Nectar
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From Tabasco to Insane: When You're Hot, It May Not Be Enough
By DAN MORSE
Staff Reporter of THE
WALL STREET
JOURNAL
Dave Lutes sells about 8,000 cases of ultrahot hot sauce a year.
The last time he tried some of it himself was three years ago, on a tortilla
chip in Albuquerque. "I almost went down," Mr. Lutes says, recalling
the fit of wheezing, tearing and hiccuping the stuff caused.
That's because "hot" doesn't quite describe the latest hot sauces.
Things have gone way beyond Tabasco, the Louisiana red-pepper standby, as hot-sauce
makers escalate the most absurd arms race in the history of condiments. Even
the sauce makers admit it's hard for anybody to make fine distinctions between
products that are so much hotter than hot. And is something truly palatable
when it is as potent as the pepper spray used for self-defense?
The quest makes business sense: Every day, all across the country, macho guys
walk into little stores that specialize in hot sauce, puff themselves up and
ask: "What's the hottest thing you got?"
The little stores get their products from purveyors like Mr. Lutes (pronounced
"Loots"), a burly 49-year-old who runs Hot Shots with his wife, Cathy,
50, from an 8,000-square-foot warehouse in Charlotte, N.C. The Luteses don't
make the hot sauce; they distribute it. Cathy Lutes, a former high-school teacher,
has also sworn off the ultrahots. "You see what it does even when it gets
on your skin," she says. (It burns.) The Luteses also sell a fire extinguisher
-- in the form of BurnAway, spray bottles of hot-sauce antidote (soaps and oils)
to spray on affected skin.
And the Luteses ask customers to sign optional disclaimers before buying certain
brands, particularly Dave's Insanity Private Reserve and Pure Cap, which are
among the hottest of the hot. It's a "food additive," the disclaimer
warns. Don't drink the stuff or you'll regret it.
Or worse. The hottest hots, stuff like Blair's 3 a.m. Reserve, could kill you,
says Marlin Bensinger, a chemical engineer at Chromtec in North Palm Beach,
Fla., who tests pepper extract -- a resin of capsaicin, the chemical that makes
peppers hot and gives some of the ultrahots their kick. (It's also used in repellents
that halt charging grizzly bears.) Mr. Bensinger fears that somebody might swill
ultrahot pepper sauce on a dare, get it into his lungs and go into respiratory
arrest.
Consumers, meanwhile, still clamor for the hottest. So the Luteses' suppliers
-- manufacturers of such brands as Ground Zero, Cyanide D.O.A., and Sudden Death
-- vie for the honor. To stay on the cutting edge, the Luteses rely on friends,
including Grant Lane, 39, who runs PyroPepper.com (www.pyropepper.com)
from his house on Lake Lure in the North Carolina mountains. "It has to
do with taste buds," he says.
Mr. Lane dabs toothpick samples onto his tongue. A half-second later the grenade
goes off in his mouth. "I enjoy it, and I crave it," he says. When
he makes spaghetti sauce, he has to cook up a milder batch for his wife.
The Luteses also take to the road to gather intelligence, as they did in March
at the annual Fiery Foods trade show in Nevada. There, at the Reno Hilton, hot-sauce
maker Paul Feagan presents Mr. Lutes with a 4-inch-tall bottle of his latest
concoction, Da' Bomb ... The Final Answer. It's got a drawing of flaming A-bomb
superimposed on a background of skulls and crossbones. Da' Bomb claims to be
the hottest sauce ever, scoring 1.5 million "Scovilles."
Wilbur Scoville invented the heat gauge in 1912. His method was to ask a five-person
tasting panel to see how much sugar water it took to eliminate the hotness of
a pepper. On this scale, it would require 1,981 gallons of sweetened water to
neutralize a teaspoon of Da' Bomb. High-pressure liquid chromatography, or HPLC,
is a more modern, albeit expensive, way to accomplish the same objective. But
as in DNA testing, results are usually challenged if they don't go your way.
Mr. Lutes looks at Da' Bomb, and eventually carries it over to a booth occupied
by the legendary Dave Hirschkop, the 32-year-old, baby-faced granddaddy of ultrahot
sauces. "Still the HOTTEST. Still the Best," proclaims a sign at his
booth. "Shake Well and Good Luck!" the labels add. Mr. Hirschkop's
Insanity Sauce is the Luteses' No. 1 seller. The two men stand on either side
of a counter, exchanging pleasantries. Mr. Lutes suddenly rolls Da' Bomb toward
his good friend.
Mr. Hirschkop picks it up, with utter disdain. "Ffffumphhhh," he says.
"Says it's 1.5 million Scovilles."
"Send it to a lab," Mr. Hirschkop says. "Let's see."
Mr. Lutes himself is concerned about Da' Bomb's awesome retail price -- $40
for one little bottle. Most of the sauces he carries retail for less than $10.
But he tries never to underestimate the consumer appeal of combustibility --
something that was hammered home to him seven years ago by a cop.
Pulling Over
At the time, Mr. Lutes was starting up Hot Shots, having spent years in
the restaurant-supply business. He had just pitched some Insanity Sauce to a
Mexican restaurant in Atlanta. The owners had insisted everyone share a fingertip
taste. Mr. Lutes joined in this camaraderie to seal the deal. But while driving
home, he rubbed his right eye, and the tears started streaming down his face.
He pulled his car off the road and flushed his burning eye with water. He remembers
the incident so well, he says, because he had to explain it to the policeman
who stopped to check on him.
The cop said he was from Texas and could handle anything. He stuck out his finger.
Mr. Lutes poured on some hot sauce. The cop gave it a lick and started dancing
and twitching in a fairly dramatic demonstration of acute discomfort. When the
pain subsided, he bought the last three bottles Mr. Lutes had on him.
Ultrahot is a small niche of the $500 million-a-year salsa and hot-sauce market.
And the Luteses were in the right place at the right time in the early '90s
when hot-sauce sales took off. The mainstream suppliers were doing well, too,
led by Tabasco sauce, made by McIlhenny Co. of Avery Island, La. The company
today claims to have a 30% share in supermarkets and more than 50% in the whole
"food service" category, which includes restaurants. Paul C.P. McIlhenny,
the company's current president and chief executive calls the hottest upstart
superhots "the lunatic-fringe labels."
As the Luteses' business grew, they added hundreds of sauces to their lineup,
many with wacky labels such as LiquidStupid, PMS in a Bottle and Pain Is Good.
To get the stuff hotter than a habanero pepper, some sauce makers started to
add distilled pepper extracts. And the boasts broke out like the sweat from
a jalapeno.
By 1998, hot-sauce middleman Tim Eidson had had enough. >From his Mo' HottaMo'
Betta office in San Luis Obispo, Calif., he sent 120 hot sauces out for HPLC
testing, which can cost $60 a bottle and gets results that are reported in Scoville
units. Even as Mo' Hotta published its findings (the winner was Mad Dog Inferno),
the race toward mutual assured destruction grew hotter, eventually passing 100-times
Tabasco on the Scoville scale.
Catchy Names
Labeling and memorable names are important, even with the fairly hots, which
make up about 35% to 40% of the Luteses' business. "We can send you some
Screaming Sphincter inventory if you need it," Mr. Lutes tells a couple
he runs into in Reno. Andrew Przlomski, an urgent-care physician from Manitowish
Waters, Wis., and his wife, Pepper Przlomski, own two locations of Doc's Hot
Shop. Customers arrive by pontoon boats in the summer, snowmobiles in the winter.
"Biggest hot shops in Wisconsin," Pepper Przlomski says.
"Chef Ivo. He killed me," Dr. Przlomski says, explaining a recent
tasting.
"They get you pretty good?" Mr. Lutes asks.
"Yah, he noooked me."
Still in Reno, it's time to go see Chef Ivo Puidak of the Galena Canning Co.
of Chicago, which makes salsas and hot sauces, among other things.
"I got some people telling me about your Blasting Sauce," Mr. Lutes
tells him. The two start putting together a deal. Mr. Lutes orders a bunch of
cases of Blasting Sauce, and Chef Ivo tosses in some dynamite blasting displays.
Chef Ivo also sells Mr. Lutes on still other combustible comestibles, including
Blasting Powder, a barbecue meat rub, and some fiery salsas and jellies.
Further up the heat scale, though, flavor is sacrificed to what's known as the
"Burnt Cat Hair" effect. There's a product called Habanero 750 (meaning,
750,000 Scovilles) that has an eyedropper for its lid. Habanero chilies, of
which California's red savina is a popular variety, are often said to be the
hottest of them all.
Clearly, Habanero 750 is a food additive to be used with discretion, as stated
on a detailed warning label hammered out by a team of Boston attorneys. "I
agree, as indicated by my opening of this box, as follows in connection with
my purchase of this product: Due to the extreme hot nature of this product,
this product shall be used only as a food additive. This product can cause serious
injury if directly consumed, ingested or applied to the body... . This product
is to be used only at my own risk... . I am not inebriated or otherwise not
of a sound mind."
Then there's The Final Answer. It's got a small serving straw hanging down from
the inside of the cap and a warning label, features that only serve to entice
some people. "They say, 'This is perfect for my idiot friend Ed who always
claims to eat hotter foods than anyone else,' " says Dave DeWitt, who runs
the Fiery Foods show.
Bottom Line
Mr. DeWitt, known as the Pope of Peppers, has written 25 books on the subject,
but at home in New Mexico, he has only one use for the ultrahots, and it's not
on food. Every spring, he and his wife, Mary Jane line the bottom of their doorways
with it. "We've noticed we have fewer roaches when we do that," he
says.
For now at least, humans seem to be holding up. Blair Lazar makes something
called 3 a.m. Reserve, a recent batch of which topped the charts at two million
Scoville's. Mr. Lazar says he has seen people eat a full teaspoon before, and
walk away: "I don't know what planet they're from."
Perhaps Sparks, Nev. Forrest Hill first picked up some Insanity Sauce three
years ago at a gourmet food store in Toledo, Ohio. Sampled one drop. Says it
scared him off for six months. Now, the 39-year-old hotel executive eats the
stuff twice a day. In the morning, with his bacon and eggs. At night -- a thin
layer mixed with dinner, to his wife's dismay.
Mr. Hill says when he was five, growing up in Sparks, his father tried to get
him to quit sucking his thumb by dousing it with Tabasco. Young Forrest only
asked for more.
Write to Dan Morse at dan.morse@wsj.com
Copyright © 2000 Dow Jones & Company,
Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Nectar
Every spring, he and his wife, Mary Jane line the bottom of their doorways with it. "We've noticed we have fewer roaches when we do that," he says.
I have a bottle of Sudden Death in the cupboard. I think I'll go dump it on the plants around the gofer holes in my garden.
My 12 year old has put Tabasco on everything since she first started feeding herself with utensils. She developed the taste by eating off her father's and my plates. Back when she started spicing up her food, she called it "Tabacco Sauce". We thought that was dang cute. She also called Deviled Eggs "Evil Eggs". That girl just loved Evil Eggs with Tabacco Sauce.
hottest upstart superhots "the lunatic-fringe labels."
This fable sounds like "Clinton and the Congress." Each time Clinton (as the head) tries something more bold, Congress just doesn't have the stomach to tell him to stop.
It will take a lot of antacid to end the pain. Probably a long time.
I"m hard pressed to thing of too many things that aren't better with at least a dash of Tabasco on or in it. Yogurt, maybe.
I haven't tried any of those exotic brands mentioned in the article. I have a bottle of Habanero sauce and it is hot as hell. It's great for spicing up soups or stews, but to use it straight as a salsa or on a taco invites vast quantities of sweat to run off the forehead.
Any GI's out there noticed the tiny bottles of Tabasco in the MREs? Even a dog turd (or the Chicken ala King) is palatable with a drop of Tabasco.
Ridiculous and I have eaten a lot hot stuff in my life such as raw hot peppers right off the plant. Tabasco is hot enough though if you want hotter just use more of it..... duh!!
My favorite hot stuff is 30,000btu cayenne pepper form the health food store. Nice rich, real, red color. Use as much as you can tolerate and it adds body when you eat food made with it, not just a flashy searing heat on top of the other tastes. Far superior to the 90,000btu African Bird's Eye peppers.
A great red pepper sauce is the Vietnamese sauce that is made in California and has a rooster on the plastic bottle. Nice blend of heat with garlic and a bit of vinegar. Very cheap too.
Nectar - thou hast said it, brother. As native New Orleanean, I grew up with a bottle 'o red on the table. Love it on eggs. And most anything else. I sneak into the spaghetti sauce at home, and even the kids like it...
I don't know which is crazier; Paying $40.00 a bottle for Da Bomb...The Final Answer or putting it in one's mouth.
Dave's Insanity is plenty hot enough for my taste buds (whats left of them)
FYI, DaBomb is the bomb, and it ain't 40 bucks a bottle.....
Regards,
L
The cop said he was from Texas and could handle anything. He stuck out his finger. Mr. Lutes poured on some hot sauce. The cop gave it a lick and started dancing and twitching in a fairly dramatic demonstration of acute discomfort. When the pain subsided, he bought the last three bottles Mr. Lutes had on him.
What a great scene! They should make a commercial out of it.
At the party following my daughter's first communion Saturday, I served my special guacamole dip, with about 10 times as much Tabasco (R) sauce as I used to put in 5 years ago, before they got to like it. It was a big hit with the relatives. But the sauces described in this article are insane; if it injures you, it's too hot!
Ingredients
1 Haas Avocado, just ripe enough that the skin is beginning to loosen, after it has gotten soft but before the inside starts to darken in color.
1 large garlic clove, roasted (or 1 small clove raw)
1/2 small lime
30 drops Tabasco(R) sauce.
Cut the avocado in half. Scoop out the flesh into a small bowl. If the pit doesn't come loose easily, you waited too long. Make sure you scrape the inside of the skin with the spoon to get all the avocado flesh.
If you have a raw garlic clove, mash it in a garlic press. If you have a roasted clove (preferable), just spread it like butter into the bowl.
Squeeze the lime juice into the bowl. Use a fork to get some pulp too if you like.
Shake the Tabasco(R) sauce into the bowl with vigor.
Use two forks to mash everything together and swirl it around to a smooth consistency. When you are done you may lick the forks.
Serve with tortilla chips and salsa. Serves from 1 to 4, but make sure everyone has equal access to the chips and the bowl or someone will snarf it all up before the others get their fair share.
I wouldn't go too far with that anything's better with Tabasco on it. I have a friend who had a girlfriend who loved Tabasco. She said it made everything taste better. So, he put it on .... Well, let's just say he ended up in the hospital where he had to answer some very embarrassing questions. True story.
I tried this stuff called 'After Death' once...
LOL! Mark that down! We have found an antidote for a Viagra overdose!!!
Found it,
49,220
After Death Sauce
After Death Sauce was developed at Gimpi's, a trendy restaurant in New Jersey, locally
famous for their chicken "Wings of Death". Blair and Cary Lazar created this deadly
recipe made from pepper extract and they warn that it has a "heat level a few points
south of Purgatory!"
Found it,
49,220
After Death Sauce
After Death Sauce was developed at Gimpi's, a trendy restaurant in New Jersey, locally
famous for their chicken "Wings of Death". Blair and Cary Lazar created this deadly
recipe made from pepper extract and they warn that it has a "heat level a few points
south of Purgatory!"
You got dat right! I put McIlhenny's Tobasco on everything I eat--I guarantee!!
Must be something about "fire in the belly" and all that sort of thing. :-)
I like it too.
I'm a freak for foods that cross the border into a 'pain before pleasure' zone, and used to get my fixes at Hot Hot Hot in Pasadena when I lived in LA.
Even I have a limit though, and the hottest sauce I can take in any frequency is the exquisitely named "Scorned Woman" hot sauce. OW!
I rather like McIlhenny's jalape~no sauce myself. Mile chili or chile if you will, gives better taste with some small amounts of really hot stuff just to spice things up. The chili petins we used to have in our garden are good with eggs.
I was born a few miles from Avery island, where the tabasco sauce is made--you can feel it in the air as you approach the island! Avery Island is one of the most wonderful places on earth---they'll give you some free samples if you visit, and those fortunate enough to work for the company get a lifetime supply of tabasco! Makes me wonder why I ever left home!
I've always been a fan of your spicy posts, OWK---now it all makes sense! LOL! Regards---CAC
K-Pauls,Tobasco,and Hurricanes, the three main food groups.
All you want to know about Tobasco:
Don't forget to remind the folks that Avery Island isn't an island at all. After they visit that they can visit the lake that Texaco accidentally drained while drilling an oil well (they accidentally drilled into a salt mine).
Lots of fun things to do in Cajun Country.
I'm also a big fan of Tabasco; the original stuff, not that weenie, much milder artificially, biliously colored green stuff they came out with a few years ago. I go through a 5 ounce bottle of Tabasco in a year or so (keep it in the refrigerator, and it'll stay red indefinitely, instead of turning brown). I agree, there isn't much, other than desserts, it won't improve; especially good in anything with cheese in it. Here in North Carolina, you'll see Texas Pete (made, not in Texas as you might expect, but in Winston-Salem, NC) on the table in every barbecue joint you venture into; nothing wrong with it, but about a third the hotness of Tabasco. Of the "botique" super-hot sauces, the one with the best name that I've encountered has to be Scorned Woman, as in "hell hath no fury like..." The super-hots are pretty good thoroughly mixed into salsa or the like before adding it to your food. I'd be willing to bet, however, that less than 10% of the volume of these sauces sold are actually consumed before being discarded. In addition to wildly varying levels of intensity, of course, there are different "types" of hotness. Chinese mustard and horseradish go to the sinuses first rather than to the throat as most hot sauces do, though all will ultimately make you sweat if used in sufficient quantity. Can't wait for someone to come out with habanero-spiked wasabi.
Whoops, you beat me to the punch on Scorned Woman, bigsur (see #26). I should read the other posts more carefully before adding mine, I guess.
A great red pepper sauce is the Vietnamese sauce that is made in California and has a rooster on the
plastic bottle. Nice blend of heat with garlic and a bit of vinegar. Very cheap too.
There is a 1" by 1/5" pepper that grows wild in the Dominican Republic called the Caribe Pepper, named after the fierce Indians that used to live there. At camp one summer, a boy thought he'd have some fun by telling the American to eat one. I pulled it off the bush and just put it under my tongue and pretended to chew. The boy and his friends waited with an eager look in their eyes that turned to disappointment after a few seconds. I told them it was great, asked what the fuss was, and suggested the boy take a bite himself. He pulled a pepper off the same bush and gingerly bit it. As soon as he did, he yelled and threw it away. Within seconds his lower lip had swollen and turned red. Then I showed him the unbitten pepper I had hidden under my tongue. That was a good camp memory.
Nectar
Agreed! It's always a sad moment when the final drop is extracted from the bottle, and even sadder when you realize you don't have another, full bottle waiting in reserve at the moment you need it!
Yahoo! A topic near and dear to my heart, having spent a few hours last week in my FAVORITE location on Earth; the PEPPER PALACE in downtown Gatlinburg, Tennessee! The hotter the salsa, the better. To die with chili peppers on my breath (especially habanero) would be bliss. As for favorites, one of mine is "Screaming Sphincter", out of Amarillo, Texas. Talk about truth in advertising! If I want it hotter, I add a teaspoon or so of "Dave's Insanity Gourmet Salsa", which includes habanero peppers measuring out at 326,000 scovilles. Not QUITE the hottest salsa, but more than most could handle. If you ever get invited for nachos at the WKWE household, BEWARE! Chili fans should check out the Ring of Fire at webring.com...hundreds of GREAT chili sites! Enjoy!
Makes me wonder why I ever left home!
You can always come back and visit, ya know......(besides, the shrimp season is supposed to be a good one!) ;-)
Tabasco is hot enough though if you want hotter just use more of it..... duh!!
Nay, the "pain" factor is a combination of the amount of capsicum you eat combined with the maximum-concentration that any part of your mouth is exposed to. I once won a bet by doing a shotglass full of Tobasco, to the amazement of people who thought that Tobasco was the hottest thing around. In fact, a single drop of Dave's Insanity Sauce would have been much more painful, even though the pure scoville calculation would indicate more "heat" in the shotglass.
Where can I obtain a sample of Screaming Sphincter?
K-Pauls,Tobasco,and Hurricanes, the three main food groups. All you want to know about Tobasco: www.tabasco.com
That's my browser's default start page, razorback :)
I once won a bet by doing a shotglass full of Tobasco, to the amazement of people who thought that Tobasco was the hottest thing around.
Only one such bet??? I damned nearly put myself through college with the money I won from the old tabasco shot bet. It only works for a limited time though---after all your friends and associates wise up to where you were born, you don't make too much money :)
Tabasco is hot enough though if you want hotter just use more of it..... duh!!
This turns out not to be the case. If you doubt me, try chugging as much Tabasco as you can handle from one of those plastic gallon milk-type jugs you can get it in, and once you've recovered, I'll mail you a salted fresh pumpkin-orange Habanero. A little one. Pop it in your mouth and chew it up like a grape; if you don't agree that that single Habanero is quite a bit hotter than a whole tanker truck full of Tabasco sauce, I'll be very surprised.
My favorite hot stuff is 30,000btu cayenne pepper form the health food store.
That is pretty nice, but you can make it better.
Get yourself a mortar and pestle, and buy some of the flake (not ground) pepper. Dish yourself out a serving of food, and then dump a quantity of flake pepper into the mortar and grind it up with the pestle. Grind it as fine as you can get it: finer means more surface area, which means quicker capsaicin release. If you can make it finer than flour, that's best. Proceed with all deliberate speed; that aroma you smell is the essence of the pepper being released into the atmosphere, and you want to keep as much of it as possible in the pepper, not in the air.
As soon as you're finished grinding, dump it on your food, mix well, and eat up. The effect won't last as long, but it'll be more intense.
I tried this stuff called 'After Death' once...
I believe it is made by the same company. Did it come with a skull keychain attatched?
After reading this article yesterday, my husband used my Sudden Death sauce to kill a swarm of bees that had decided to make a home on the side of our hot tub. They dropped in one big clump, never to buzz again.
This is the rooster sauce you were talking about and it is one of the best garlic based sauces around. The bottle is really big too so it will last quite a while.
BTW the Pyropepper.com site in the article is pretty good. Lots and lots of cool sauces.
Monica's Down On Your Knees Hot Sauce:
Bob,
Thanks for posting a photo.
You saved me, as I was fumbling with the uh...you know...thïngiès
Huy Fong Spiracha Garlic AKA Vietnamese Rooster Sauce
Nice to meet a fellow fan of this sauce.
I don't have a bottle around at the moment but I use it whenever we go the Vietnamese
restaurant. Vietnamese food is just OK with me but I really love their
beef/noodle soups called pho. That's were I get to use the rooster sauce. I usually
get the soup with rare beef slices.
If you feel uneasy in any way, a big, steaming hot bowl of pho will make you feel better.
You know what you're talking about. You know the physics of hot peppers and the hot, spicy tatse.
About grinding up the pepper flakes.... I just put them through the little Krups electric coffee mill real quick.
Darn, I hate when I screw up a link like that.
Regards,
L
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
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