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Hey, what's going on everybody?
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For First We Feast, I'm Sean Evans coming at you from Heat Nest HQ in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where I'm joined by Hot Ones Hot Sauce Sommelier Noah Chaimberg.
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And today we're cutting straight to the chase, answering one of the most asked questions in the Hot Ones mailbox.
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What kind of hot sauce should I pair with my food?
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Well, today we're going to figure it all out.
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And first things first, what are you looking for when it comes to pairing a hot sauce with your meal?
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Well, when pairing a hot sauce with food, I like to consider what are the flavors of the food, what are the textures going on there because hot sauces, we know some are more splashy, as they say, a little more vinegary, whereas some are denser and more full-bodied.
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Definitely with the Hot Ones hot sauces, Fiery Chipotle is a lot more vinegary.
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The Dab is, you know, a lot denser with pepper.
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So, we look at that, look at heat level, too.
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What am I going to enjoy right now?
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And then we look at the flavor profile.
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Do you want something sweet?
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Do I want a little smoky with this?
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It's all about finding the right sauce for the right application.
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Here's something I get tweeted at me all the time.
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I'm never always entirely sure how to answer it.
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Do you refrigerate hot sauces?
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thing for everybody to remember is you don't want your sauce to get hot and then cold and then hot and then cold.
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Don't keep it next to the stove.
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Don't keep it where the sun is going to be shining on it.
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So, if it's really a vinegary sauce, very stable, you don't need to have it in the fridge, something like Tabasco.
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Whereas if it's something that has a lot of fresh fruit in it, that's a little more prone to spoilage, then it's a good idea to keep that in the fridge and extend the life.
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All right, enough chitchat.
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Lawrence, to the pairings.
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All right, we're going to start naturally with breakfast, eggs, staple hot sauce vehicle.
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Noah, what do you put on your eggs in the morning and why?
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For me, waking up in the morning, I like something with a nice balance of vinegar flavors and a nice little punchy heat.
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Nothing that's going to have you crying first thing out of bed.
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Today, what I picked for us is this smoked onion hot sauce from Butterfly Bakery in Vermont.
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And this is red jalapenos with smoked onions.
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So, it's going to have a little bit of smoky elements.
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It will just go right on there. Oh, yeah.
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Heat level, what are we looking at here?
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Heat level here, this sauce is pretty pepper dense.
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Pepper is the number one ingredient.
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So, it's going to be about a five out of 10. Mhm. That's what you want.
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The onion gives it just a hint of sweetness.
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Perfect to start the day.
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Got some good heat to it. It does have heat to it.
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And perfect for the five out of 10.
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So, the number one thing to remember when it's a dish like our eggs with yolk, like soup, something where the sauce is going to be totally mixed in, is I want to Once it's in, it's in.
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So, start with a little bit, make sure that you like it, and then you can always add more from there. You can never add less.
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One dish, one sauce down, revolving door, let's bring in the next one.
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All right, up next we have mac and cheese.
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And because everyone wants something a little bit different with mac and cheese, we have options.
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Yeah, mac and cheese is a fun one because you're able to control it a little more bite by bite.
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Personally, I'm reaching for another vinegary sauce because the richness of the cheese and all the cream that's going on in there, I like some of that vinegar to be sharp and cut through.
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So, what we have here today is actually a couple of smoky ones cuz I'm really partial to the smoke, but we took it in two different directions.
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So, one here, this is ancho and morita from Humble House.
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And this is really like a barbecuey hot sauce.
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It's two types of smoked peppers with some tamarind in there, so a little sweetness, too.
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Heat wise, that's going to be like a two out of 10.
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So, that's a nice place to start.
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And then, also from Texas, we have from Bravado.
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This is their Crimson Special Reserve.
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So, it's a special edition of their Crimson sauce.
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This one's And that's pretty hot, very hot.
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The Crimson's hot normally.
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This is the one though made with the Maruga Scorpion peppers. So, very hot.
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All right, going in with this Crimson.
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So, very hot sauce, but with mac and cheese, you know, because it's creamy, because it's cheesy, it's almost like a built-in Kevlar vest for the hot sauce or something, you know, it really cuts it.
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You got a little shock absorber in there with the dairy.
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Yeah, it's a really nice chance to experiment with something a little hotter than you might otherwise go.
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Really, you know, it's it's it's a journey inside.
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You know, it's like what kind of man are you?
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Like what's in your soul?
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Like that's really how you can tell what kind of person you are.
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It's how you eat your mac and cheese, how you pair it with your hot sauce. All right, next.
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What are you going with when it comes to steak, Noah?
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Well, with steak, we have a really simple protein.
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So, we're talking about one thing.
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So, when we're looking at a sauce, it's a great opportunity to use sauce with more subtle flavors and interesting notes.
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The ones that we pulled out here today, we have Queen Majesty's Red Habanero Black Coffee.
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Uh we also brought out uh that Heatonist number one I was talking about before from Dawson's.
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This one has Szechuan peppercorn, so super floral, ginger and lemon.
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And these are all things that activate different taste buds in different parts of your mouth.
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So, when you put it on something simple like a steak, you're going to get that whole orchestra playing together, but you're going to feel all these notes separately. Little symphony.
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And then, this last one, it's a little strange.
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I've never seen this before. What do What is this?
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This last one uh we don't let out too often.
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This is a limited production and Yehao pepper sauce from Nashville.
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Yeah, don't start with the number one, cuz that's going to be a little intense. This one? Yeah. Yeah, I'll start here. this guy.
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I'm going to get this on my plate.
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The nice thing with the steak is that because we're cutting it into bites, we have the opportunity to play each bite against the others to to switch it up as we go.
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We're not committed here.
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I do know here we can we can bounce around. Exactly.
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Wow, I started off on a hot note.
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Really interesting for anybody who doesn't know Szechuan, that's the famous tongue-numbing spice from China.
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Just super floral, gives you a whole mouth excitement.
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This añejo really took it over.
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Like instead of having a steak, I was eating an añejo steak.
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Same with the Dawson's Szechuan.
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Like it immediately became a Dawson's Szechuan bite of food.
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When it comes to steak, whatever you pair with it, that'll become the star of the show. Absolutely.
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Next up, we have ice cream, and I'm not sure because it's like I'm hot ones guy looking at the world through a different lens these days, but it does seem that now spicy is in everything including dessert.
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These days we have spicy cocktails, we have spicy snacks, spicy candy.
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Everything's getting spiced up.
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We shouldn't forget dessert. Right.
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And like I've even seen now increasingly chocolate bars that are spicy.
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Chocolate and spice are two ingredients that go really well together and have been used together for a long time in mole sauces from Mexico.
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Uh not all moles are going to have chocolate, but a lot of them that we're familiar with do.
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So, we got another one here from Brody Dawson.
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This one's his chocolate chili sauce, and it just goes perfectly on this vanilla ice cream.
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And then just like with the mac and cheese, you kind of have a you have an antidote with the kick, you know?
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A little a little ice with the fire.
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Adds a whole 'nother dimension.
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But otherwise it'd be just a little bit plain.
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We have some acidity and sweetness of the strawberries.
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We have the low notes of vanilla.
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Um but the heat just really kicks everything into high gear.
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Turns up the volume on all these sounds. All right.
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Well, if you heard it from Noah, you know that it's gospel.
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Now we can knock you out of your Sriracha Tabasco holding pattern.
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First we feast, y'all already know.
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Heat Nestle Noah in the building. Stay spicy, people.