Hot Sauce

Hot sauce, chili sauce or pepper sauce refers to any spicy sauce made from chili peppers and other ingredients.

There are many recipes for chili sauces - the common ingredient being chili peppers. A group of chemicals called capsaicinoids are responsible for the heat in chile peppers. 1 The peppers are infused in anything from vinegar, oil, water, beer and alcohol to fruits and vegetable pulp. Additional ingredients are often used, including those used to add extra heat, such as pure capsaicin extract and mustards.

Variants include the typical concoctions with ginger and garlic for chicken rice and variants that are made into gummy consistency as with ketchup tomato sauce.

The heat, or burning sensation, experienced when consuming hot sauce is caused by capsaicin. The burning sensation is not "real" in the sense of damage being wrought on tissues. It is instead a chemical reaction with the body's neurological system see this technical explanation .

The seemingly subjective perceived heat of hot sauces can be measured by the Scoville scale. The Scoville scale number indicates how many times something must be diluted with an equal volume of water until people can no longer feel any sensation from the capsaicin. The hottest hot sauce scientifically possible is one rated at 16,000,000 Scoville units, which is pure capsaicin. Examples of hot sauces marketed as achieving this level of heat are Blair's 16 Million Reserve due to production variances, it's up to 16 million Scoville units marketed by Blair's Sauces amp Snacks. By comparison, Tabasco sauce is rated between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville units batches vary - with one of the mildest commercially available Chile condiments, Cackalacky Classic Condiment Company's Spice Sauce, weighing in at less than 1000 Scoville units on the standard heat scale.

An easy way to determine the heat of a sauce they are considering is to look at the ingredients. Sauces tend to vary in heat by the ingredients in them.