Thursday, June 9, 2011

Hot sauce of the day: Louisiana Brand Hot Suace

9.5 fingers and thumbs up


Seeing how this sauce is one of the originals, it certainly proves that it has been around for over 80 years.  A bold, strong, hot sauce taste with a good 6 out of 10 spicy kick is perfect on a burrito (which is what I used it on today).  Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce claims to be the first and the very best cajun cayenne pepper sauce and after tasting it today I certainly do believe it.

I would recommend this sauce on almost anything with meat.  With burgers, chicken, sandwiches, burritos, tacos, or even eggs, I think this sauce would add a great kick and a great bold flavor to your meal.

A little bit of background information on Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce:

Created over 80 years ago, this sauce is the first to use the State's name within the name of the sauce.  Although you may have heard of many other brands calling their sauce a "Louisiana Hot Sauce", this one is the very first and original Louisiana Hot Sauce.  Many of the other Louisiana hot sauces aren't even actually from Louisiana or certified as Cajun hot sauces, but Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce is.  Although the imitators call themselves Louisiana hot sauces, the are only influenced by the original flavor of the original.

All sauces have their own preferred amount of time spent in the fermenting process, some ranging from months all the way up to 3+ years.  Louisiana Hot Sauce's cayenne peppers are sun-ripened, hand picked, and then the mash ferments for about 1 year.

Hot Sauce of the Day: Tabasco Habanero Sauce

???? out of 10 fingers and thumbs


This sauce..... is absolutely insane.  You are probably wondering why this is scored as a ???? out of 10?  Well, it's because this sauce is 10 times too hot for me to handle.  I tried it on a slice of pizza this afternoon... I didn't finish the slice of pizza.  I would discuss the flavor in this post, but that's just impossible.  I don't think I will be tasting anything for a while.  If you try this stuff and get scorched, don't say I didn't warn you.

This sauce is rated greater than 7,000 units on the Scoville Heat Scale.  Tabasco's Original Sauce ranges only from 2,500-5,000 and I think that's quite hot!  7,000+ units... no thanks.



Curious about the Scoville Heat Scale?  Here is some back ground information for ya:

In 1912 Wilbur Scoville created the Scoville Heat Scale.  The purpose of this test was to test the hotness of different types of peppers.  It is not exactly the pepper that the scale measures, but a chemical within the pepper called capsaicin.  As we all know, technology is always advancing and it certainly has improved in quality since 1912 which results in a new, more accurate test being used.  Respectively, the unit for the heat is still called the Scoville Unit.


In case you were wondering, the hottest pepper known to date is the Bhut Jolokia.  This pepper measured in at a little bit over 1,000,000 Scoville Units!

Hot sauce of the day: Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Wing Sauce

6.5 out of 10 fingers and thumbs

Today I spent my whole day at work thinking about what I was going to eat for dinner.  After 8 hours of pondering, I decided that I would take a trip to the store to buy some chicken wings and some Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Wings Sauce.  Today was my first experience with this particular wing sauce, but after doing some research it was easy to decide when I found out that Frank's sauce was the first sauce ever used to create buffalo sauce.  If this stuff inspired one of my favorite styles of sauce way back in 1964, it's got to be good.  Decision Made.

After completing my slightly large portion of buffalo sauce covered wings I decided to rate this sauce a 6.5 out of 10 on the fingers and thumbs scale.  Although this sauce does have a natural buttery flavor, it just doesn't compare to the sauce that is made at restaurants such as Buffalo Wild Wings and Wings Etc.  I guess I will just have to go venture off to Buffalo, New York to see how Frank's sauce can truly turn buffalo sauce into the wonderful thing it should be.

Some background info on Frank's Red Hot Sauce:

Although the buffalo sauce was not an original sauce, it did have to start somewhere.  It all started with the original creation of Frank's Louisiana RedHot Sauce.  This all began as the Frank Tea and Spice Company, which was created by Jacob Frank in 1896 in Cincinatti Ohio, but it would take years for Jacob to begin creating hot sauce.  It wasn't until 1920 when he began creating his great hot sauce, and it definitely payed off for him as it became very popular in the United States, it even played a huge role in the creation of buffalo sauce in Buffalo, New York in 1964.

As with most all hot sauces, Frank's is created from a variety of peppers, which is where it gets its distinct flavor.  Frank's grows all of it's peppers in Mexico and New Mexico, which shouldn't be too much of a surprise.  From there the peppers are sent to Springfield, Missouri to begin the aging process in which the peppers are ground into a salt and pepper mix called the "mash".

The sauce that I had today was the Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Wings Sauce, which was created in 1996 in order to make the preparation of wings even easier.  Although this sauce is designed for wings, I have heard of it being used on a variety of things such as hamburgers, hot dogs, and turkey sandwiches.

Hot sauce of the day: Sriracha Hot Sauce

9 out of 10 fingers and thumbs

I originally knew this sauce as "the rooster sauce" because none of my friends knew the actual name of it and I know that we aren't the only ones.  Many people refer to this sauce based on the design of the bottle.  The red bottle and the green top are surely easy to spot, especially since the bottle has a large picture of a rooster placed in the center.

Today was not my first time trying this sauce, but since I decided to create this blog I decided to pay a little bit closer attention to the flavor and feeling of the sauce.  This morning I had it with my meat lover's omelet.  I wasn't surprised by the heat due to my past experiences with this stuff. I always have to remind myself to be very careful with this sauce because it is quite hot.  Although this sauce is quite hot, it is still great to eat on almost anything as long as it is used in moderation.  I've used it on various meals such as: hot dogs, soups, eggs, hash browns, ham burgers, stir fry, and many other food items.  Don't let the heat fool you, this sauce has a great taste that will be sure to welcome you back for more. 

The ingredients in this sauce definitely make the difference in flavor.  The combination of sun ripened chili's and garlic are sure to add a bit of spice to an ordinary meal. I would recommend this sauce to any one of my friends and I have decided to rate this sauce a 9 out of 10 on the fingers and thumb scale. 

A little bit of background info:

Created in the 1980's by a Vietnamese immigrant, this sauce has really created a real life success story.  David Tran immigrated to Los Angeles in 1980.  Due to the lack of a sauce that David enjoyed, he decided to create his own chili sauce to his own liking.  As he started making his sauce, it led to him selling it strait out of the back of his van on the streets of L.A., leading to a great following of fans of his sauce.  Due to this following, David decided to put the sauce into more of a mass production leading to the creating of Sriracha Sauce, the most successful Hoy Fong sauce to date.