I was so envious of Amy after her visit to the Tabasco factory on Avery Island, Louisiana. Last week Ravenous published a feature about how Tabasco became a world’s favorite hot sauce with dreamy archival photos and videos of the pepper farm and factory. Like many households, Tabasco was a childhood staple at mealtime standing alongside salt and pepper. During every Filipino spaghetti dinner, my dad would sprinkle a few shakes over red sauce while stirring his noodles with a fork.
The visit sent Amy back to Dallas with some fantastic photos and footage, and as I perused those assets, I designed an Instagram carousel highlighting quotes from the article alongside visuals of a handful of peppers, oak barrels, mashed pepper paste, and a factory conveyer belt. In this day and age, when it seems like everything is automated and optimized, it’s nice to see an iconic brand like Tabasco has largely stuck to its traditional methods of producing the hot sauce by putting mashed tabasco peppers in oak barrels, leaving them to ferment for up to three years.
feedravenousHere’s what Amy, who was born in Louisiana, shared about her experience on Avery Island:
“It was one of the coolest reporting experiences of my career, and I’m never going to get that smell of vinegar and peppers (complimentary!) out of my nose. Driving onto the island, you know you’re headed somewhere special, which isn’t something you can say about most massive industrial factories. I was particularly taken with the people, everyone I spoke with had a deep, almost obsessive love for making Tabasco, and the history behind it. I also got to go on a fan boat ride around the island, and saw so many alligators. There is truly no place like South Louisiana, and I’m thrilled to have a piece of it on Ravenous.”
Many of us have a very close relationship with the Tabasco brand. But some hot sauce fans might be a bit too obsessive. Our story hit the r/spicy and r/hotsauce reddit threads rallying the hot sauce fanatics of the Internet. Here are some of things we learned about the hot sauce fandom:
1. Ya’ll are buying way too much hot sauce
Our Tabasco story wound up in a Reddit thread where a commenter responded with a photo of their stash of six Tabasco bottles, four of which are empty, plus a half-used gallon. There’s also a funnel which I presume this person uses to refill their numerous bottles of hot sauce, which is a whole lotta hot sauce for one household. This is definitely enough hot sauce for a small pop-up. Well, they say you should have eight cups of water hot sauce a day.
2. We accidentally (on purpose) brought up the ye ol’ Crystal vs Tabasco debate
The Internet loves a good food matchup. There was intense discourse about the other Louisiana hot sauce: Crystal. Some thought that Tabasco is too vinegary; while other thought Crystal is too salty. Even if I did have a preference, I wouldn’t share it here. I don’t want the hot sauce bros coming after me over my personal taste. But can they really be compared though when one Crystal’s uses cayenne peppers and Tabasco uses the lowercase tabasco pepper?
3. Regardless of how we feel about Tabasco, this story made us really hungry
On Bluesky, there was talk about ordering Tabasco sauce to a chicken shawarma and in the Instagram comments, Texas food connoisseur Ali Khan admitted to craving a Bloody Mary. Um, same! There’s no denying that a little bit of Tabasco sauce can really up the ante on any lifeless lunch. Which reminds me a burrito sounds great right now with a sprinkle of Tabasco. Ordering said burrito as we speak.
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🐦⬛ Bird Droppings
- Over the weekend, The Daily podcast by the New York Times covered how restaurants are navigating the rising cost of real estate, ingredients, and labor. They highlight Modern Times in Minneapolis as a restaurant that removed prices off the menu as a form of protest of the ICE raids. At Ravenous, we’ve also covered some innovative ways restaurants are providing hospitality when customers can’t always afford to eat out. In May, Jaya wrote a story about the pay what you can model championed by Telly Justice, co-owner and chef of HAGS in NYC, and how they’re getting restaurants around the world to join in.
- As Meta continues to implement more AI on comment moderation, gay bars are taking a hit. A Texas gay bar had their Instagram page deactivated by Meta for allegedly flagging the account that deemed pictures of drag queens marked as “inappropriate.”
- As the midterm elections approach, Twin Cities chef Sean Sherman put out a call out for food industry workers to get vote and “86 fascism,” to protect “farm workers, food processors, restaurant workers, grocery workers, institutional food industry workers and basically everybody who has been targeted by ICE because of the color of their skin.” Part of the rallying cry is for restaurants to host dinners across the country on Tuesday, October 26. He’s also established a website, cafe.vote, to inform the community to get out the vote.
