Hot Sauce Nation: America's Burning Obsession

by Denver Nicks

Hot Sauce Nation  is a journey of discovery, delving into history, culture, immigration patterns, and the science of spice and pain. Through the stories of hot sauce makers and lovers, it explores the unique hold the dark prince of condiments has over the American heart. 

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Food

198 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2016

Reviews

[Yael · Rating 5 out of 5]

Now for something a little different: Denver Nicks's Hot Sauce Nation: America's Burning Obsession, a delight to read and a serious discussion of all things chili.

Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans -- language [ravens and cats have language], rationality [hah!], culture [birds, other primates, even Tyrannosaurus rex had and have it], and so on. I'd stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce.
-- Dr. Paul Bloom, [as quoted on page ix of the book]

Actually, this may go some way to explaining that humans are the only animal life-forms to have tamed fire. Not to mention setting fires for the sheer, ecstatic joy of it. Or is that the other way around?

Be that as it may and howsomever, while Tabasco sauce is by no means the hottest of hot sauces, those who have not been exposed to chilies and chili sauces before tasting Tabasco sauce will, upon ingesting it, look wildly around for the nearest fire extinguisher, water-tap, gallon of ice cream, or anything else capable of putting out that conflagration that has suddenly erupted in their mouths and take it in as fast as they can. (Ice cream works, due to its fat content. Don't use the fire extinguisher for this -- it will simultaneously freeze your mouth solid and poison you. A word to the wise.) In fact, however, that terrible burning is a mere illusion, set off by contact of nerve-ends in your mouth with capsaicin, the active ingredient in chilies and chili sauce that makes tour mouth feel as if you'd just ingested yellow-hot lava. There is no actual injury to your mouth and tongue, even though for a while it sure feels like it. But once the "burn" calms down, your eyes stop watering, and your sinuses are cleared out by the experience, you actually begin to feel rather good, then awash in a euphoric high some say is better than the afterglow of sex, due to the endorphins in your system set off by that initial blast of that terrible PAIN. The taste of the food on which you use the sauce tastes much better for it. Thus, fans of red-hot chili peppers all over the world who delight in the possibly perverse pleasure of ingesting the stuff..

The pungency of a chili pepper -- its concentration of capsaicin -- is traditionally measured in Scoville heat units (SHU), named for the American pharmacist Wilbur Lincoln Scoville, who devised the Scoville Organoleptic Test at a Detroit-based pharmaceutical company in 1912. The test measures the degree to which a chili pepper solution must be diluted before capsaicin is no longer detectable to a professional taster. Nowadays a less subjective test, High-Performance liquid Chromatography, is used to analyze capsaicin content, but heat is still generally described in SHU. With the bell pepper weighing in at 0 SCU*, Cholula hot sauce achieves 1,000 SHU, Tabasco Pepper Sauce reaches 5,000 SCU, Grinders Death Nectar out of Kansas City burns at a hearty 337,000 SCU, and it goes up from there. Pure capsaicin tops out the Scoville scale at 16,000,000 SCU. (*Data as provided by the author of this book. Frankly, IMHO in this one case he's dead wrong. Try eating the seeds in a bell pepper by themselves and you'll find out what I mean. This reviewer accepts no responsibility for the results, especially not the expense, embarrassment, and chaos due to calling the fire department to put out what is actually an illusionary fire.)

That said, this book is a treasure, delving into history, culture, immigration patterns, and the sciences of spice and pain. Containing color plates of the chilies themselves, dishes made from the chilies, restaurateurs and restaurateuses who have perfected the use of chili peppers to create their culinary delights, dishes made using peppers of varying strengths, weird people who have based their lives on the Joys of Peppers, and those tiny little bottles containing the culinary equivalent of the nuclear option as well as 10 chapters all about this infernal subject as well as an introduction, a selected bibliography, and a very useful index, this little books is a lot of fun. Whether you are a cook, a devoted chilihead, an average American looking to try something new, an anthropologist wanting to learn more about the crazy cultural phenomena of our very strange country, an historian who wants to know how the hell did these little bundles of culinary U235 become part of American culture, or just someone bored out of his mind who is looking for something interesting, amusing, and new, this book is right up your alley.

But I must here give a cautionary tale for those have little or no experience with chilies:

Notes From An Inexperienced Chili Tester Named FRANK, who was visiting Texas from the East Coast: "Recently, I was honored to be selected as a judge at a chili cook-off. The original person called in sick at the last moment and I happened to be standing there at the judge's table asking directions to the beer wagon when the call came. I was assured by the other two judges (Native Texans) that the chili wouldn't be all that spicy, and besides, they told me I could have free beer during the tasting, So I accepted."

Here are the scorecards from the event:

* * * * *

CHILI # 1 MIKE'S MANIAC MOBSTER MONSTER CHILI

JUDGE ONE: A little too heavy on tomato. Amusing kick.

JUDGE TWO: Nice, smooth tomato flavor. Very mild.

FRANK: Holy shit, what the hell is this stuff? You could remove dried paint from your driveway with it! Took me two beers to put the flames out. I hope that's the worst one. These Texans are crazy.

CHILI # 2 ARTHUR'S AFTERBURNER CHILI

JUDGE ONE: Smokey, with a hint of pork. Slight Jalapeno tang.

JUDGE TWO: Exciting BBQ flavor, needs more peppers to be taken seriously.

FRANK: Keep this out of the reach of children – I'm not sure what I am supposed to taste besides pain! I had to wave off two people who wanted to give me the Heimlich maneuver. They had to rush in more beer when they saw the look on my face.

CHILI # 3 FRED'S FAMOUS BURN DOWN THE BARN CHILI

JUDGE ONE: Excellent firehouse chili! Great kick. Needs more beans.

JUDGE TWO: A beanless chili, a bit salty, good use of peppers.

FRANK: Call the EPA, I've located a uranium spill. My nose feels like I’ve been snorting Drano! Everyone knows the routine by now – get me more beer before I ignite! Barmaid pounded me on the back; now my backbone is in the front part of my chest! I'm getting shit-faced from all that beer.

CHILI # 4 BUBBA'S BLACK MAGIC

JUDGE ONE: Black bean chili with almost no spice. Disappointing.

JUDGE TWO: Hint of lime in the black beans. Good side dish for fish or other mild foods, not much of a chili.

FRANK: I felt something scraping across my tongue, but was unable to taste it, is it possible to burn out taste buds? Sally, the barmaid, was standing behind me with fresh refills; that 300-lb. bitch is starting to look HOT just like this nuclear waste I'm eating. Is chili an aphrodisiac?

CHILI # 5 LINDA'S LEGAL LIP REMOVER

JUDGE ONE: Meaty, strong chili. Cayenne peppers freshly ground, adding considerable kick. Very impressive.

JUDGE TWO: Chili using shredded beef, could use more tomato. Must admit the cayenne peppers make a strong statement.

FRANK: My ears are ringing, sweat is pouring off my forehead, and I can no longer focus my eyes. I farted and four people behind me needed paramedics. The contestant seemed offended when I told her that her chili had given me brain damage. Sally saved my tongue from bleeding by pouring beer directly on it from a pitcher. I wonder if I'm burning my lips off? It really pisses me off that the other judges asked me to stop screaming. Screw those rednecks!

CHILI # 6 VERA'S VERY VEGETARIAN VARIETY

JUDGE ONE: Thin yet bold vegetarian variety chili. Good balance of spice and peppers.

JUDGE TWO: The best yet. Aggressive use of peppers, onions, and garlic. Superb.

FRANK: My intestines are now a straight pipe filled with gaseous, sulfuric flames. I shit myself when I farted and I'm worried it will eat through the chair. No one seems inclined to stand behind me except Sally. Can't feel my lips anymore. I need to wipe my ass with a snow cone made of dry ice!

CHILI # 7 SUSAN'S SCREAMING SENSATION CHILI

JUDGE ONE: A mediocre chili with too much reliance on canned peppers.

JUDGE TWO: Ho hum, tastes as if the chef literally threw in a can of chili peppers at the last moment. I should take note that I am worried about Judge Number 3, he appears to be in a bit of distress, as he is cursing uncontrollably.

FRANK: You could put a grenade in my mouth, pull the pin, and I wouldn't feel a damn thing. I've lost sight in one eye, and the world sounds like it’s made of rushing water. My shirt is covered with chili, which slid unnoticed out of my mouth. My pants are full of lava-like shit to match my damn shirt. At least during the autopsy they'll know what killed me. I've decided to stop breathing, it's too painful. Screw it, I'm not getting any oxygen anyway. If I need air, I'll just suck it in through the 4-inch hole in my stomach.

Note: Paramedics have been called for Judge Number 3 . . .

[Lori L (She Treads Softly) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hot Sauce Nation: America's Burning Obsession by Denver Nicks is a very highly recommended celebration of the most popular condiment on earth and a tribute to the people who make it and the people who love it. Nicks explores the history of hot sauce, and some of the people and places who love it.

"Philosophers have often looked for the defining feature of humans - language, rationality, culture, and so on. I’d stick with this: Man is the only animal that likes Tabasco sauce." Dr. Paul Bloom.

What a timely book as I have just started harvesting my habanero and tabasco chilis, and my jalapenos are coming on strong. I'm not the greatest fan of hot sauce in my home, but I understand how a hot sauce fanatic rates their various sauces and can distinguish one sauce from another. This is a fascinating look at how the chili pepper was "discovered" by Columbus in the New World and the love was subsequently spread around the world. in fact, that has continued to be the key to the success and the expansion of the varieties of hot sauces: immigration. As cultures intermingle, they bring their own varieties of hot sauce with them and we love it. Think of sriracha and the spread of its popularity

The true hot sauce aficionado can never have too many varieties of hot sauce. We love our hot sauces. "But, as you know if you’ve ever poured too heartily from the wrong bottle of hot sauce, taste and smell are but secondary pieces of the hot sauce puzzle. There’s something else happening with hot sauce unique to the chilies that are its essential ingredient, something weirder and kinkier and a stubborn mystery that cuts to the heart of what it means to be human - pain."

That pain is from capsaicin, but "capsaicin is just one of at least twenty-two compounds, called capsaicinoids, that account for a pepper’s heat in the myriad forms it takes." The heat profiles of various peppers differ widely, just as hot sauces differ.

In fact, "Dr. Bosland developed a multidimensional heat profile to more fully describe a chili pepper’s heat, including five separate descriptors: how fast or delayed the heat is (Asian chilies tend to come on fast, while habaneros come on slowly); how long it lingers (habaneros stick around, but jalapeños dissipate more quickly); the sharpness or flatness of the heat (cayennes are sharper, like pins sticking in the mouth, whereas New Mexican chilies are flatter, like the heat is applied with a paintbrush); where the heat is strongest (jalapeños burn nearer the tongue and lips, habaneros attack the back of the throat); and finally how much heat the chili has. These are our good old-fashioned Scoville heat units."

I found this exploration of the history of hot sauces and the current trend to more varieties and more heat fascinating. We'll see how far the trend to more heat/pain goes. In the meantime I've got some jalepeno poppers to make and it's time to explore some recipes for homemade hot sauces for my tabasco and habanero chili peppers.

Disclosure: My advanced reading copy was courtesy of the publisher for review purposes.

[Chelsea · Rating 4 out of 5]

More reviews available at my blog, Beauty and the Bookworm.

Hot Sauce Nation showed up on a Buzzfeed list of gifts for hot sauce lovers. My stepfather is a hot sauce lover, so I clicked into it, and being a book lover myself, the book jumped out at me. So I bought it for some light weekend reading. After slogging through Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, the light non-fiction of Hot Sauce Nation was refreshing, and it was a pretty decent book overall.

In this book, Nicks endeavors to explain how hot sauce became such a national phenomenon. To this end, I'm not entirely sure he succeeds, but I do believe that he provides a lot of fun information about hot sauce, the people who make it, and the people who love it along the way. He talks about self-proclaimed "chiliheads," who love all things spicy, and a number of small hot sauce making operations, as well as short looks at two of the larger ones, Huy Fong Foods' sriracha or rooster sauce and the ever-present Tabasco. He even talks about the Washington, DC region for a good portion of time in two different places. First, he talks about the fish pepper, a type of chili that was grown in the Chesapeake Bay area and is now on the verge of extinction because people haven't seen a continuing use for it, but which is still grown and used in a sauce by a small operation in Baltimore. It had me Googling away, looking for where I could find a bottle of this mysterious sauce, but to no avail. And later in the book he talks about mumbo sauce! This is a sauce that's very popular in the less-affluent areas of DC, though there appears to be debate of whether it's actually native to the area of not. It's more of a sweet sauce than a spicy one, which makes its inclusion in this book somewhat puzzling, but still.

Nicks has a way of talking about food and people that is deeply inviting, though his asides and his own narrative format, at times, tend to the "frat boy" end of the spectrum. He is also easily distracted. One chapter of the book talks more about an interesting character by the name of Baron Ambrosia than about hot sauce or chilies. Nicks tries to integrate this by saying how Ambrosia was trying to get a hot sauce certification system up and running, complete with member cards to show that you really, really love spicy food, as hot as it can be, but this never actually got up and running so it's a rather poor sort of inclusion. He also makes some questionable decisions about places to praise; for example, he lauds the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, NY, the ostensible birthplace of the buffalo wing (like with mumbo sauce, this appears to be up for some debate) but anyone from that region knows that, while the buffalo wing might have originated at the Anchor Bar (maybe), it certainly wasn't perfected there, and going to the Anchor Bar for buffalo wings (or just "wings," as they are known locally) is one of the surest ways to mark yourself as a tourist rather than a serious wing eater.

Still, I think this was a worthy read. It's short, less than 300 pages and with only about 75% of it being actual book content rather than a bibliography and other end content, but it was enjoyable. It even inspired me to make my own hot sauce--no recipes are included here, but a bit of searching on the internet ultimately led me to an easily-customized one that is now aging away in my fridge as a homemade Christmas present. (It has to sit for 2 weeks before use). If you like spicy foods, even if you're not a self-proclaimed "chilihead" (I am certainly not.) this is a good, light nonfiction book to add to your shelf.

4 stars out of 5.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was an impulse borrow from the library because I love hot sauce. I did wonder a bit though, reading the praise blurbs on the back from the author of a history of bourbon and the author of a history of craft beer...is everything going to get a history eventually? A history of fish sticks? A history of cereal bars? Even this guy mentions several times in the book that his friends thought it was kind of weird that he was working on a history of hot sauce.
The book was kind of a mixed bag. I enjoyed the chapters where he kind of poked around in the histories of some of the more prominent hot sauces, like sriracha and tabasco. But there were other chapters that didn't really belong. There was one chapter about this guy named "Baron Ambrosia" in NYC...I can't even remember how that was supposed to relate to hot sauce. Maybe he should have treated the whole book as a road trip, because the road trip chapters worked better.
Made me want more hot sauce, obviously. I definitely raised the spice level of my food while reading this.

[Michele Jennifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in a Goodreads giveaway, but all thoughts and opinions are my own
This book takes a delightful, lighthearted look at the psyche of the hot sauce aficionado. If you weren’t craving salsa, buffalo wings, or some sort of spicy flavour before reading this book, you definitely will after. Read my full review here.

[Kelsey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the fourth book I have recieved from a Goodreads giveaway. I entered the contest intrigued by the content of the novel, but not entirely sure how a book about hot sauce would read. The author's voice is humorous and informative, drawing conclusions that I would have never connected. I enjoyed reading about the history of spicy foods and the real life pioneers of the hot sauce nation.

[Taylor Mitchell · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting to read. The author was funny and it was light. The last chapter mentioned New Mexico which was great since just getting back from Zuni a month ago. It was interesting to see points on how hot sauce is a millennial thing, but in the end it's a book about hot sauce. I'm glad I challenged myself to a different type of book.

[Ioana Oprița · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read some reviews on Amazon before buying it, and I was curious about its content, but I was very disappointed.

It has some interesting ideas, but reading it felt...tiring. While there's a lot of information that was verified, the book is not worth buying.

It's some sort of diary, some scientific stuff, some stories that aren't really glued together. It was like the author had all this information gathered and the editor tried to make sense of it all. It would have been better if one actually received a bottle of hot sauce...with the book.

[Toddkenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interestingly written, and not a complete summary of the history of hot sauce in America, well worth the read if you like spicy food at all.

[Bob Lenning · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, but obscure. Not my favorite style of writing.

[Carly · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any lover of hot sauce. Denver Nicks mixes a little history and science with a road trip tasting all the hot sauces he could find.

[Rennie · Rating 4 out of 5]

He goes on segues that don’t connect as well as they’re meant to and the personal aspects aren’t as good as the history/culture, but this was a lot of fun to read and surprisingly educational.