McIlhenny Co. Tabasco Pepper Sauce

This is the genuine article. From the very beginning (1868, to be exact), we knew Tabasco Sauce was more than just heat. That’s because, unlike other sauces that mask the flavor of food, Tabasco Original Red blends with every bite – allowing our aged red peppers to amplify each flavor so you taste more of your favorite foods. So whether you shake a little or splash a lot, you’re ready to turn ordinary meals into extraordinary ones. Taste the difference Tabasco can make on pizza, eggs, seafood, salad dressing and more. Hungry for more? Visit Tabasco Website to purchase any of our pepper sauce family of flavors. Shake some on and make your pizza supreme. Dress up the dressing. Crack open the flavor. Shake well.

Ingredients:

• Distilled Vinegar
• Red Pepper
• Salt.

Tabasco peppers are ground into a mash on the day of harvest and placed along with salt in white oak barrels previously used for whiskey of various distilleries. To prepare the barrel, the inside of the barrel is de-charred (top layer of wood is removed), torched, and cleaned, to minimize the presence of any residual whiskey. The barrels are then used in warehouses on Avery Island for aging the mash.

After aging for up to three years, the mash is strained to remove skins and seeds. The resulting liquid is then mixed with distilled vinegar, stirred occasionally for a month, and then bottled as finished sauce. Tabasco has released a Tabasco reserve edition with peppers aged for up to eight years, mixed with wine vinegar.

Tabasco diamond reserve edition was a limited bottling released in 2018 to commemorate the brand’s 150th anniversary. This sauce consists of peppers that have been aged for up to fifteen years, then mixed with sparkling white wine vinegar.

Much of the salt used in Tabasco production comes from the Avery Island salt dome, the largest one in Louisiana.

Interestingly, the McIlhenny Co historical claim about making Tabasco Sauce seems to be disproven as Jeffrey Rothfeder’s book McIlhenny’s Gold points out, some of the McIlhenny Company’s official history is disputed. A book review by Mark Robichaux of The Wall Street Journal quotes Rothfeder’s book:

“The story actually begins in the pre-Civil War era with a New Orleans plantation owner named Maunsel White, who was famous for the food served at his sumptuous dinner parties. Mr. White’s table no doubt groaned with the region’s varied fare—drawing inspiration from European, Caribbean, and Cajun sources—but one of his favorite was of his own devising, made from a pepper named for its origins in the Mexican state of Tabasco. White added it to various dishes and bottled it for his guests. Although the McIlhennys have tried to dismiss the possibility, it seems clear now that in 1849, a full two decades before Edmund McIlhenny professed to discover the Tabasco pepper, White was already growing Tabasco chilies on his plantation.”

Wikipedia