Category: Cooking

Hot Sauce Review – (Louisiana’s Pure) Crystal Hot Sauce

Full disclosure – Taking a quick vacation to a small middle-of-nowhere fishing town with wife and kiddos this week. WiFi a little sketchy, and there’re only two restaurants here – both seafood (I’m veggie and wife and kids are highly allergic to shellfish, so unfortunately, won’t be reviewing those this time), but also using this as a time to unplug from the daily stresses of modern life, especially before another (virtual) school year starts! Tomorrow, I’ll be back to more regular posting, so that said…

In continuation of my new format of prefixing my reviews with…well, “Review” and prefixing my “Review” prefix with the type of review being done (have I bored you enough yet? :-)), this is the first of my official Hot Sauce reviews, titled as such. Moving on…

Aah, the state of Louisiana. My neighboring state to the East, known for so many things – awesome football (college and pro), wild parties, Bourbon Street and yes, spicy food! Cajun cooking (and the unique blend of spices it brings) is one of the staples of the Pelican State, and with it, comes a unique blend and wholehearted use of spice and flavor. Louisiana itself is also the home for the ubiquitously known Tabasco brand, and yours truly has been fortunate enough to visit Avery Island (not a real island, but the name of the town!) – the very heart of where this is made. I’ve toured the factory and observed it both from the lens of a chemical engineer (my background) and a Heataholic!

Being a vegetarian (no meat or seafood), I can’t truly experience all the delicacies Cajun cuisine has to offer – Jambalaya, crawfish boils, fish fry’s, Po’boys, etc. But I do the next best thing – enjoy the Cajun spice, without the Cajun food. I’ve tried Jambalaya without the sausage, vegetarian Po’Boys, indulging the same Cajun spice used in crawfish boils with corn on the cob and potatoes and dunking Hush Puppies in my favorite Cajun hot sauces! That brings me to Crystal Hot Sauce. Often overshadowed by its larger competitor in Avery Island and a host of smaller competitors all around, Crystal is a Louisiana-based hot sauce that provides the simple, yet sharp kick in the pants needed in your food. I admire its simplicity (given it has only three ingredients and none of those require an advanced degree in chemistry or chemical engineering to decipher).

Being in a town of 500 while on vacation, when your only source of food is a Dollar General store down the street, it’s slim pickin’s! But I followed my own advice on using grocery stores and was still able to pick up a bottle of Crystal. Crystal is great with just about anything – Cajun food, but also pizza, tacos, pasta, Bloody Mary’s, and yes, just plain on its own for a spicy kick!

Positives:

  • Good spicy kick
  • Simplicity in ingredients (only 3 – cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt)
  • Guilt-free consumption – 0 calories!
  • Good website with recipes

Negatives:

  • Flavor itself is not unique and is hardly distinguishable from Texas Pete’s or Frank’s
Three ingredients – cayenne peppers, vinegar and salt. Like they say, KISS – Keep it Short and Simple!
Zero calories, zero guilt!
Crystal Hot Sauce can be used with anything, or in my case, on its own as a quick drink! 🙂
When options for spice are limited, be creative! In a town of 500, I could buy crushed red pepper and hot sauce! No excuses!

Spice on, my friends!

A Spoonful of Bhut Jolokia Powder…

Ghost peppers are challenging. I’ve always said they’ve been my bogeyman so far. They’re not a white whale as I’ve handled them, but they can be…tough to digest! Unlike sugar, as Mary Poppins would sing, can help make the medicine go down – A spoonful of Bhut Jolokia and you’ll likely need medicine!

OK, that is an exaggeration (sort of), but what’s the deal with this spicy pepper? Do a quick Google or Wikipedia search and you will find that it is one of THE spiciest peppers naturally known to mankind. In fact, until 2007, it was the hottest one known to mankind (based on spice units – something I will cover in a future post), but as of this writing, has taken the Bronze award (3rd place) in the ongoing Spice Olympics…

Given its insane heat intensity, how can you best enjoy this magnificent creation of Mother Nature? There are plenty of sauces out there that use ghost peppers. I recently had a post on one of those (and more posts will come on this awesome pepper and its derivatives!). But if you want something a tad more intense, especially when cooking (as opposed to a basic condiment), might I recommend the Bhut Jolokia powder.

Being a powder, there is no water or other ingredients to potentially reduce the spicy effect and the dryness of the powder adds to the intensity. I use it sparingly when cooking. Even just a dash and the wife and kids are complaining they need a respirator, but if you’re looking to heat up your stir fry, curry or just want something more daring on your pizza, pasta or omelettes, to list a few, then give it a shot!

This is the brand of Ghost Pepper powder I buy at my local HEB. Lots of options both at your store and Amazon.
I used it sparingly with my broccoli-zucchini-onion stir fry. Even then, just look at how much red there is!
The final product! Wife and kids had to be upstairs for two hours until the fumes subsided! 🙂

Spice on, my friends!

Pro-Tip: Heat on Heat for a more Intense Spice Experience

Keeping up with my latest diet – low-carbs-during-the-week, carbs-on-the-weekend, I decided to make myself zucchini pizza bites for dinner. Lots of recipes out there on making these that are mostly similar, but this is the one I used from an oven temperature and time perspective.

The add-ons are always up to the cook at hand, and like a normal pizza, each person has their preference. Being the one, the ONLY Heataholic, my preference is to maximize the spicy experience I get from my food. One thing I’ve noticed over the years on that front is the following equation – Heat+Heat=TONS OF HEAT!

You’re thinking – “Ok, Annoyingly Ostentatious Math Minor, what does that mean and what does that have to do with zucchini pizza bites?” Simple. It’s that when you cook with spice, i.e., heat it for an extended period of time, the intensity of this hotter-by-temperature spice is much higher than when you just add it on afterwards, where the spice itself will be at room temperature. So Heat (oven) + Heat (spice) will give you a much more heightened level of spice you wouldn’t get otherwise.

With my zucchini bites, I added both ground black pepper and crushed red pepper flakes to both the base, cut zucchini (after I’d drizzled olive oil) and also a second round of crushed red pepper once I’d added the sauce and shredded mozzarella as you can see below:

See those nice little red flakes right before I pop them in the oven!

And of course, once they came out (but before they cooled), I added a third round of crushed red pepper to take advantage of the hot temperature, before I let my bites cool down so I could consume them!

Spice on, my friends!

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