It doesn’t matter whether you hail from a country that speaks Spanish or Setswana, chances are, there’s a local beloved hot sauce in town.
From the American South to Southeast Asia, here’s how hot sauce is done:
NORTH AMERICA
Most American hot sauce traces its fiery roots back to a confluence of threads coming together in the Mexican-American War. The Spanish, no strangers to a little spice in their foods, had first brought peppers and tomatoes to the American colonies in the 1700s, where both crops found hospitable soil and climates in the South.
But it wasn’t until the war with Mexico that many soldiers discovered the omnipresent tabasco pepper, which Mexicans had been utilizing in meals for countless generations. Tabasco peppers returned alongside soldiers to the states, where they exploded in popularity in Louisiana. From the Port of New Orleans, the peppers – and hot sauces being prepared with them – were shipped from the Caribbean all the way to Europe and Africa.
Though Louisiana-style hot sauce (which started with Tabasco) is credited with kicking off the craze, variations from Texas to the Carolinas eventually emerged. And while as recently as 2015 Tabasco sales accounted for 18% of the U.S. hot sauce market, there are quite literally hundreds of different varieties made from countless hot peppers on sale today.
LATIN AMERICA
AJI (PERU)
Historians have traced chili peppers in South America back more than 6,000 years. Blessed with the highest hot pepper biodiversity of all continents, many of the peppers now cultivated throughout the world trace their roots back to Bolivia and Peru (and Mexico before that).
Peruvian aji amarillo peppers are famous the world over for their bright yellow color, and most famously appear in aji – a creamy yellow-green sauce that you’ve probably slathered all over your roasted bird and yucca if you’ve ever been to a Peruvian chicken joint. In addition to the aji amarillos, the sauce actually gets much of its trademark flavor from green chilies.
SALSA (MEXICO)
The chili pepper Mecca of Latin America (and arguably the world) has to be Mexico. The mind-boggling variety of salsas found in Mexican cuisine is expansive enough to warrant many articles, so we’re going to have limit ourselves.
Virtually any tortilla-wrapped meal you eat will come with anywhere between one and several types of salsas, most typically at least a red and a green, made from any number of chilies and ingredients like tomatoes, tomatillos and avocados, as well as aromatics like garlic and onion. Various bottled hot sauces also appear throughout the country – most famously Valentina and Cholula, which are similar to Louisiana-style hot sauces.
CARIBBEAN
The Caribbean is probably most famous for one spice mixture: jerk. The ubiquitous marinade is the only thing many people even know about Caribbean food, and the pepper that gives jerk its signature kick is scotch bonnet.
This orange pepper is related to the habanero, and like its more famous cousin, has a scorching bite, but it has a decidedly sweeter flavor. Perhaps even more common than jerk, bright orange scotch bonnet sauce is used to add spice to just about anything on islands across the Caribbean.
ASIA
SRIRACHA (THAILAND)
Tell someone native to Thailand that the chili peppers so synonymous with their cuisine and culture were actually imported from South America and they may find it hard to believe you.
Nevertheless, Asia’s chilies – or chiles or chillis, depending on where you grew up – indeed trace their history back to The Columbian Exchange, the global transfer of culture, cuisine, agriculture, disease, wealth and trade that kicked off when Christopher Columbus landed in the West in the 15th century.
In the good ol’ U.S. of A., Sriracha is probably the most common of all Asian hot sauces. And while it has roots in Thailand, where a slightly runnier but equally delicious variety is widely used – the Huy Fong red bottle with the rooster that conquered the world over is actually a product of America., even if the company’s founder traces his roots back to Vietnam.
Still, there are endless other Thai companies producing their own version of the spicy stuff today.
NAM PHRIK (THAILAND)
Sriracha aside, in Thailand you’re more likely to find Nam Phrik on the table. This chunky, often fermented and usually fiery red or green mixture – which literally means “chili water” – can be found on tables all over the country. Like Mexican salsas, flavor and heat vary wildly, so proceed with caution. Baby steps are your friend here.
GOCHUJANG (KOREA)
Korean cuisine has quietly taken the world by storm (thanks, Korean BBQ and David Chang), and gochujang has gone from an under-the-radar house of pain to a household name for many chili enthusiasts.
Consider it the sriracha of Korea; this hot sauce has as much depth of flavor as just about any other, thanks to the use of pungent, funky, fermented soybeans. The spicy, sweet, funky, umami mixture is a true rarity among hot sauces.
AFRICA/MIDDLE EAST
HARISSA
A smoky hot sauce called harissa, made from cumin and chilis ground until they are granular instead of smooth, is as ubiquitous in parts of northern Africa as ketchup and mustard are in the states.
The red paste is as flavorful as it is spicy, thanks to garlic, olive oil and everything from coriander to caraway to saffron. In countries like Tunisia and Algeria, they eat it on just about everything.
SCHUG (OR ZHUG)
Often associated with Israeli cuisine, this hot sauce originated in Yemen. Yemeni Jews brought it with them to Israel, where it eventually became a staple in restaurants, hummus stands and shwarama/falafel shops across the country.
There are two varieties, red and green. The red is made with various spices, red chilies and often tomatoes, while the green is made with green chilies, garlic, olive oil and plenty of cilantro. It’s wicked hot, but thanks to the cilantro, simultaneously refreshing.
AUSTRALIA
The Land Down Under is admittedly the hardest continent to pin down with an exact historical narrative for the chili/hot sauce invasion. Scouring the internet for research materials mostly turns up speculative articles about whether or not The Red Hot Chili Peppers will return to Australia on tour.
No, seriously. Even so, there are no shortage of hot sauce bottlers to have sprung up in recent years, each peddling their spicy wares. A few of the more popular ones include Bunsters $#@% the Bed Sauce, Changz, and Jungle Rain, Mama Blu’s.
EUROPE
PERI-PERI (or PIRI-PIRI)
While Columbus is credited with ferrying chili peppers back to Europe for the first time – and little known fact, naming them peppers– it was actually his ship’s Spanish physician, Diego Álvarez Chanca, who popularized them as something other than a curious household plant. Chanca published his writings on the medicinal qualities of peppers in 1494, which led to their widespread usage in cooking. Only then did the sweeping, nearly global trade routes established by the Portuguese make chili peppers such a hit the world over.
Today peppers are synonymous with Spanish, Hungarian, and Portuguese cuisines, and some of the world’s top European restaurants. And we have the portuguese to thank for peri peri sauce – made with Bird’s Eye Chilies. If you’ve ever been to a Portuguese restaurant (or had a post-pub visit to Nando’s in the UK), chances are you’ve ordered the peri peri chicken, which has considerable heat from the scorching peri peri. But the spice is manageable thanks to the addition of milder peppers and acidic elements like vinegar and lime to cut the heat.
Source : https://eatsiptrip.10best.com/2018/05/17/11-essential-hot-sauces-around-the-world/
