Hot Sauce Dangers
What are hot sauce dangers? When you’re preparing your own hot sauce, you’ll need to steer clear of the three most common dangers elements of hot sauce: spice, sugar and skin. You can find dozens of hot sauce recipes to suit any kind of dish, and you’ll find each variety of spicy food requires a different set of ingredients for its hot sauce. For example, hot sauce for a barbeque will be much thicker and sweeter than the sauce needed for a flavorsome chili. Try mixing recipes together and adapting them to your level of spice.
Overpowering Spice
The first of the hot sauce dangers to be aware of is the overuse of chilies in your sauce. When adding chilies to your hot sauce, you have the choice of using dried chilies or chopping up fresh ones. Dried chilies have the main advantage of coming in different spice levels, so you can be more assured of the temperature you’re going to get. Fresh chilies tend to be much cheaper, but the heat rating can change from chili to chili, even when bought in the same pack. Either way, the best way to avoid making your hot sauce unusable from overpowering spice is to prepare the rest of the ingredients first, and add the chilies in small doses.
Sugar Compensation
Some chilies are so spicy that a milligram will mean the difference between a bland hot sauce and one that is too hot to eat. If you have fallen foul of the first of the hot sauce dangers, you’ll need to find a way of cooling your sauce down. You could try adding:
- Cream. This will bulk out your sauce quite a lot, and turn it more into a stir in sauce rather than a condiment that people will add to their food. You could also serve cream on the side of the main dish.
- Sugar. Another classic recipe for reducing the heat of a hot sauce is to add brown sugar to the mix. However, the big danger here is that it is very easy to add too much. In the same way that you can’t take chilies out of the sauce once you’ve put them in, you can’t remove sugar either. It’s better to add a tiny amount at a time to avoid making your sauce too sweet.
- Honey. This works in a similar way to the sugar, but adds a richer texture to your sauce. Consider adding honey to a barbeque hot sauce to coat and crisp the meat.
Skin Irritation
The last of the main hot sauce dangers is capsaicin, the key ingredient that makes things spicy. Capsaicin is a natural irritant for humans and the sensation of spice is actually the capsaicin irritating your mouth and digestive tract. These are very sensitive areas of your body, and capsaicin will also cause intense irritation in other sensitive spots, such as your eyes and nose. This is why it will be essential to wash your hands regularly when you’re handling chilies and hot sauces, and avoid touching your face. If you do make a mistake and touch your nose or eyes, cover the afflicted area with sour cream. You may look like an idiot, but it will provide instant relief.
The best way to avoid these hot sauce dangers is to follow a set recipe for the first few times that you make a hot sauce. These will have been tried and tested for spice levels, and they will give you an idea of how much chili to use, and your spice tolerance. Another way to get an idea of what tastes you like is to try as many different brands from your local supermarket and look at the ingredients of the ones that you like the best.
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