The salsas served with tortilla chips on Tex-Mex tables are typically made with roasted red tomatoes, charred jalapeño peppers, garlic, onions, and lime juice, and they range from mild to superhot. Salsa is the Spanish word for sauce, but unlike bottled pepper sauces that contain vinegar as a preservative, Mexican salsas are made fresh and consumed right away. So it seems people have been eating tortilla chips and some form of spicy green salsa for a little over two thousand years. There were also curved comals for making crispy tortillas. And thanks to the seemingly endless sprawl of diverse neighborhoods, chileheads never run out of hot new places to discover.Īrchaeologists studying the ruins of Monte Albán in Oaxaca have found grinding bowls and the remains of chile peppers and husked green tomatoes from around the time of Christ. A hot sauce tour of H-town restaurants turns up sauces that go back centuries, inter-national flavors, as well as brand-new multiethnic mashups. Known for having one of the most multicultural dining scenes in the South, it also has one of the spiciest. There’s no better place to explore this brave new world than in my hometown of Houston. When we say hot sauce, we aren’t just talking about Tabasco anymore. I don’t know about you, but my refrigerator door is loaded to capacity with salsa, sambal, Sriracha, gochujang, piri-piri sauce. Salsa overtook ketchup as the country’s condiment of choice some twenty years ago, and since then the shelves at the supermarket have expanded to include a United Nations of piquant enhancements. Thankfully, Southerners have more choices than ever these days to satisfy our hot sauce cravings.
After you get accustomed to the natural painkillers coursing through your brain, eating just isn’t as enjoyable without the burn and buzz. And then we act like junkies going cold turkey.ĭon’t be alarmed, but some scientists believe that hot sauce is actually addictive-something to do with the endorphin rush you get when you eat hot peppers. Southerners take hot sauce for granted-until one day we find ourselves in front of a plate of fried eggs in an airport coffee shop in the Maple Syrup Belt with no Tabasco, Texas Pete, or picante sauce to be had.