Totally Sauced

Picture courtesy of The Sriracha Cookbook Blog.

The above graphic describes my dining phase circa Fall 2008. Sriracha was going on everything - scrambled eggs, pizza, red beans and rice - you name the food, there was likely a squirt of the red stuff going on it. And I swear that back then, everything tasted better with a little rooster sauce. Sriracha became an unhealthy obsession that eventually had to be broken, but once I quit sriracha, no sooner later did I find myself liberally applying Tiger Sauce or Valentina or Pepperdoux to everything from grilled chicken thighs to plain white rice.

I guess you could label me "a sauce guy", but really aren't we all? When was the last time you reheated some leftovers without instinctively grabbing for the jar of your favorite condiment? Whether it's extra hollandaise on your eggs benedict or a side of Larkin sauce to dip your fries in at MVB, at some point the steak becomes but a mere vehicle for the sizzle. And it's not just spicy sauces that I'm talking about. Think about all of the chicken tenders that you dunked into honey mustard or the eggrolls dipped in sweet-n-sour. In college, when grilled ham and cheese was served for lunch at my fraternity house, the cook made sure to provide plenty of ranch dressing for dipping. Matter of fact, Texans love ranch dressing on just about everything.

What are some of your go-to sauces that you can?  Do you like pepper jelly on your pork chops and your pancakes? Or do you have hankering for Caesar dressing on both your salads and your shrimp? The only stipulation is that the sauce must be readily usable either our of the bottle or from the jar.

For a little inspiration, how about a flashback to one of the best Super Bowl commercials of all time:

The Spicy Stuff

We natives of Louisiana have a reputation for a disposition to spicy food, and bottles of Tabasco on restaurant tables are as customary as salt and pepper shakers. I like to spice up my food just as much as the coonass sitting next to me, but lately I have been tantalizing my taste buds with a wider range of hot sauces. In fact, I would say that on average I probably use more sriracha than traditional Louisiana hot sauces. I like it with sushi, pizza, and even (gasp) red beans and rice.

But I have not forsaken our homegrown sauces all together. I still douse my fried shrimp po-boys with plenty of Crystal and hit a few drops of Pepperdoux (a gift from a friend) on a pork tenderloin. But I am just as likely to use sambal in my pho or piri piri (a recent discovery in Portugal) on my roasted chicken.

Variety really is the spice of life. So what's your favorite hot sauce?