For my birthday this year, I received a wonderful gift: Professor Phardtpounders Colon Cleaner. That's the kind of hot sauce packaging that makes you laugh, but also makes you a little nervous -- and if you're me, a lot excited.
Colon Cleaner is a mustard-based hot sauce (great on a burger or sandwich for an extra mustardy kick) that's a lot spicier than your average grocery store hot sauce, but it's not the hottest thing available on the market, by far.
The most extreme hot sauces usually brag about their Scoville heat units. The Scoville scale (named after its creator, Wilbur Scoville) is a measurement of the level of heat of a chili pepper. The number of Scoville heat units a pepper is given indicates the amount of capsaicin present. Capsaicin is the stuff that makes your nose run and/or your entire body kind of want to die. To give you an idea of the range of the Scoville scale, sweet bell pepper gets a zero, pepperoncini receives from 100-500 units and red savina habanero gets from 50,000-575,000 units.
If you're looking for hot sauces that are more adventurous and much more hilariously named than Tabasco, after the jump are just a few options from the world of extreme hot sauces:
1. Insane Chicken's Fire Roasted Habanero Hot Sauce This sauce won first place in the Extreme Hot Sauce (With Extract) Category at this year's 2011 Scovie Awards (http://www.scovieawards.com/). Yes, 2011. These awards apparently took place in the future.
2. Ass In The Tub First of all, probably wouldn't do a Google image search this one at work. Taste-wise, this one's more of a medium heat. But, the name makes it a great stocking stuffer for your most conservative relative.
3. Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Made with ghost peppers (nearly two times hotter than red savina habaneros), this hot sauce is bound to scare the shit out of you.
4. Colon Blow The bottle brags that it's "A red habanero enema." Mmmm. Enema.
5. Uncle Jester's The Jester This limited edition sauce offers up 6 million Scoville Heat Units (police-grade pepper spray only gets 5 million units on the Scoville scale). It's the 2011 Scovie Award Winner for second place in the Extreme Hot Sauce (with extract) category. Just a guess, but I'm betting your butt will not be laughing at this bottle's jokes.
