Hot sauce

Tuesday Night Hot Sauce Club

Seth, , , Leave a comment

Welcome to yet another installment of my sporadic and food-centric series on me eating hot sauces I get from Firehouse Subs. (I know, right? This is like a highlight reel of all Blogging ’12, but stick with, it gets better).

Tonight’s entrants both rated 8s on the Firehouse Subs severity index [actual name: unknown] and one of them damn near cost me my life. No lie.

Here’s a visual aid for folks still confused about this whole exercise. Yes, it’s really all about hot sauce.

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The hot sauce on the left is Brother Bru-Bru’s Very Hot African Hot Pepper Sauce. This sauce has 0mg of sodium and tasted fantastic. A great, spicy heat that came on only after I swallowed a bite.

This was definitely a solid 8 on the 10-point heat scale but maybe a 9 from a taste and overall enjoyment scale. I would definitely eat this hot sauce again and, if I can find it locally, I’m buying a bottle for home. Nothing fruity or too garlic-y, just great, savory heat almost like the hot sauce equivalent of cumin.

The hot sauce on the right, in contrast, was a lot like eating molten road tar. It was extremely hot (more like a 9 or 10 on my heat scale), it had little to no flavor to speak of and it coated my tongue and mouth making it nearly impossible to eat anything afterwords without tasting the sauce.

In short: stay away from Liquid Stoopid. In general I should learn to avoid any hot sauce that include capsaicin extract as an ingredient. Duh (at least the naming convention of this one is accurate).

It should have been a sign for me to stop eating this sauce – and I did try multiple tastes because BLOGGING FOR YOU PEOPLE – when my scalp and eyelids (yes, eyelids) started sweating after the second bite. I suffer for my craft or at least I soldier through hot sauce for meager digital jollies.

One good hot sauce out of the pair and I still have full use of all my limbs and partial use of my frontal lobe. Not entirely a loss, everybody.

Until next time (when I eat Firehouse) keep wondering why non-regular food-related blogging isn’t the absolute darling and pinnacle of the online world. I know I’ll keep trying to figure it out!

Leftovers & Hot Sauce

Seth, , Leave a comment

I was a bit too late to participate in National Peanut Butter Day1 2 because I brought some awesome, homemade chili as a leftovers lunch. It’s almost better a few days later, don’t you think?

I didn’t have the chance to spice up the chili this morning before I left for work, so I was stuck with packets of Texas Pete from the cafeteria, but I’ll take what I can get.

The chili itself was delicious all by itself and it was perfect for the rest of the family. Even the kids enjoyed it and told me it was my best effort yet.

High praise indeed from the rug rats.

Lest you think I only apply the high-quality hot sauce on subs, here’s a picture I took of all the hot sauce currently in the Miller house:

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It’s not the largest selection – there might even be some kind of salsa verde sauce in the fridge somewhere – but it’s good for the time being.

Two were gifts from my father-in-law (who shares my fiery affinity), one was an impulse purchase and the Sriracha … I can’t say anything more/better than The Oatmeal did.

Until we eat again …


1 It’s an actual “holiday”. Really.


2 Thanks to Sesame Street’s Google+ page for the knowledge.

Still Sauced

SethLeave a comment

The only real drawback to writing regular hot sauce posts is that it reveals just how much hot sauce – and by extension Firehouse Subs – I’m eating this month.

For the second installment, I have to give a shout-out to my awesome wife who indulged me (and allowed me to indulge) by getting this week’s sauces.

She asked “Chunky or smooth?” and I said “either”.
She wanted to know if fruity was fine and I told her it was.
She needed a heat range and I specified 7s & 8s.

With these parameters in mind, she chose two excellent sauces that really served to highlight and compliment my regular sub, the Smokehouse Beef & Cheddar Brisket.

Here’s a photo:

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First, (on the left) the 7, Mo Hotta Mo Betta Chipotle Adobo sauce. Say that one five times fast.

I enjoyed this sauce a ton. It was sweet, thick and almost like a spicy ketchup or barbecue sauce. Lots of molasses and ginger in this one.

Second, (on the right) the 8, Pyro-Mania. No idea why it isn’t one word like the classic Def Leppard album but that’s another blog post. This one was very chunky (more a spicy salsa than a hot sauce) but it was really good. Lots of fresh herb and vegetable in this one. Yum!

All in all, I greatly enjoyed both sauces. The first really served as a spicier version of the bbq sauce already on the sandwich. Smooth, sweet and just the proper amount of spice.

The second was an excellent contrast to the other flavors and textures. It was chunkier, hotter and more savory than the first. This one complimented the meat just as the first complimented the sauce.

Some of you are no doubt thinking to yourselves that I’m flattering my wife for her ability to choose condiments (and spouses). You would be correct.

I’m also being honest. This batch of sauces was far superior to the first batch I blogged.

Only time will tell if subsequent meals live up to this standard.

One tasting note: I’d rate both of these sauces about one unit lower than Firehouse has chosen to mark them. Maybe I need to start dipping my finger (or just the edge of my sub roll) in each as a more scientific method.

That or I need to eat less Sriracha so I’m not throwing off my regular baseline. 😉

Until next time.

The Hot Sauce Chronicles

Seth, , Leave a comment

I love Firehouse Subs.

Toastier than Quiznos.
Not as skimpy as Blimpies.
Fresher than Subway.

I even (almost) got into an altercation with the Labor & Delivery nurse during Imogen’s birth over the quality of sub chains in Atlanta. (She was a devotee of Jimmy ohn’s, which I found disgusting and personally insulting. More importantly, who argues with the parents in the delivery room? Honestly!)

One of my favorite things about Firehouse (apart from the freestyle machines) is the wide array of hot sauces.They even have a house hot sauce, Captain Sorenson’s Datil Pepper Sauce. It’s a sandwich chain started by Firemen, after all, so they have hot sauce.

I think we all see the joke.

Right.

There.

So I’ve got around a dozen photos on my phone exactly like the one you see below: two hot sauce bottles and the plastic cups I used for my takeout order.

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I had the crazy idea I was going to start a hot sauce Tumblr or maybe even a hot sauce site, but other folks have already been there so I’m doing the next best thing: blogging here.

Firehouse puts a numbered sticker ranging in value from 1 to 10 on each of the bottles with 1 being the mildest and 10 being the hottest. The bottles are usually arranged mildest to hottest moving left to right.

Knowing my own palette (and my desire to try new things) I started taking the pictures so I wouldn’t repeat hot sauces and so that I could use Tumblr, Evernote or something else (like this blog post) to keep track of my tasting and heat notes. Note: this didn’t sound so weird in my head, but it seems ridiculous typed out on screen.

So be it.

I like hot sauce.

These two hot sauces weren’t bad at all. The Walkerswood Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce was rated a 6 and the Al Gore’s I Invented Hot Sauce was rated a 7. I’d agree with the former but I’d rate the latter an 8.

I normally go for the 6/7/8 range but, if the sauce is sufficiently smooth and not chunky I’ll get a 9 from time to time.

Both of these sauces were thick & chunky, which didn’t provide much difference in texture, but the Walkerswood was noticeably sweeter and the color of mustard. Very nice.

Al Gore? He brought the global warming with a sauce that was hotter than advertised and seemed to stick to my ribs, teeth, sub and any other surface it saw. This one had a lingering bite after a very hot start. Call it an 8 and I’d happily get it again.

I don’t think I’m going to blog the back catalog of hot sauces & photos (mostly because my notes are suspect) but I liked this enough to keep doing it going forward, minus all that boring crap in the beginning.

Until next time, gentle reader, enjoy your hot sauce responsibly!