The Best Hot Sauce for Italian Food

Even the most ardent of Chileheads hesitates to juice up a classic Italian dish like a fabulous lasagna or a great veal parmesan with hot sauce. Often, the hot sauce fights the oregano, basil, or rich tomato base of the dish. Trust Spicy Food Guy when he says cayenne and scotch bonnet pepper based hot sauces simply don't work.

Likewise, a strong garlic hot sauce can simply over flavor an Italian dish, and a sauce that is too hot overpowers and masks the Italian flavor.

Spicy Food Guy has searched the nooks and crannies of the hot sauce world looking for the elixir that can both enhance and add heat to a great plate of spaghetti.

So pleased as punch was Spicy Food Guy when he discovered "Sheriff Jim Taylor's All Natural Garlic and Herb Hot Sauce" that professes to "add zest to any Italian dish." And Spicy Food Guy is here to testify that Sheriff Jim Taylor tells no lies: his hot sauce is indeed the perfect complement to a penne and bolognese entree. Not overly hot, nice touches of garlic and basil and oregano without being overbearing. It has a slight saltiness and vinegar that really works with marinara.

But there are some mysteries.

First, just who was Sheriff Taylor and what was his role in hot sauce development? We know from the bottle that "Sheriff Jim Taylor was the true and real sheriff of Surry County North Carolina in the 1960s and 1970s and lived in Mount Airy, North Carolina."

That's it. That's all we know. There are no references to how the Sheriff of Surry County came to be associated with a hot sauce, either on the label or on the Internet. Did he wake one night in the midst of an epiphany filled dream and yell "Tabasco peppers with Italian herbs, that's the secret to the elixir?" Spicy Food Guy does not know.

Second mystery? Sheriff Taylor's hot sauces are not widely available. Google searches turn up only "The Rustic Barn" as the venue to order Sheriff Taylor's products. And even more mysterious, the Garlic and Herb hot sauce is not one of the products available to order.

Which brings Spicy Food Guy to his third and final mystery: just how in the hell did SFG end up with this particular hot sauce in his collection? Spicy Food Guy has no earthly idea. Did he get it in a North Carolina airport? Possibly. Or at Zestfest 2007 or 2008? Maybe. But he doesn't really know. Not at all.

Spicy Food Guy suspects it was smuggled into his collection by Elves. It is the season, after all. And Spicy Food Guy has been soooo nice as of late. And full. Lasagna with Sheriff Jim Taylor Hot Sauce. You heard it here.

Scotch Bonnet Peppers Make Killer Hot Sauces

Spicy Food Guy is a huge fan of hot sauces made with Scotch Bonnet peppers.

Scotch bonnets are natives of Jamaica, and are commonly found in many jerk seasonings. They are also known to keep away ghosts, or "duppies", as they are referred to on the Island. How a high-powered chile pepper that packs up to 350,000 scoville units came to be viewed as mystic protector against ghosts called duppies is a mystery to Spicy Food Guy, but he suspects that the early origins of this superstition have something to do with another powerful Jamaican plant called Cannabis Sativa. But Spicy Food guy digresses.

A superb example of a Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce is Bodine's Fire in the Hole. Bodine's is known for its variety of fresh garlic, and they pack a lot of it in Fire in the Hole. The Scotch Bonnet Pepper brings the tart and smoky sweet-to-heat element that is so unique to the Scotch Bonnet.

Try it on chicken pot pie. Really. You'll thank me. So says Spicy Food Guy.

Honey Makers Bring Heat

Spicy Food Guy and Beautiful Spouse of Spicy Food Guy (BSOSFG) met Zane and Zack's Mom and Dad at Zestfest 2007. Nice family. They have lots of boys, lots of bees, but no daughters. Spicy Food Guy is OK with that. That's just how they roll, as Loud Only Son of Spicy Food Guy (LOOSOSFG) would say.

Besides making boys (three, at last count, Zane, Zack, and Hans. Hans probably coming as a real relief to realtives who were expecting Zippy or Zillow, but Spicy Food Guy digresses), Sam and his wife also make most excellent honey hot sauces. Spicy Food Guy particularly likes the Honey Chipotle Sauce and the Three Brothers Hot Pepper Sauce.

The Chipotle sauce is a thick mixture of roasted jalapenos and sticky honey. Think sweet and smoky. Spicy Food Guy mostly likes to mix it with mayonnaise for a summer burger grill out. The Three Brother Hot Pepper Sauce is great with fried eggs.

Zane and Zack's is good stuff, even if the owners are Seahawks fans. So says Spicy Food Guy, Steeler fan extraordinaire.

Sorch is Appropriately Named

No lies here.

No pepper extracts either.

Spicy Food Guy is generally disdainful of hot sauces made with pepper extracts. Extracts in hot sauces are like steroids in athletes. Cheating. Un-American. Godless. Counter to the very fabric of the universe.

But Spicy Food Guy digresses.

Scorch is an all natural sauce made by the folks at CaJohn's. It's supposedly one of the hottest natural pepper sauces ever made. Not surprising, given it is made up of Fatalii Chiles, Red Savina Habaneros, and Orange Habaneros. And yes, it scorches, but not insanely so.

One of the big reasons Spicy Food Guy thinks Scorch is the bomb (har!) is that it is thick. Chunky thick. 60% pepper solids, according to John Hard, the formulator.

Scorch has the texture of a thick BBQ sauce, so it allows for delicate presentations if you are one of those uptight pretentious foodie types, in which case Scorch probably kicks your ass. Kinda serves you right. So says Spicy Food Guy.

Best Blend of Hot Sauce and BBQ Sauce

A good way's back, Spicy Food Guy had a business trip that took him to the Green Valley Ranch Resort and Casino outside Las Vegas. Incidentally, Spicy Food Guy notices that every time he travels to Vegas for a business meeting, none of his colleagues ever admits to having lost money at the casino. Everybody has either "broken even" or is "up a little bit." Spicy Food Guy, who could not flush his cash down the toilet any faster than he loses it at the Blackjack table, is very, very suspicious.

So one afternoon, after Spicy Food Guy had hurriedly given the dealer at the Blackjack Table several hundred dollars, he dejectedly meandered just outside the Green Valley grounds. Behold, Spicy Food Guy's good luck reappeared in the form of Lucille's Smokehouse BBQ. Lucille's is an authentic real deal hickory smokehouse and both the food and the people are first rate. Spicy Food Guy especially recommends the ribs.

The real find, though, was not the food, but what Lucille's calls "non traditional" hot sauce. Smokin' sauce, according to the label. To Spicy Food Guy, it tastes like a habanero hot sauce with some chipotle bbq sauce and some red peppers and onions thrown in. Simply outstanding. Spicy Food Guy now uses it on his own smoked ribs.

When Spicy Food Guy bought two bottles to take home, the folks at Lucille's warned him that if the bottles got too warm, they would explode. Spicy Food Guy was not sure if the folks at Lucille's were pulling his leg, but he took no chances. Spicy Food Guy took two Budweiser's out of his mini bar and stashed the Lucille's Smokin Sauce there for the balance of the trip.

So get yourself some Lucille's. A great, different kind of hot sauce.

Yes, Spicy Food Guy drank the two beers. Twelve bucks.

Best Hot Sauce to Add to Chili

That's right -- it's a mustard.

A couple of years ago, Spicy Food Guy had a revelation. If the best chili cheese dogs always have mustard on them, couldn't chili itself be improved by the addition of spicy mustard?

Indeed it could.

The search for the appropriate mustard, however, took much longer. For awhile, Spicy Food Guy used the world renowned Gladys's mustard out of St. Thomas. Spicy Food Guy was turned onto Gladys by the people at Passionate Food. Gladys's mustard, while perfect for the ham and cheese sandwich, somehow did not connect perfectly with a bowl of steaming chili.

Enter Crazy Mother Pucker's Maniacal Mustard. The Crazy Mother Pucker hot sauce line has won five Golden Chile awards over the years, and the Fire Roasted Fusion Hot Sauce is one of Spicy Food Guy's hot sauce staples.

The Maniac, which has a more fiery flavor than Gladys's, adds a district mustard zest to chili that gives the overall palette a tangier and more robust flavor experience. For you Sales Guys out there, that means the chili tastes better.

Someday, when mustard in chili is a common practice, you can say "I've been doing that for years." Just Spicy Food Guy's way of making the world a little bit better place.

Best Hot Sauce for Eggs

The best hot sauce you can put on eggs, hands down, is Memphis Mojo Original Red Hot Sauce. Spicy Food Guy is unsure whether it is the scotch bonnet peppers or other seasonings that makes Memphis Mojo a standout, but the blend of flavors is perfect if you are looking to take an omelette to the next level.

Beautiful Spouse of Spicy Food Guy (BSOSFG) takes her omelette without the mojo, which is her prerogative. So when Spicy Food Guy flips an omelette for BSOSFG, he adds a small heap of smoked cheddar cheese at the end, which she loves. She also likes turkey bacon, which is blasphemy.

Long live the house of pork. Eat up now.

Best Hot Sauce Selection in a Cajun Restaurant

Now just how inviting is this?

Welcome to Heaven on Seven, a cajun restaurant (with three locations) in the Chicago area. Spicy Food Guy goes there for two reasons: 1) the fun of trying the dozen or so hot sauces placed on the table (and available for purchase after dinner is finished), and 2) the amazing cajun menu.

Spicy Food Guy recommends the BBQ Ribs Appetizer, the Hot as a Mutha Stuffed Habanero Chile, and the Fried Catfish as an entree. Spicy Food Guy tries to eat there every time he has occasion to visit the Windy City, and he hasn't had a bad meal, or even an average meal, yet.

Eat up and enjoy!