Dale Williams wrote:I'm not really a chilehead, I no longer enjoy intense heat (I used to buy things like Dave's Insanity). But I think a lot of things have subtlety different profiles/uses. Right now looks like we have Tabasco, TPete, Cholula, Cholula Chipotle, sriracha, sambal olek, harrisa, gochugangm chile crisp, chile oil, maybe couple others in fridge. Plus some Asian sauces with varying degrees of heat.
In pantry for cooking a variety of dried chiles, cayenne, hot paprika, red pepper flakes, gochugaru.
It seems strange, but to me none of these are interchangeable.
My reference to flakes was to Peter putting hot sauce in puttanesca, usually for any Italian cooking red pepper flakes are my go to for adding a little Scoville accent.
I'm a big fan of Cholula and also still have a bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce on my fridge door, which I used to use in my pickled eggs. Believe it or not, I have some hot sauce even hotter than Dave's.
I've met Dave a few times. He used to wear a straitjacket at the Fiery Foods Festival. One year after his Insanity Sauce was banned from tasting at the festival*, I took his Atomic Challenge, which was a mixture of his two next-hottest sauces. I had to sign a waiver and was awarded a certificate for surviving the tasting. I remember thinking, "That wasn't too bad" and made it halfway down the next aisle before it hit me. I stopped dead in my tracks. My face flushed, and I started raining sweat on the floor. Yowee! Eventually it wore off.
*Dave used to have small bowls of his Insanity Sauce set out for people to dip with chips. One drop would do most people in, but I once watched a woman grab a chip and swoop up a spoonful, obviously not knowing what it was. I heard rumors about someone winding up in the hospital and have always wondered if it was that woman.
