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.

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!

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.

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

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 they 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.

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.

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).

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

"The world" xD

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

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world? never ever heard of tobasco in india.