Our Secret Weapons
There’s a battle in the world of hot sauce that gets even more heated the spicier the sauce is. The battle is because of the biggest stigma for the ultra hot hot sauce genre is: all heat no flavor. That is a very fair and valid concern. Not everyone is up for something spicier than a habanero and super hot peppers tend to be expensive.
For the hearty of tongue, stomach, and ass, the first super hot sauces contained acrid tasting extracts and artificial preservatives. With this ‘hold my beer’ mentality, a lot of the super hot sauces were only about burning your taste buds, completely ignoring how it tastes. This is the uphill battle we are fighting, and we have the ultimate solution.
The weeds we flavor our food with are called herbs. They are the soul of a recipe. There are over 200 different herb species and the majority of them can be grown pretty much anywhere in the US. Some are perennials (they go dormant or grow very slowly in the winter) and others are only good for one season and after they flower and produce seeds, they die. Herbs can be the stem, flower, seed, leaf, and/or even the root of the plant.
Empires went to war over the control of spices and early large-scale exploration campaigns were financed in part by spice companies. Pound for pound, dried herbs are one of the most expensive items in the grocery store. Freeze-dried chives end up being over $200 per lb when you scale up how much you pay for less than a half oz.
We grow 9 different peppers for our mashes. Each has its own flavor and heat profile that creates a harmony of pepper flavors and burns. With some vinegar and a bit more salt, you have yourself a very, very hot pepper sauce. I’m sure the peppers taste lovely, but it’s going to be lacking depth.
That’s where the herbs and spices come in. We grow several varieties of different over half a dozen herbs in a special garden. Pungent, savory, sweet, tangy, the herbs alone are so amazingly aromatic. We take these wonderful plants and add them to the vinegar for our sauces.
When we combine the pepper mash with the herb-infused vinegar, the result is the resolution to the conflict of heat and flavor being mutually exclusive. Flavor is not sacrificed for heat and heat is not sacrificed for flavor. There is no need to choose one over the other if you keep it pure and natural.
Our peppers and herbs are grown in a clean and natural environment which allows them to grow to their potential and produce extra rich flavonoids. The peppers take care of the heat and the garlic, onions, and herbs do the flavor part. We don’t have to do much more than letting life live and enjoy what it provides for us.
Our secret weapons in the war of heat vs flavor are the heat and flavors of our peppers and herbs and garlic and onions. Our sauces are ultra hot. That’s completely on purpose. They are so exceedingly flavorful, you almost will yourself to endure the heat just so you can get one more taste. Just be careful. You might start enjoying the burn more than you thought you did.
Do you enjoy the burn?
[ C L I C K H E R E ]
