Remember when you first added a drop of Tabasco to your food, and you were floored by the flavor and burn it added to your meal?
Those days are long gone now, aren’t they? Adding Tabasco to your food is now something you do because you accidentally pulled into a restaurant that doesn’t fully comprehend what hot is. These days, you’re all about gourmet hot sauce – it’s hotter and has infinitely more flavor than you can explain. (We understand that.) But, believe it or not, there is more to the gourmet hot sauce than you might think.
Gourmet Hot Sauce Takes Years to Perfect
Okay, sometimes you get lucky. For example, the original Mad Dog 357 Hot Sauce came out perfectly on the first try. The sauce you taste when you open a new bottle of this fiery condiment is the recipe as it was conceived.
But, mostly, gourmet hot sauce begins with an idea that grows and transforms during a development phase. And, sometimes, this process can take years. That’s because it is not just a matter of releasing a condiment that’s simply, wildly hot. Gourmet hot sauce is all about a perfectly balanced bottle that matches the flavor to the heat. It’s something that ordinary hot sauce just cannot do.
Perfect Recipes Are Not Machine AutomatedThere is something to be said for automating food production. It does make it easier and faster to get products to hungry consumers. But, not everyone enjoys gourmet hot sauce (we’re not totally sure why, but that’s the truth of it). So, it’s usually okay if it takes a little longer to craft perfect batches of killer condiments… as long as the Mad Dog is on the shelves when you need it.
Anyone that takes their gourmet hot sauce as seriously as we do knows that it’s always best when it begins with the tender loving care of hand measurements. And that’s exactly what goes into every batch of Mad Dog hot sauce; each recipe is still hand-measured even after we’ve perfected the recipe. That’s why you reach for it again and again.
Gourmet Hot Sauces Are All about the Flavor
When a new, world record-holding pepper is discovered (or usually, developed), it’s not a simple matter of tossing a few of those peppers in an existing recipe and calling it a new sauce. In fact, it’s the opposite of that. New peppers, like the Carolina Reaper, need to be considered for what they are. They have unique qualities, even if they do overlap with other peppers that contributed to their development.
Chili peppers are central to the development of any new gourmet hot sauce. Everything else must revolve around a pepper’s unique taste sensation. And, it can take time and very careful consideration. Even if there is a popular flavor that taste buds are demanding, a gourmet hot sauce needs to work this into the recipe rather than using it as a base – otherwise, the quality you’ve come to expect will dwindle.
So, now that you know what differentiates a gourmet hot sauce from, well, Tabasco, isn’t it time you got in on the game? And, if you’re looking for a new flavor, you might just want to get some of our new Mad Dog Reaper Sriracha Sauce. It’ll completely transform your ideas about how a gourmet hot sauce should taste.