Hot Sauces

Hot sauces and chile pastes are built on ground chile peppers. Thin pepper sauces add salt and vinegar, either straight away or after the pepper mash has fermented, then are strained or blended thin enough to shake.

How to choose Hot Sauces

  • Scoville rating. Scoville units measure a chile's heat. Jalapeños run 2,500 to 5,000, cayenne 30,000 to 50,000 and habaneros 100,000 to 300,000, so the pepper named on the label says more than the word hot.
  • Fermented or fresh. A fermented mash is ground with salt and left in barrels while lactic acid builds and the pH drops. Fresh sauces get their sourness from added acid such as vinegar.
  • Acid. Under US rules, peppers made shelf stable by adding vinegar count as acidified foods and must test at pH 4.6 or lower, on a scale where lower means more acidic. Condiment sauces that are mostly acid with only a little pepper fall outside that rule.

About Hot Sauces

Hot sauces get their heat from capsaicinoids, compounds made by chile peppers that cause a burning feeling where they touch the lining of the mouth. How much a pepper makes depends on its variety and on how it was grown.

The Louisiana method is the classic example. Ripe red peppers were first mashed with salt and aged about a month in crocks or barrels, and one large Louisiana maker now ages its mash up to three years in white oak. The mash is then blended with vinegar, aged again, strained and bottled.

Scoville heat units take their name from the pharmacologist Wilbur Scoville, whose test diluted a chile extract until tasters could no longer feel any burn. Pure capsaicin rates 16 million units, and a bell pepper rates zero.

At a glance

Made from
Chile peppers and salt, with vinegar in pepper sauces
Main types
Fermented mash, fresh vinegar sauce, chile paste
Unopened
About one year
Once opened
Refrigerate

Hot Sauces questions

What cools your mouth after too much hot sauce?

Reach for milk or yogurt. Extension food specialists note that dairy helps counter capsaicin, the compound behind the burn. Stirring a fiery sauce into sour cream or yogurt tames it the same way at the table. If you cut fresh chiles to make your own sauce, wear plastic gloves and keep your hands away from your eyes.

How do labs measure the Scoville heat of a pepper today?

Labs now use high-performance liquid chromatography, a machine test that extracts a dried, ground sample and measures each capsaicinoid directly. It replaced panels of human tasters and gives an objective reading. Ratings printed on bottles are still estimates, because the same pepper variety can test milder or hotter depending on temperature and water during the season.

Does hot sauce need to be refrigerated after opening?

Yes, for the long run. Extension storage guides give an unopened bottle about a year in the cupboard and say to refrigerate hot sauce once it is open. Sealed vinegar sauces are acidic enough to sit safely on a shelf until then.

Sources: New Mexico State University Chile Pepper Institute; NDSU Extension; US Code of Federal Regulations, 21 CFR 114.

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