I don’t shy away when it comes to condiments on my food, Whether it’s ketchup on fries or Mustard on ham, there’s something for every occasion.
But one world I’ve been exploring more and more lately is hot sauces. Everything from a simple Tabasco sauce to add a little kick to the stuff that would make any sane person ask “why?” when they hear what’s in it.
Hot sauce in itself is just any kind of sauce that is well… hot, it’s in the name. But looking back the earliest recording of a hot sauce can be traced WAY back to about 7,000 BC when the Aztecs mixed chili peppers with water. Back then it was used for virtually everything (sound familiar?) from adding kick to their food to curing colds and attacking their enemies. Since then humans have been adding all sorts of peppers and other ingredients to attempt to make the hottest and/or most flavorful hot sauces!
Whenever you hear of a hot sauce you’ve probably heard something like “it’s 2,693,000 Scoville (SHU)” or something more tame like the 450 Scoville of Franks Red Hot. That scale wasn’t invented until 1912 when a man by the name of Wilbur Lincoln Scoville came up with the system. By measuring the amount of chemical compounds in the ingredients and multiplying them by 15 you can usually gauge a sauces heat level before it’s consumed… how it tastes is another matter on its own.
Currently the hottest pepper in the world is called Pepper X, which was created by Ed Currie. The pepper comes in at an average 2.693 Million Scoville and was recognized as the worlds hottest pepper in 2023 by the Guinness Book of World Records, dethroning the Carolina Reaper which averages around 1.6 Million Scoville.
The hottest hot sauce on the other hand is called pure evil, which comes in at a mouth burning 13 Million Scoville and comes in a drop style container for your own safety.
Now that’s HOT!
