Love and Insanity in the Kitchen
February 3rd, 2007 1:19:00 pm pst by Sterling Camden
Last night I rediscovered Dave’s Insanity Sauce, the hottest sauce on the planet. The only other time I tried it, years ago, was at a hamburger joint that featured a variety of sauces. I like hot food. I regularly eat two habaneros, a jalapeno, a red chile pepper and a Thai chile in my breakfast. So on that first encounter I laid the Dave’s on a hamburger like most people use ketchup. Let me tell you, I finished that burger three beers and a lot of “woo-hoo!” later.
So last night I used more caution. Just five thick drops on three scrambled eggs, and it was still a whole lot hotter than my breakfast recipe. I was sweating and swearing and loving every minute of it. It gives new meaning to the phrase, “Hot damn!” Dave’s is made with habanero peppers, the hottest in the world. But to me the sauce tastes hotter than eating the peppers by themselves.
My first encounter with the hellish habanero was in a bar (can’t remember the name) up on Mt. Washington, overlooking the three rivers in Pittsburgh. This establishment offered buffalo wings in four varieties: mild, medium, hot, and Three Mile Island. The latter were covered in habanero sauce. I ate the whole platter, accompanied by generous draughts of beer. As I was sweating and whewing my way through the meal, the bartender asked, “Why are you doing that to yourself?”
Because I love them. The habanero has a unique taste, almost fruity at first, and the heat doesn’t hit you right away. It takes a few minutes to get really hot, and then it just keeps getting hotter! No matter how you douse it with water, beer, or what have you, it keeps coming back.
When my wife and I were first getting together, we kept our relationship a secret for months. She worked in software sales for a client of mine. I know, conflict of interest. But this time it all worked out. Anyway, our common employer hosted a summit meeting of some of their most influential customers, and one evening they took them all out to The Kitchen, a very nice and intimate restaurant in Sacramento. It’s so small that they had to reserve the entire restaurant. They seat the diners around a large counter where the chef prepares the meal right before your eyes.
My future wife and I managed to sit beside each other without drawing too much attention. As we sipped our wine awaiting the feast, I noticed all the baskets of things scattered around the counter. Right in front of me was a basket full of huge habanero peppers!
Knowing about the gradual onset of the habanero’s heat, I picked one up and bit it in half.
While I could still speak, I handed the other half to my sweetheart, saying “Not too bad” before the wave of heat engulfed my soul.
So she popped the other half in her mouth.
I’m afraid it was probably the half containing most of the seeds.
She shrieked and quickly downed about a pint of wine. Of course, the heat only continued to rise, so she drank rather more quickly than usual all that whole evening. In front of her employer and her best customers, too. And she couldn’t taste any of the fine meal or desserts.
But she didn’t kick me out. So I thought to myself, “She’s got a sense of humor — she’s a keeper.”
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Not bad. They were banned from a spicy food show because it gave someone a respirator problem. Very cool! Must try.
The common habañero isn’t quite the hottest pepper in the world. The honor of that title belongs to the Dorset Naga, at about three times the Scoville units boasted by the Red Savina habañero.
You could, of course, split hairs and point out that the Naga jolokia is a cultivar of the habañero, but when people say “habañero”, that’s not usually what they mean.
Err . . . extra notes:
The Dorset Naga is a derivative of the Naga jolokia, and one must wear gloves when handling Dorset Naga to protect yourself from an untimely trip to the emergency room. They’re that hot.
Wow, do you know where I can get some of those Dorset Nagas, apotheon?
I’ve had a few cases where I accidentally touched my eyes after handling store-bought habaneros. It was painful, but nothing that I couldn’t soldier through.
Sacrilege! The only sauce is Tabasco sauce.
And just before kickoff, let me put my prediction in for the Bears to win!
Sterling: Not really. I think you can order them online. Check Wikipedia and/or Google — I’m sure you’ll find something as easily as I could. I once stumbled across something about buying them, but wasn’t really interested since I wasn’t planning on killing the neighbors’ dogs or anything like that, so I didn’t keep track of it.
TDavid: Only if you think “hot sauce” should taste like vinegar. I was actually quite fond of Schlotzky’s (from the sandwich place) until they changed the formula a couple years ago — now it’s just an above-average flavored hot sauce, rather than the best I’ve ever had.
I’ve been making do with Tapatio brand lately — it’s also only above average, but that’s pretty good for something I can buy at Safeway.
The thing about Tabasco that has the other brands beat is they don’t use any preservatives. Read the label of the other guys, Apotheon, and start looking at what you are ingesting.
And when I’m looking for something hot I eat the peppers raw, not sauce
Tabasco is my ketchup.
I love Tabasco too (I like vinegar, though it isn’t good for me), but it doesn’t even taste hot to me anymore. Raw peppers, woo-hoo!
Dave’s contains no preservatives, either. Probably doesn’t need them — I don’t think anything could survive in that stuff.
Tapatio is good, and it contains no vinegar, so I have used that quite often. But it isn’t really hot. And it does contain sodium benzoate as a preservative.
I, too, enjoyed the flavor of Schlotzky’s hot sauce (pretty mild, though) and I’m saddened to learn that they have changed it. I haven’t had a Schlotzky’s in years — the nearest one to here is in Redmond. Back when we lived in California, my wife would have me bring Scholtzky’s home at least once a week. Love their bread.
[...] like food that’s so spicy that most people can’t eat it, and some folks can’t even stand to be nearby [...]
[...] love habanero pepper sauce. I use a lot of it, so it makes sense to buy an “every day” brand that isn’t as expensive [...]
[...] over the downtown area. I took the Duquesne Incline up Mt. Washington, where I first encountered the beloved habanero. I walked across the Fort Pitt Bridge, and toured the remains of the old forts at Point State [...]
Right now (I guess) the reigning champ is the Trinidad Scorpion Morouga, weighing in at an incredible 2,009,231 SHU’s… 4-6 times that of a habanero. For another way to describe it, it’s over 12 % of the Scoville value of pure capsaicin.
You going to grow your own, Chip? http://www.thechillipeppercompany.co.uk/moruga_morouga_scorpion_chilli_pepper_seeds.htm
I haven’t gone for the pure chilies, but I do love a good hot vindaloo.
Mmmm, vindalo. I haven’t had that for a while. There’s a restaurant in this (relatively small) college town that has the best lamb vindalo I’ve ever encountered, and my mouth is watering just thinking about it.
For the most part, I really don’t care one way or another about how spicy-hot my food gets; I only care about the flavor. I like habanero, and I don’t like jalapeño. When I say I don’t like jalapeño sauces, people often think that means I don’t like hot food, but there are things much hotter than any jalapeño pepper or sauce made from it that I just adore. Vindalo is a great example; I eat it like it’s nothing, just savoring the flavor, then my SigO takes a bite and can’t function for five minutes because of the scorching sensations inside her mouth. It’s also not that I can’t tell it’s hot — I just don’t really care, as long as it tastes good. Even so, I don’t intend to eat anything in the range of a Dorset Naga or worse any time soon, because I kinda care whether I live or die these days.
The fact Tobasco has no preservatives in it is great, but if I dislike the flavor, it doesn’t really matter, because I just don’t care to eat it (hearkening back to what TDavid said). It’s like telling me I should puree some garden slugs and mix them in with vinegar to make a very healthy sauce. Well, maybe it is healthy, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to enjoy it, so I won’t use it as a sauce.
Vinegar’s great, by the way, when it’s good vinegar used as vinegar — such as a high quality red wine vinegar used to sautee mushrooms. When it’s cheap vinegar used as hot sauce, on the other hand, it generally just ends up being a boat anchor around the neck of what could otherwise be a good meal.
I know exactly what you mean, Vindaloo is such a great taste.
There’s another benefit; I am genetically really not cut out for hot weather, especially the humidity kills me, but after a good hot vindaloo I’m feeling no pain from the heat outside. It’s like inverse anti-freeze… anti-melt for the metabolism
Vindaloo is my favorite Indian variety of food. The hotter the better. I had some in London in 1995 that I can still taste. It would be worth the airline fare just to have some more. I wish I could remember the name of the restaurant.
Those pepper seeds are tempting, Andreas. Where I’m living now, though, I don’t have a square meter of ground in which to plant one. I don’t suppose they’d do well potted.
Well, look at the Bonsai Chili guide: http://www.fatalii.net/growing/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=95&Itemid=105 Chilies seem to be pretty hardy…
I think Fatalii is Finnish, so he takes his chilies inside and bonsais them for the winter, it’s supposedly good for the crop (no pun intended).