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A hot sauce is any spicy condiment sauce. In some West Indian countries, hot sauce is simply called pepper.

Ingredients

The main ingredients in most hot sauces are Capsicum chile peppers or their extracts, and vinegar. The chile peppers used are often jalapeños and habaneros. Chipotles (smoked jalapeños), are also common.

Hot sauce itself may also be used as an ingredient in other dishes.

Hot sauces are often found in Mexican, Tex-Mex cuisine, Cajun, Soul food, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Thai cuisines.

Styles of Hot Sauce

There are several styles of Hot Sauce.

Louisiana-style: the most popular style in America. Louisiana-style hot sauce contains peppers (Tabasco and/or Cayenne are the most popular), vinegar and water. Occasionally salt and/or Xanthan gum or other thickeners are used. Tabasco sauce, Texas Pete, and Frank's Red Hot are all examples of Louisiana-style sauce. This sauce is popular outside the USA and many foreign sauces are Louisiana-style. In New Orleans, the two most common alternatives to Tabasco sauce are Louisiana Hot Sauce and Crystal Hot Sauce.

Mexican: Mexican hot sauce typically focuses more on flavor than on intense heat. The sauces are hot, but the individual flavors of the peppers are pronounced. Vinegar is used sparingly or not at all. Chipotle is a very popular Mexican hot sauce, which uses smoked jalapeños for its flavor. Some sauces produced in Mexico are high vinegar-content Louisiana-style sauces.

Asian: Asian sauces generally contain more ingredients than Louisiana or Mexican. These sauces are generally sweeter and often rely on garlic or other seasonings for their flavor. However, Chinese (especially Sichuan and Hunan), Thai and Indian sauces are some of the hottest sauces made.

Heat

The heat, or burning sensation, experienced when consuming hot sauce is caused by capsaicin. The burning sensation is not "real" in the sense of damage being wrought on tissues. In fact, it is merely a harmless chemical reaction with the body's neurological system (see this technical explanation).

The seemingly subjective perceived heat of hot sauces can be measured by the Scoville Scale. The hottest hot sauce scientifically possible is one rated at 16,000,000 Scoville units, which makes it pure capsaicin. Examples of hot sauces marketed as achieving this level of heat are Blair's 6am Reserve (due to production variances, it's up to 16 million Scoville units) marketed by Blair's Sauces & Snacks. By comparison, Tabasco sauce is rated between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville units (batches vary).

An easy way to determine the heat of a sauce they are considering is to look at the ingredients. Sauces tend to vary in heat by the ingredients in them.

  • Jalapeño - These sauces include green and red jalapeño sauce and chipotle. Green jalapeño and chipotle are usually the mildest sauces available. However, red jalapeño sauce is normally hotter, as hot as cayenne or even tabasco sauces.

  • Cayenne/Chili - Sauces made with cayenne and chili pepper (also hot peppers, red peppers, peppers, etc.), including most of the Louisianna-style sauces, are usually hotter than jalapeño but milder than other sauces.

  • Tabasco - Sauces made with tabasco peppers, like Tabasco sauce, are hotter than cayenne pepper sauces. Along with Tabasco, a number of "extra hot" sauces are made using a combination of tabasco and cayenne or chili peppers.

  • Habañero - Habañero pepper sauces are the hottest natural pepper sauces. They contain either habañero only, or a combination of habañero and other peppers. Habañero-only sauces are usually orange, while blends are usually red.

  • Extract - the hottest sauces are made from capsaicin extract. These range from extremely hot pepper sauce blends to pure capsaicin extracts. These sauces are extremely hot and should be considered with caution by those not used to fiery foods. Many are too hot to consume more than a drop or two in a pot of food. These sauces are typically only found in specialty shops or online.

  • Other ingredients - heat is also affected by other ingredients. Many sauces contain tomatoes, carrots (in habañero sauces), onions, garlic or other ingredients. Generally, more ingredients in a sauce dilute the effect of the peppers, resulting in a milder flavor.

Remedies

Capsaicin is an alkaloid oil and is, as such, soluble in acid, fat or alcohol. The effects of ingestion of a hot sauce deemed 'too hot' can be partially remedied by drinking such things as milk (dairy products, despite being alkaline in nature, contain a protein (casein) which binds with the capsaicin alkaloid, neutralizing it) or a strong alcoholic beverage (beer is primarily water) or by eating a fatty food such as peanut butter, buttery bread or whipped cream. Some people report relief with tomato juice or by eating a fresh lemon or lime (all acids). Granulated sugar can also provide some relief. Serving yoghurt with meals, as in Indian cuisine, may also help.

Contrary to many people's initial reactions, drinking water (or soda, beer, or most other typically available beverages) actually makes the burning sensation worse, as capsaicin, being an oil, is not soluble in water. While the immediate effect may be quelling of the burning pain by the coolness of the liquid, water actually distributes the capsaicin more broadly in the mouth and throat, causing more pain once the liquid is swallowed.

When washing one's hands of lingering hot sauce before using the bathroom or scratching one's eye, the use of an acidic astringent, such as lemon or lime juice, is necessary to ensure total elimination of capsaicin from the skin. Soap is alkaline, and its use does not guarantee rinsing away all of the capsaicin.

See also

External links

Hot sauces

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Hot sauce".

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