So anyway, we ran out of hot sauce last week.
As I’ve mentioned before, I like jazzing up my food with a splash of the ol’ pepper spray. In the absence of the amazing Dan-T’s White Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce (still not available in the UK), I’ve been sticking to the tried and tested Encona Cajun hot pepper sauce (cayenne peppers). Occasionally, though, I do browse around for alternative flavours and new experiences.
While snuffling through the sauces aisle at out local Safeway, I noticed a bottle I didn’t recognise. It looked hot, though, so I picked it up and checked out the label. It was “Who Dares Burns” from the Hot-Headz. In my travels across the web I had come across the Hot-Headz web site before, and they looked like pepper enthusiasts. I dropped the bottle into our shopping trolly with a satisfied grin.
Tried it tonight for the first time.
Oh. My. God.
And me an atheist, too.
This stuff isn’t hot sauce–it’s a Pepper Genie trapped in a bottle. And the only three wishes you get when you release it are “Make it stop hurting, make it stop hurting, make it stop hurting!“
The flavour isn’t as good as Dan-T’s, but it’s hotter by an order of magnitude. I made the mistake of dipping my pinkie into the sauce and trying it neat before dosing my food with it, and it damn near took my head off. My throat constricted in a characteristic pepper burn reflex, and the ensuing cough brought tears to my eyes. I normally pour a generous teaspoonful of Encona hot sauce over a plate of gnocchi with bolognese sauce, but even a few meagre drops of “Who Dares Burns” was too much for comfort. After chugging a glass of cola and a glass of water, I had to resort to heavy duty flame retardant: milk.
I don’t know how long this sauce will last on the shelves of Safeway (how long before the first lawsuits?), but I’m glad to have had the experience.
(How glad I’ll be tomorrow when the experience progresses further through my digestive system, I don’t know.)