I have always said that I was weaned from mother’s milk onto Tabasco Sauce. I love spicy food, and the addition of Tabasco Sauce seems to brighten up everything.
Weekend before last, we were in Lafayette, LA for a tournament. On Sunday, we took a detour on the way back and went down to Avery Island, home of Tabasco. We took the tour of the plant, which I found out produces 720,000 bottles a day of spicy hot goodness. I also learned that the process involves aging the sauce for three years in oak barrels.
I like Tabasco for mainly Cajun/Creole or Southern style dishes. I love the vinegariness of it and the way it cuts through really fatty foods. Yes, I know many don’t like the vinegar, but for fried food, especially, I think it’s great. And, yes, I like it better than Krystal.
For other cuisines, I’ll use other hot sauces. Tabasco just doesn’t taste right to me with Mexican or Asian food. But for Southern or Louisiana, that’s the way I roll.
I went this past weekend with the kids and GF! My boys surprised me by not only sampling the various food items (including jalapeño ice cream), but liking them. I guess this means I can start cranking up the heat on the chili again. I would have liked to have been able to access more of the island, especially the pepper fields. A tour of the salt mine would have been neat as well.
On the way back, we took the scenic route on LA-82 along the coast and the destruction still evident from Rita 3½ years ago is truly unbelievable and sad.
Tabasco itself contains only peppers, salt and vinegar, but McIlhenny & Company produce a veritable cornucopia of flavors for most any palate.
Tabasco goes on eggs. I use Krystal for just about everything else, but eggs demand Tabasco. I also like the fact that they produce those handy little travel bottles which fit so well in my backpack. Makes tournament food much more palatable.
Tabasco is in the family of sauces like Frank’s Red Hot, but a bit more vinegary and watery. I wouldn’t say either are “all heat.” They both taste like chile peppers with vinegar and a hint of heat. If you want other flavors in the mix, and Tabasco is a bit hot for you, you might want to try something like Cholula (but that probably has about the same heat level) or some of the milder piri-piri sauces. Look for Nando’s peri-peri – they have that at Whole Foods often. The garlic peri-peri or the extra mild lemon peri-peri might be up your alley.
Also, sriracha (rooster sauce) is hot peppers and garlic, but not vinegary, and is a pretty decent sauce that a lot of people like. I don’t think it’s any less hot than Tabasco, but it might be more tolerable to you because of the other flavors.
I personally find that sriracha seems to have more heat than Tabasco, but YMMV. One of the McIlhenny products that isn’t tabasco-style but is delicious and less hot is their chipotle version.
Yeah, I would tend to agree, but it’s really hard for me to gauge as people seem to use different amounts of the stuff in their food. I had some sriracha wings the other day that were surprisingly hot. Good call on the chipotle Tabasco.
I love Tabasco! Sriracha and other sauces are great, but nothing tastes like Tabasco. I’m convinced it’s the oak-barrel aging. No one would develop a sauce like that today! Thank goodness Tabasco is still around and too popular to mess with!
Tapatio, Valentino, et al., are very good hot sauces, but I think they’re apples and oranges in comparison with Tabasco. They all kind of fill their niche.
I would have liked to have been able to access more of the island, especially the pepper fields. A tour of the salt mine would have been neat as well.