Yet another Hacker News

How Tabasco Became the World's Hot Sauce

16 points bookofjoe 3 days ago 47 comments

Carrok 1 hour ago | parent

I will take just about any hot sauce over Tabasco. If a place doesn't have Cholula, they're not a good restaurant (or are a _very_ good restaurant, and don't have hot sauce at all).

lefstathiou 1 hour ago | parent

While we're offering personal opinions, I respectfully disagree.

jeffnv 1 hour ago | parent

Sometimes Tobasco is exactly what you need! A baked potato with chives, cheddar, and sour cream is really elevated with some Tabasco splashes.

vavooom 1 hour ago | parent

Tabasco is hit or miss, usually good with seafood. Tapatio is my preferred hot sauce with eggs or avocado! And the price point is ideal. Cholua is best with dinners, but the price point can get in the way.

nilamo 1 hour ago | parent

I don't mind tobasco, but I'd rather see a Frank's Red Hot

actualwill 1 hour ago | parent

I don’t want a hot sauce to do more than add some acid and heat to my eggs or po’boy sandwich, therefore Tabasco. I find others too present and opinionated, making the dish just taste like the hot sauce.

sillyfluke 1 hour ago | parent

>If a place doesn't have Cholula, they're not a good restaurant

If you're comparing only the taste profile of the two, then perhaps, but Cholula is not as hot by comparison, at least to me. Which is why a decent restaurant (US) needs both. I don't like the excessive vinegary taste of tabasco, my work around is to mix it with ketchup on the plate.

SoftTalker 1 hour ago | parent

Louisiana Hot Sauce for me. Beats Tabasco and Franks hands down.

fph 1 hour ago | parent

Warning: sneaky paywall that appears only after scrolling.

dominotw 1 hour ago | parent

world? never ever heard of tobasco in india.

kakacik 1 hour ago | parent

western world, some part of it to be more precise, not exposed to rich variety of other sources of spiciness...

Entire continents work without tabasco just fine. Would be a junior mistake trying to make some curry with it for example. Just like its a junior mistake putting in such headline, unless its click bait

harpersealtako 32 minutes ago | parent

I've traveled to about 50 countries, on every continent except Antarctica and I've found Tabasco in every country I've been to, from Tajikistan to Tunisia to Turkey to Taiwan. At a minimum, it can be found at 99% of hotels that serve an "international" style breakfast with scrambled or fried eggs, and I have found it in enough convenience stores in some of the most remote places that it is highly unlikely that western visitors at hotel buffets are the entirety of the domestic market. It may not be the first option for adding heat to food, or even the second, but it's basically always an option, basically everywhere I've seen.

dcss_gardener 1 hour ago | parent

Before everyone gets into the obvious snobbery and taunts. I was a professional cook for many years and a pretty advanced fermenter myself.

If you don't respect tobasco you don't understand hot sauce. You don't have to like it, I find very little use for it and don't generally keep it around.

But their mastery of a complex and unpredictable natural process, and ability to consistently produce exactly the product they intend to, at this scale, decade after decade, is a nearly incomprehensible feat of food production.

And for some foods you exactly do want "spicy vinegar" which is pretty much their flavor profile. You gotta respect it to respect yourself.

luckydata 1 hour ago | parent

if you live in a place where tomatoes still have some flavor try this: cut a couple tomatoes in small cubes / triangles, add a tablespoon of olive oil, a teaspoon of red wine vinegar, a dash of tabasco, crumble some good tuna in it (like Tonnino or Ortiz) and sprinkle some oregano and salt on top. Goes well with crusty bread, preferably toasted.

That was my fathers' go to summer meal in Italy and I can't think of anything else I'd rather eat when it's hot outside, preferably with a cold lager.

skyyler 1 hour ago | parent

I respect tabasco for what it is, and I do use it when I want "spicy vinegar", but I often want more heat than vinegar.

But yes, the consistency of tabasco is very impressive, especially given how simple the recipe is (and how little salt is used, compared to similar sauces!)

(Also, lovely to see a fan of DCSS in the wild!! Going to play a felid summoner later.)

dcss_gardener 12 minutes ago | parent

Nice! Here's a seed with two acquirements, ring of the mage, and a vehumet altar by d2.

https://dcss.garden/0.34.1/seed/45203

regularfry 1 hour ago | parent

I can also respect the mastery that results in every keg of Heineken being functionally identical. I don't have to like the stuff. Or, heaven forbid, drink it.

psunavy03 25 minutes ago | parent

Anyone who's brewed beer can understand two things at once.

1) The brewmasters of mass-market lagers are legitimate masters of their craft, because that style leaves absolutely no room for error and nowhere to hide mistakes. You can screw up an IPA and cover it in hops, at least to a point. You can screw up a porter or stout and cover it in malt. You have to nail a lager.

2) The product itself is still usually insipid, flavorless, and not worth drinking.

otikik 1 hour ago | parent

"The world" xD

fodkodrasz 47 minutes ago | parent

The world: as the USA. :D

Also: Sriracha begs to differ.

kenjackson 1 hour ago | parent

Tabasco is probably my favorite hot sauce. One of the big reasons is its low sodium count. Its value per gram of sodium IMO has no peer.

skyyler 1 hour ago | parent

Chili oil is a completely different condiment, as it doesn't have the acid, but it's also often 0mg of sodium. I quite like S&B brand, but there are many Chinese varieties that are quite tasty.

kenjackson 1 hour ago | parent

Hmm. Will look into!

A secret of mine is sesame oil. Delicious, also with no sodium. I use it almost as a soy sauce substitute (but even still at much lower quantities due to the calories/fat). It’s not salty at all, but has a certain punch that I like for similar foods.

skyyler 1 hour ago | parent

S&B La-Yu is made with sesame oil, which is unlike most Chinese varieties. Part of why I like it so much. (It's not 100% sesame oil, but the sesame flavour comes through clearly)

goda90 50 minutes ago | parent

While it's not typically low sodium, chili crisp is also a great condiment in the same vein as chili oil.

skyyler 46 minutes ago | parent

Chili crisp is also tasty. I wish beef Lao Gan Ma was available in the US, it's so good.

werdnapk 47 minutes ago | parent

An oyster with 2-3 drops of Tabasco is just the perfect amount of heat.

frmrtntn 1 hour ago | parent

Give us your email to keep reading!

No thanks.

JohnMakin 1 hour ago | parent

Just click reader mode on most sites gets through this, FYI

herodoturtle 48 minutes ago | parent

TIL! Absolute game changer.

Thank you kind stranger.

gopalv 1 hour ago | parent

The annoying thing with hot-sauces is that they're somewhat like a vintage product and longer it ferments the more lag the decisions have on the sales.

The management decisions to scale up production take years to materialize on your food.

Even if you hate what you got out of a bottle you bought this week, that taste is not what made the sauce popular years ago. Popularity seems to cause a quality fade in everything that scales out of a single factory.

For example, the Sriracha from 7 years ago tasted totally different than today & it is the peppers that changed, not the recipe. Palo Alto fire fighters has gotten more cumin than chillis as the spicy stuff goes to the XX version. The Athabascan sauces I've loved from Alaska have slowly morphed sweeter and maple.

Tabasco for all its faults hasn't changed that much in the 20 years I've been having it.

ReptileMan 52 minutes ago | parent

Fermentation for foods is really short. Usually a matter of weeks.

Aging takes as long as it needs, but I don't think that the periods are that great for sauces.

Formula tweaking is usually done for costs reasons.

psunavy03 23 minutes ago | parent

Huy Fong also famously had a blowup with their main pepper supplier that ended in litigation and the supplier starting a competing brand, so it's not surprising their Sriracha now tastes differently, given they literally had to source different peppers for it.

luckydata 1 hour ago | parent

why everyone spells it "tobasco" when it's "tabasco"? Is that an american thing?

dyauspitr 1 hour ago | parent

I rarely have Tabasco. I don’t think it’s very good. It’s too watery, too much vinegar, not enough heat and the flavor is too sour forward. I also like my hot sauces where all the sourness comes from the lactic acid from fermentation. I’m not sure if Tabasco adds vinegar after the fact, but it feels like it does.

Another thing I really like in hot sauces is the slight carbonation fizz you get from the still fermenting hot sauce which isn’t in Tabasco or for that matter in anything you can buy in stores.

Making hot sauce at home is extremely cheap and very easy. I have a lot of hot sauce maybe more than a gallon a month and if I wanted to buy that in stores I would be spending hundreds or thousands. The stuff I make it home probably costs $20 in ingredients for the entire month.

The steps are simple get a 64 ounce mason jar get a fermentation lid for it. Fill it up completely to the top with chopped up peppers. Add a 3% salt solution to it all the way to the top. Get a glass weight to push all the peppers down and ensure they’re under the solution. You can add a clove of garlic if you want and then just let it sit for 7 to 10 days and then blend it. If you get fuzzy mold at the top, throw it away, but you will almost never get mold if you ensure that all the peppers are fully submerged.

logancbrown 1 hour ago | parent

Tabasco is much more of a spice than a sauce, and I reckon thats one of the reasons its so popular. I can put Tabasco on many more foods of different types than I could with Cholula, Franks, Tapatio, Valentina, or Sriracha

garciasn 44 minutes ago | parent

That's interesting. I find most of those that you listed, aside from Valentina (I am NOT a fan), as something I can put on basically everything--and actively do.

Out of the hot sauces, Tabasco is my least used these days. 30y ago, it was really all that was available; but, now, we have such a wide and varied option set at just about every restaurant that I find myself almost never using it.

sfjailbird 37 minutes ago | parent

Same. I have most of those listed on my table, and hardly ever use Tabasco. Too much vinegar and very one-note.

hathawsh 1 hour ago | parent

Growing up in my family, "hot sauce" was Pace picante sauce / salsa. I think that's true for a lot of America also.

https://theempirebuilderspodcast.com/244-pace-salsa/

Tabasco is OK, but Pace is the sauce that we always consume before it expires.

jandrewrogers 1 hour ago | parent

The US military was the major vector for Tabasco spreading globally. It has been a ubiquitous part of military rations forever. Some other foods became globalized the same way (e.g. spam) but this might be the most successful example of the US military as a food marketing vehicle.

My main issue with Southern-style hot sauce like Tabasco is that it tends to be far too vinegar-forward for my taste. I strongly prefer Mexican-style sauces.

sejje 51 minutes ago | parent

cholula is the best

I liked one called Yucatan Sunshine as well, but it's hard to find these days

rsyring 13 minutes ago | parent

Yucatan Sunshine was my favorite hot sauce for a number of years and then became almost impossible to find in the US Midwest. So interesting to see someone else mention it and on HN of all places! :)

mhink 48 minutes ago | parent

> My main issue with Southern-style hot sauce like Tabasco is that it tends to be far too vinegar-forward for my taste. I strongly prefer Mexican-style sauces.

For what it's worth, this is sort of the point of this sauce- like malt vinegar, it makes more sense as a condiment than an ingredient. A lot of Southern and Cajun dishes don't have much acidity in and of themselves, so a vinegar-forward sauce helps balance them out while adding a little bit of heat as well.

selimthegrim 58 minutes ago | parent

I personally prefer Cajun Chef but it does tend to be on the salty side and it can separate when you let it sit for too long.

xavdid 45 minutes ago | parent

If you ever find yourself in southern Louisiana, the Tabasco factory on Avery Island is worth the visit! You can see the factory floor, try as many variants of the sauce as you want, and learn a ton about the history of the company.

It's also a beautiful property complete with a ecologically important bird sanctuary. Just a fascinating day!

Pigo 40 minutes ago | parent

I took a detour to visit there once, many year ago, and it was well worth it. I remember being surprised by how small the factory seemed compared to what I expected.

tyjen 42 minutes ago | parent

Everyone has their preferences and we keep Crystal Hot Sauce, Tabasco, and whatever hot sauces we've created on hand. Our last hot sauce was a ferment using Genghis Khan Brain peppers, which was absolutely amazing; covered all the bases we wanted in a hot sauce for general use.

For Tabasco, we keep it on hand, because it seems to pair well with a lot of the sauerkraut dishes we prepare.