while they burn, burn, burn.  I am uninterested in this phenomenon.  I choose my hot sauces to add flavour to my food, not build a bonfire in my esophagus.

An early encounter with fierce hot sauces was during a trip to New Orleans.  Most of the cooking supply stores there will have a bar of hot sauces set up, with an assortment of crackers and chips for you to try with them.  I took a teensy drop of a sauce called Endorphin Rush on the corner of a triscuit, and thought it had eaten a hole in my tongue.  I realized that the initials of the sauce were "E.R." which had sudden significance.  Two cans of coke and a package of cinnamon chewing gum later, ignorant of the use of dairy to extinguish capsaicin heat, I knew I was going to live.   I am told that the formula for Endorphin Rush has changed somewhat over the years, and is no longer as powerful as it used to be.  It is a shame, because now that I am more acclimated to fiery flavours, I would like to try it again.  I probably should, anyway - I'm sure that it's still brutal.

Statistics show that hot sauce was the fastest growing condiment in the USA in the mid-nineties, and there has been a remarkable neck-and-neck race for condiment supremacy between ketchup and salsa over the last ten years.   Canada is showing a similar increase in usage of fiery foods, evident in the increasing number of restaurants that keep a bottle of Tabasco or Louisiana Hot Sauce on every table.  In many of my favourite lunching and brunching places, asking for hot sauce will net you a variety to choose from, and that's indicative, too.  Then, of course, there's Paul's Place Restaurant & Omelettery on Granville at 6th, where Paul will simply bring over the Jamaica 911 without inquiring.  Maybe that's just because he knows me, though.

The Jamaica 911, a locally made hot sauce occasionally available at Granville Island and always available on the table or for purchase at Paul's Place, is feisty without being killer hot (just a drop will do you, though) and has the delightfully unexpected prominent flavour of ginger.  The heat comes and goes while you fan at your mouth, and the pretty flavours of ginger and sweet carrot linger pleasantly.  I keep that one stocked, too.  Nice and tropical.

We purchased a number of hot sauces for a hot sauce tasting party that we held last year in September, and found some new favourites in doing so.  Ten hot sauces, each with a little write-up, placed in heat-hierarchy around the table, with tortilla chips, French bread, pita bread, and crackers to act as vectors.  Sour cream, yogurt and milk were made available to extinguish any unbearable fires.  Tasting was far from a solemn affair, but people actually did make notes on the prepared pages that I made available.  Many of these notes were then left behind, which may have been the result of the after-party: one gigantic pot of chili (mildly made, so guests could apply the sauce of their choice), cole slaw (to try to put out the fires engendered by indiscriminate use of the available sauces), three different kinds of cornbread, and a lot of cervesa.  By the end of the evening, some people may have had trouble enunciating, but I am not sure whether it was from burnt tongues or beer consumption, but a good time was had by all.  I managed to coax some of my guests into taking home a bottle or two at the end of it, just to make room in the fridge. 

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Okay, I just checked my fridge.  Note to self:  Tabasco bottle is almost empty.  Twenty-two hot sauces.  I think it's time for another party. 

September 2004