Of Skulls and Scovilles
12.30.06 By Collin DavidI don’t know exactly why, but I’ve recently developed a very distinct interest in all things culinary. Maybe aspiring to experience a vast variety of cuisine isn’t the best pursuit for someone who suffers from lactose intolerance and very possibly IBS, but I’ve just about had it with Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. Don’t get me wrong - I love the stuff, but there’s a vast world out there, and I want to eat the hell out of it. I’m already notorious for my love of sushi and consumption of most things that swim, but I can’t help but regret that there are animals that I’ve not yet tasted.
Unrepentant carnivorism aside, it’s long been a secret dream of mine to not only get my very own kitchen for this exploration, but display a vast array of hot sauce bottles along one wall of it. It wasn’t until my grandfather started growing peppers and grinding them up into his own special hot pepper flakes that I even developed a taste for spicy things, but the desire for hot sauce bottles predates that. Mostly, I think I’m attracted to them because the labels on really good hot sauces look like they could just as well be printed on the back of Hell’s Angels jackets and use a lot of profanity in their titles. [Click to enlarge, and visit Sweat 'N' Spice for more!]
See how attractive that is?
The vast subculture of people who pursue hot foods is probably no surprise, but the sheer breadth of the pursuit and available products is fascinating. Any dedicated heatseeker will tell you about the Scoville scale, which measures the heat of any given consumable. Varieties of peppers fall at different places along this scale, which tops out at about 16 million units. For comparison, your average jalapeño is about 8000 units, and anything near the top of the scale will usually come with a disclaimer and multiple health warnings. While the hottest of sauces can potentially cause damage to the stomach lining with repeated use, any tastebuds that you damage should replace themselves after a few weeks.
The variety of possible sauces (and more importantly, their labels) probably first presented themselves to me in the gourmet aisle of Marshalls, of all places. You know, back next to the sofa pillows and dusty bottles of boysenberry jam, all reds and oranges, images of skeletons and devils and heads with fire shooting from their mouths and if you’re lucky, a naked chick. If you’re unlucky, there are plenty of ‘ass’ references and tremendously off-color phraseology, but it’s all part of the package.
It’s a fairly inexpensive hobby, unless you’re looking to explore Blair’s Reserve, commonly regarded as the hottest available product on the planet - an artfully packaged pure extract, in glass and wax. Like a fine wine, these are collectible and rare, made more desirable by being signed and numbered - and roughly $300 for a tiny vial of crystals. This seems to be the true apex of classy peppers, but you can easily find quick reviews of any number of hot sauces all over the internet. Fire Girl’s offering of custom-labeled bottles of hot sauce seems to open up the possibilities to an endless degree, but the sauce inside remains the same. The question arises, should I collect these for their labels, or to foist upon attendees at the debaucherous, inebriated parties that I’ll surely have one day? Alas, such parties would require the aforementioned kitchen, a predilection for alcohol, and more than two friends. Those days are distant, yet.
Health and bodily risks aside, a kitchen full of demons, fire and death would certainly be a thing to behold on a purely aesthetic level, and doubly on the palate. Do you have a favorite hot sauce? An extra awesome label for my kitchen? Comment down below!
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Article Tags: , Blair's Reserve, bottles, culinary, Fire Girl, hot sauce, Scoville================
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