Texas Pete knows what the hot sauce game is all about.
At least, Texas Pete knows what the come-back-next-week-and-get-another-bottle hot sauce game is all about.
Since 1929, Texas Pete has been a stalwart of the sauce aisle. Familiar as Tabasco, friendlier than all the “Taste me and die young” super-Scoville sauces, the Louisiana-style hot sauce made in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and fronted by a Texan has been a hot sauce we’ve turned to in our millions – and returned to the next week because damned if the balance between the pepper heat and the vinegar tang wasn’t just ninja-master perfect.
It’s the dependability and the balance of Texas Pete that has pushed it to the number 3 spot in the hot sauce market across the nation.
Let’s break out some Texas Pete hot sauce and break it down a little, see what lets the old-timer run rings around many a young whippersnapper.
Texas Pete is not by any means lacking in a pepper hit, but it’s on the milder end of the spectrum which starts with chili jam and ends in head-explosion.
That means it’s flexible enough to go with anything you care to chili up.
That’s one of the keys to its success – by having just enough bite from aged peppers, and balancing it with the sharp indrawn breath of vinegar, it’s friendly enough to go with anything you like, while still being chili enough to not be out of place at the National Hot Sauce Awards.
That means you can use it for everything from nachos to chicken, fries to a cream cheese bagel, and what you’ll get is not some horrible car-crash mish-mash.
What you’ll get is intelligence, balance, a mouthful that demands another, and above all, a hot sauce friendly enough to act as a gateway sauce, to get younger members of the family into the taste profile of hot sauce without all the tedious business of lawsuits and protective custody.
Flavor
· Not too hot – Texas Pete is a gateway sauce
· Tangy vinegar on the tongue
· Perfectly balanced, blooming, aged chili heat
· Robust flavor, rather than anything near high Scoville count
How To Use It
· Fantastic wing sauce
· Nacho night!
· Strangely cool with dairy, like cream cheese bagels
· Above all, use it as a friendly introduction to hot sauce for younger members of the family
Scoville, spice, and flavor
At just 340 to 740 Scoville Heat Units, Texas Pete is one amiable sauce. It’s not about to blow your hair off at any point, and comes in anywhere from mild to the lower end of a medium sauce.
You get notice that it’s a hot sauce, but it’s not a rollercoaster of ever-increasing Scoville intensity.
Texas Pete’s business model is not to blow your brains out, it’s to be as friendly as possible, so you pour hot sauce over every wing, dip every fry, liven up every egg, and keep coming back for more.
Flavorwise, it’s not as complex as some others on the market, and you get less of an odyssey through different levels and types of flavor.
Again, the idea of Texas Pete is to give you a solidly reliable, tasty Louisiana-style sauce that leads in with vinegar and isn’t slow to give you the aged pepper hit you want, without overcomplicating your life or your lunchtime.
Where to get Texas Pete hot sauce
Number 3 in the country. You don’t get to that position by being a shrinking violet, only available to certain specialists by solving an online riddle, and taking a special code to a field in the middle of nowhere, then digging down three feet to a sealed strongbox.
You can find Texas Pete in the sauce aisle of any reasonably-sized grocery store, and with a long history and some vivid color choices, it’s a sauce that’s not subtle about getting you to choose it, either.
Or, if you’re all about slathering your Texas Pete over every meal, save yourself gas money and click away on Amazon, who will gladly sell you a gallon of Texas Pete in one easy-pour bottle!
Texas Pete hot sauce consistency
Texas Pete hot sauce has a consistency that makes you nod your head. The trouble with quite a few hot sauces out there, including plenty of Louisiana-style sauces, is that they’re too thin.
They may taste like the tongue-tickling dickens, but they slide, and drip off your food, and puddle on your clothes, rather than clinging on to whatever food you cover them with.
Texas Pete is an uncomplicated sauce, but it is decently (if artificially) thickened, so you can pour it on your wings and be pretty confident it’ll stay where you put it.
Sure, some meals are enhanced by the messiness when it comes to the sauce – wings is one of those meals. But you want to get the full benefit of the flavor of Texas Pete, and the thickness of it means you can easily do that.
Is Texas Pete hot sauce worth buying?
Oh yes. The thing with Texas Pete is that you almost have to separate it from all the challenging, intensely hot hot sauces out there.
Texas Pete is a sauce to have in your pantry, not for Hot Sauce Challenge Night. You’ve not about to win any Scoville shoot-out with Texas Pete in your holster.
Texas Pete is for Wing Night Friday. And Hot Brunch Saturday. And Wow-My-Regular-Eggs-Are-Dull Sunday Morning. And Tacos And Game Night Tuesday.
It’s for Netflix and Hot Sauce, and it’s for any thousand other things in between.
It’s the hot sauce you can use to introduce your younger family members to the notion of hot sauce without fear.
The hot sauce you can pour, and smear, and dunk with practically any savory food, and heck, it even works pretty well as a contrast to some desserts too.
No, you don’t even need to be high – creamy vanilla ice-cream, or take-no-prisoners cheesecake, with a little Texas Pete. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it – the creamy and the vinegar/pepper combo works well in a messy little throw-down.
The point is, Texas Pete is a hot sauce you can use for most anything to give it a bit more kick without it kicking your butt.
