Actually, I’m chewing on a couple whole cloves right now, and you’re right. There is that tingle. It’s somewhat different than the Szechuan peppercorns, but it is in the general ballpark of sensations, although the peppercorns also cause me to salivate like a madman.
yep. I just grabbed a jar of Szechuan peppercorns for the hell of it, and the numbing effect is stronger and they have a notable “tingling” effect that cloves really don’t.
Dangit.
Now you guys have me thinking about how I can make a hot sauce with habaneros, Szechuan peppercorns, and cloves 
Throw in some wasabi and I’ll buy a bottle.
billfish678, thanks for that link. I had a serrano pepper plant that lived a few years and I’m really tempted to grow some more now. I have a fabulous spice shop with all the dried peppers I could need really close to my house, but fresh are always wonderful, and sometimes dried just don’t fit your needs.
I’ve often pondered the possibility of a sauce with equal parts by Scoville of capsaicin, piperine, cinnemaldehyde, and mustard oil (the active ingredients in chiles, black pepper, cinnamon, and mustard/radishes). I’d expect that the different varieties of heat would have a sort of synergistic effect with each other.
Hmmm…
Call it Higgs Extra Hot or perhaps TOE Sauce?
I just bought the Trader Joe’s Habanero hot sauce. It’s pretty darned tasty. To be honest, I don’t think it’s hotter than El Yucateco green. I had it side-by-side and had a half teaspoon or so of each and, to me, the El Yucateco actually seems a bit hotter and sharper. I let the heat die down and tried it in reverse order, and I do think that they’re at least at the same level heat-wise, although the El Yucateco still seem noticeably spicier to me. However, there may be difference in heat levels from batch to batch. I certainly know that when I buy peppers, one day’s habanero’s may only be kind of hot, while the next is blisteringly hot. I don’t know how much they stabilize for heat levels in commercial hot sauce production.
Y’know, chain or not, Buffalo Wild Wings has some tasty sauces. Even their blazin sauce (which is hot as shit but not intolerable) tastes like more than burning.
…if only their wings were any good. I agree that their blazing sauce tastes reasonably good, and is nothing to be afraid of if you’re into habanero-level heat. But in the three or four times I’ve been there, I’ve always been meh on their wings. They’ve always tasted to me like they were sitting around for ten minutes before being delivered to the table. It could just be the locations I’ve tried, but I’ve never gotten really well-cooked, hot and crispy wings from BW3.
Their wings are just sauce conveyances.
I had a friend who went to Thailand. He said the spicy they use is far hotter than the spices Thai places us in the USA.
How interesting! Thanks for letting me know what you thought. I’ll give the TJ’s sauce another try. Maybe it makes a different which food I eat it with- I normally put a milder red sauce on eggs and use the El Yucateco on enchiladas or when I’m at my local taqueria.
It could also be true that the batch I tasted was exceptionally hot. I too have had that experience with fresh peppers, that one day they’re easily edible and the next time I get them at the same store they’re much hotter.
Heck, I’ve had that kind of variability from the same plant. One year when I grew peppers, I had one jalapeño plant and about half of the peppers from it were duds, the other half were firecrackers.