Hot Sauce

There is a local member of our shooters group who makes his own Salsa, apptly named, Seismic Salsa.

good flavor, heat that builds, and then nuclear meltdown. Its really really good on a big burger to absorb some of the heat, and its darn tasty.

He makes it at home, in clinical cleanliness, and he makes it by the five gallon bucket, then cans it in half pint mason's jars.

this is what his prep table looks like, http://img101.imageshack.us/img101/7133/salsa3post.jpg

People forget it's flavor first and heat second. Good list.

Great thread and picture!!! I have been a devotee of spicy hot foods all my life, and about ten years ago, discovered the hard way what Scovilles meant and real heat was. I had no idea at the time that there were things that could make the hottest tabasco seem like liquid red sugar by comparison. I won't go in to that story, but the hot sauce wars which I discovered shortly after that first experience, brought me to today, where I keep 20 of the world's hottest sauces in my refrigerator. I have sauces going as high as 600,000 Scovilles, which is twice as hot as a habanero pepper. Of course, these are used sparingly, on things such as omelettes, hard boiled eggs, chicken, meat, etc., and I always have plenty of bread and butter to kill the heat. It's the butter that kills the heat, not the bread. On extremely hot sauces, water will actually make it worse, and bread alone is no good. You need fat, such as milk, ice cream or butter hanging around to help you if you get in to trouble, where your mouth is burning, you can't stand it, and have to do something.

I recognize that flavor is all important and really hate when a hot sauce tastes bad, but for me the heat is just as, if not more important, than the flavor, as long as the resident flavor is not offputting. I tend to concentrate on the hot sauces made by Blair's, Dave's and Mad Dog, but have plenty of other brands, including some oddities. One sauce that I eat for flavor's sake, which The Colonel introduced me to, is the Joe Perry's Rock Your World Boneyard Brew sauce. This is not one of the 20 mentioned above, which I eat occasionally. The Joe Perry's is a true sauce with a pleasant touch of heat, along with an incredible flavor, as was another that The Colonel sent me, but the second was not from the hot sauce line. Although I love the endorphin rush of a truly fiery sauce, that's only for certain times. I also love it when there's a blast of heat, but the most fulfilling thing is a rich flavor. That picture reminded me of some of the more flavorful, and slightly less crazy hot sauces.