TABASCO Pepper Sauce

Original TABASCO Pepper Sauce has long been Louisiana’s most famous export after Mardi Gras and New Orleans’ jazz. The most famous name in heat for over 140 years, the fiery red hot sauce is indispensable when it comes to making drinks, a fact that makes it a fixture behind every bar in the civilized world.

Introduced in 1868 by the McIlhenny Company of Avery Island, Louisiana, TABASCO Pepper Sauce is made from handpicked Capsicum frutescens red peppers. To ensure they’ve reached peak ripeness, field workers carry red sticks and use them as gauges to check each peppers color. If they’re not the right shade of red, the peppers are left on the vines. After harvesting, they are immediately mashed and placed in used bourbon barrels along with salt from the company’s own mine. The barrels are sealed, then transferred to a warehouse where they remain untouched for three years to age.

Afterwards, the mash is emptied from the barrels, filtered to remove the seeds and skins and blended with distilled white vinegar. The mixture is stirred regularly over the course of a month before bottling.

Hot is a relative term. For example, the Original TABASCO Sauce has a Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) rating of 2500-5000, which puts it on par with Paprika and jalapeño and Anaheim peppers. The Scoville scale measures a product’s spicy heat based on its capsaicin content—the natural compound that produces all of the sizzle.

Those looking for something more combustible should test-drive the TABASCO Habanero Sauce, which throttles up the heat to 7000-8000 SHU. While it won’t permanently scald your larynx, it’ll certainly feel as if it has. Delicious as the Habanero Sauce is, it’s not for the faint of heart.

TABASCO Chipotle Pepper Sauce features a blend of the classic sauce with added red jalapeño peppers. It’s a savory hot sauce that tips the scales at a more reasonable 2000-2500 SHU. Milder still is TABASCO Garlic Pepper Sauce. It’s made with a blend of three peppers—red jalapeños, cayenne and the oak-aged TABASCO peppers—and generates a zesty, yet tolerable 1200-2400 units of heat.

With a Scoville rating of 600-800, TABASCO Green Jalapeño Pepper Sauce has gained popularity not as a result of its fiery heat but its brilliant flavor. The same is true about the tamest of the Louisiana natives, TABASCO Sweet & Spicy Pepper Sauce. Created with an Asian character, it brings a mere 100-600 units of heat to the dance.

While some like it hot, others like it warmer still. And even others like it magma-hot. Rest assured, TABASCO Pepper Sauces have all of those wants and desires covered.