Tuesday, February 25, 2014

If you don't put Tabasco on your pizza you are crazy!


Pizza is a go-to staple for hundreds of millions of people.  It's easy, cheesy, savory, and often times SPICY.

a multitude of bold-flavored ingredients are likely to be found on a properly-topped pizza.  Pepperoni is perhaps the most common, whereas banana peppers are all the rage as of late.  Sausage lovers and onion fanatics alike take great delight in dressing up their creations with piles of their favorite add-ons.

Now let's talk about sauce.  a good tomato-based pizza sauce usually needs some kick to it.  You'll want some garlic and oregano in there, and it's fun to experiment with other seasonings.

But what about the most flavorful ingredient of all?  What about our good friend...





a lot of people sprinkle Tabasco on TOP of their pizza.  Or if you're anything like me you pretty much baste it.  It's one of the most common and recommended uses, so perfectly complementary.

I got to thinking, though, does anyone ever use it IN the SAUCE?  Tabasco has been infused into a lot of great food products over the years.  Everything from ketchup to Cheez-Its to SPAM.  (You can check out http://countrystore.tabasco.com to see all the different things they have available.)  But there's never been a Tabasco brand pizza sauce, at least as far as I've ever seen.  and I'm pretty thorough!

Therefore I decided to make my own.  I purchased a simple store-bought jar of really basic name brand pizza sauce, and stirred in Tabasco.  Like, a LOT of it.  I was aware that the resulting product might contain too much heat even for ME, but was excited to take the challenge.  For the pizza itself I just used bagels (I didn't want to make a whole giant pie in case the results were inedible), spread on a good amount of the sauce, and topped it with simple mozzarella and pepperoni.

The results were about as tasty as you might expect, but that lingering residual heat I had been hoping for simply wasn't there!  So now I'm wondering...

...IS there such a thing as too much Tabasco on pizza?

I'm still determined to find out.  Round two of my mad experiment will be coming up shortly.  This time I have decided to try using Tabasco ONLY without any pizza sauce at all.  I'll injure myself yet, just wait.

I know I can do it.




That's all for now, more Tabasco thoughts to follow.

Thanks for reading!