This post brought to you by TABASCO® Original Red. All opinions are 100% mine.
Growing up in Arizona I developed a love for spicy foods at a young age. TABASCO® Original Red is one of my favorite ways to bring out the flavor in just about anything, from pizza, to eggs, hash browns, steak, burgers, you name it, I've even used TABASCO on vegetables and in salad.
Our family's Game-Day Party Menu always includes pizza and I make it from scratch since we are too far away to get it delivered. It is Pizza Perfected with the addition of TABASCO® Original Red! I make individual pizzas so that each one can choose favorite toppings and my oldest son, Big A, adds TABASCO® Original Red right into the pizza sauce before it goes onto the dough!
As I've mentioned on the blog before, I'm following a diet which is very “clean” and this tends to eliminate most commercially produced condiments, but happily for me, not TABASCO® Original Red since it has contains only three ingredients: red pepper, salt and vinegar. This simple combination of ingredients brings out the flavor in food like no other hot sauce can, and I just love that I can still have one of my lifelong favorites since all items are allowed on my food list.
One of my favorite meals is butter fried chicken. Very simple: just cut chicken breast into strips, melt butter in a skillet and fry until firm and nicely browned on both sides. The other night I had a pineapple just begging to be used, so I concocted a pineapple chutney and added a splash of TABASCO® Original Red on the side to bring out the flavor. It really hit the spot and satisfied my cravings.
As I mentioned earlier, I've even been known to add this fine hot sauce to salad. Usually taco salad, which is very simple to prepare. I brown ground beef in a skillet along with chopped onions and garlic. Salt and pepper to taste, and of course a splash of TABASCO® Original Red. For the salad part, I use normal salad ingredients: lettuce, radishes, cucumbers, onions, avocado, shredded carrots, green olives, black olives. Mix the warm ground beef into the salad, add some olive oil and finally TABASCO® Original Red. My mouth is watering just writing about it.
In looking at the How TABASCO is made page of their website, I learned some things about TABASCO® Original Red that I never knew. For one thing, it has been around since 1868! It was Edmund McIlhenny who started the tradition by growing the Capsicum frutescens peppers on Avery Island in Louisiana. The McIlhenny family still oversees the production of this famous hot sauce to make sure it remains the same as it has for over a hundred years. As a gardener I find it fascinating that they replant every year using seeds grown on Avery Island and have actually stored seeds in a seed vault in case of disaster to the current crops. It sounds as if they intend to make TABASCO® Original Red for a very long time.
Are you a fan of TABASCO® Original Red?