Super Hot Sauce Information

Jalapeno Peppers

Jalapenos are mild, fresh-tasting peppers that add just a bit of heat, and a lot of flavor.

Cayenne Peppers

A Cayenne is a medium heat pepper, traditional in Louisanna-style cooking.

Chipotle Peppers

A chipotle is a dried, smoked ripe jalapeno. Lots of people pronounce this word incorrectly. The last syllable is pronounced "lay." Whatever! It's smoky, tasty, and quite popular.

Habanero Pepper

The Habanero is the hottest pepper.

Red Savina Habanero

The hottest habanero.

Ingredients

The main ingredients in most hot sauces are Capsicum chile peppers or their extracts, and vinegar. The chile peppers used are often jalapepenosand habaneros. Chipotles (smoked jalapenos), are also common.

Hot sauce itself may also be used as an ingredient in other dishes.

Hot sauces are often found in Mexican, Tex-Mex cuisine, Cajun, Vietnamese, and Thai cusines.

Heat

The heat, or burning sensation, experienced when consuming hot sauce is caused by capsaicin. The burning sensation is not "real" in the sense of damage being wrought on tissues. In fact, it is merely a harmless chemical reaction with the body's neurological system.

The seemingly subjective perceived heat of hot sauces can be measured by the Scoville Scale. The hottest hot sauce scientifically possible is one rated at 16,000,000 Scoville units, which makes it pure capsaicin. Examples of hot sauces marketed as achieving this level of heat are Blair's 6am Reserve (due to production variances, it's up to 16 million Scoville units) marketed by Blair's Sauces & Snacks. By comparison, Tabasco sauce is rated between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville units (batches vary).

Styles of Hot Sauce

There are several styles of Hot Sauce.

Louisiana-style: the most popular syle in America. Louisiana-style hot sauce contains peppers (Tabasco and/or Cayenneare the most popular), vinegar and water. Occasionally salt and/or Xanthan gum or other thickeners are used. Tabasco sauce, Texas Pete, and Frank's Red Hot are all examples of Louisiana-style sauce. This sauce is popular outside the USA and many foreign sauces are Louisiana-style.

Mexican: Mexican hot sauce typically focuses more on flavor than on intense heat. The sauces are hot, but the individual flavors of the peppers are pronounced. Vinegar is used sparingly or not at all. Chipotle is a very popular mexican hot sauce, which uses smoked jalapenos for its flavor. Some sauces produced in Mexico are high vinegar content Louisiana-style sauces.

Asian: Asian sauces generally contain more ingredients than Louisiana or Mexican. These sauces are generally sweeter and often rely on garlic or other seasonings for their flavor. However, Thai and Indian sauces are some of the hottest sauces made.

Remedies

Capsaicin is an alkaloid oil and is, as such, soluble in acid, fat or alcohol. The effects of ingestion of a hot sauce deemed 'too hot' by the consumer can be partially remedied by drinking such things as milk (dairy products, despite being alkaline in nature, contain a protein (casein) which binds with the capsaicin alkaloid, neutralizing it) or a strong alcoholic beverage (beer is primarily water) or by eating a fatty food such as peanut butter, buttery bread or whipped cream. Some people report relief with tomato juice or by eating a fresh lemon or lime (all acids). Granulated sugar can also provide some relief. Serving yoghurt with meals, as takes place in Indian cuisine, is also said to help.

Contrary to many people's initial reaction, drinking water (or soda, beer, or most other typically available beverages) actually makes the burning sensation worse, as capsaicin, being an oil, is not soluable in water. While the immediate effect may be quelling of the burning pain by the physical coolness of the liquid, water only distributes the capsaicin more broadly in the mouth and throat, causing more pain once the liquid is swallowed.

When washing ones hands of lingering hot sauce before using the bathroom or scratching one's eye, the use of an acidic astringent such as lemon or lime juice is necessary to ensure total elimination of capsaicin from the skin. Soap is an alkaline as well, and its use alone (with water) does not guarantee rinsing away all of the capsaicin.

Scoville scale

The Scoville scale is a measure of the hotness of a chile pepper. These fruits of the Capsicum genus contain capsaicin, a chemical compound which stimulates thermoreceptor nerve endings in the tongue, and the number of Scoville heat units (SHU) indicates the amount of capsaicin present. Many hot sauces use their Scoville rating in advertising as a selling point.

It is named after Wilbur Scoville, who developed the Scoville Organoleptic Testin 1912. As originally devised, a solution of the pepper extract is diluted in sugar water until the 'heat' is no longer detectable to a panel of (usually five) tasters; the degree of dilution gives its measure on the Scoville scale. Thus a sweet pepper, containing no capsaicin at all, has a Scoville rating of zero, meaning no heat detectable even undiluted. Conversely, the hottest chiles, such as habaneros, have a rating of 300,000 or more, indicating that their extract has to be diluted 300,000-fold before the capsaicin present is undetectable. 15 Scoville units is equivalent to one part capsaicin per million, thus the highest concentration corresponds to 15,000,000 Scoville units. The greatest weakness of the Scoville Organoleptic Test is its imprecision, because it relies on human subjectivity.

Later analytical developments such as high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) (also known as the "Gillett Method") have now enabled the Scoville rating to be determined by direct measurement of capsaicin rather than sensory methods.

List of Scoville ratings

Scoville ratings may vary considerably within a specieseasily by a factor of 10 or moredepending on seed lineage, climate and even soil. This is especially true of habaneros.

16,000,000 Pure capsaicin, dihydrocapsaicin

9,100,000 Nordihydrocapsaicin

8,600,000 Homodihydrocapsaicin and homocapsaicin

7,100,000 "The Source" hot sauce

5,300,000 Police grade Pepper spray

2,000,000 Common pepper spray or Pepper Bomb

350,000 - 580,000 Red Savina habanero

100,000 - 350,000 Habanero chile

100,000 - 325,000 Scotch bonnet

100,000 - 225,000 African birdseye (aka "African Devil")

100,000 - 200,000 Jamaican hot pepper

100,000 - 125,000 Carolina cayenne pepper

95,000 - 110,000 Bahamian pepper

85,000 - 115,000 Tabiche pepper

50,000 - 100,000 Chiltepin pepper

50,000 - 100,000 Rocoto

40,000 - 58,000 Pequin pepper

40,000 - 50,000 Super chile pepper

40,000 - 50,000 Santaka pepper

30,000 - 50,000 Cayenne pepper

30,000 - 50,000 Tabasco pepper

15,000 - 30,000 de Arbol pepper

12,000 - 30,000 Manzano pepper

5,000 - 23,000 Serrano pepper

5,000 - 10,000 Hot wax pepper

5,000 - 10,000 Chipotle

2,500 - 8,000 Jalapeno

2,500 - 8,000 Santaka pepper

2,500 - 5,000 Guajilla pepper

1,500 - 2,500 Rocotilla pepper

1,000 - 2,000 Pasilla pepper

1,000 - 2,000 Ancho pepper

1,000 - 2,000 Poblano pepper

700 - 1,000 Coronado pepper

500 - 2,500 Anaheim pepper

500 - 1,000 New Mexico pepper

500 - 700 Santa Fe Grande pepper

100 - 500 Pepperoncini pepper

100 - 500 Pimento

0 Bell pepper