TABASCO GREEN PEPPER
SAUCE
Green Tabasco is a great
entry-level hot sauce for anyone
who’s been traumatised by
touching an ornamental chilli
plant in 1997, then rubbing it
in their eyes, leading to hours
of painful and humiliating milk
eye baths. I won’t leave you
in suspense: I was that young
capsaicin casualty, and green
Tabasco was one of the first hot
sauces I tried after deciding
I was ready to overcome that
horror. Its low heat, nice
vinegar hit, and pleasingly tangy
jalapeño dimension is a good
replacement for whatever other
horrible shit you currently put
on your scrambled eggs. Or
you could shake it into a Bloody
Mary made with spicy V8 juice
and ascend to a higher plane
of brunchdom. Or you could
scrub the label off the cute little
green glass bottle and use it to
hold a single gardenia on your
windowsill. ER
SRIRACHA HOT CHILI SAUCE
Like every other tight-jean-
wearing urbanite who’s
chosen love over money,
I’ve eaten a lot of cheap
Vietnamese food in my
time. Sometimes good,
sometimes just cheap. But
even when it was essentially
MSG-flavoured water, there
was always that bright red
bottle of Sriracha standing
tall on the table, ready to
save the meal. This sauce
tastes of my youth and so I
will always love it, just like
I’ll always love the plasticky
smell of My Little Pony dolls.
Sriracha has become a bit of
an icon in Australia, and with
its solid kick, strong flavour
and low price, it deserves it.
There’s no denying, though,
that it’s the Heinz Ketchup
of hot sauces – we should
never be ashamed of our
love for it, but it’s good to
branch out and try new
things, too. CCRED CLIPPER JALAPEÑO,
GREEN TOMATO & CORIANDER
SAUCE
I wanted to like this. It’s in a
smooth, oblong, apothecary-
chic bottle; it’s got green
tomato and coriander; it’s a
bit chunky, so you get little
bursts of flavour when you eat
it. Unfortunately, that flavour
is bad. I don’t know what it is,
maybe the green tomato, but
it has an astringent medical
quality that brings to mind
the lemon gel bleach I use to
scrub skidmarks off my toilet
bowl. That unpleasant top note
doesn’t last long, and once it
fades you’re left with a hint of
chilli heat and not much else.
If you told me that pouring this
sauce onto open wounds would
disinfect them and speed up
the tissue healing process, I’d
believe you. The only application
I enjoyed was onto a slightly-too-
burnt barbecued chicken thigh,
where it sort of balanced out the
flavour of ash and failure. ERMELBOURNE HOT SAUCE
HABANERO & MANGO
I first came across this
brand in a craft beer store
in Melbourne. I walked in to
buy a bottle of beer for myself- yes, a single bottle – and
walked out with a bottle of
hot sauce for my brother. My
brother will become a chilli
farmer when he retires; his
love for chilli sauce is as
intense as a Carolina Reaper.
As kids who grew up in
Queensland, we also have a
love of mangoes. This sauce
is his dream come true, and
if Harrison Ford circa 1985
was putting it on my dinner,
it would be my dream come
true, too. For those who aren’t
a fan of the world’s sloppiest
fruit, don’t let it put you off – it
doesn’t taste like mango, it
just has a summery kick. It’s
also great for people paranoid
about having thin lips – it’s so
spicy that you’ll be sporting a
swollen pout in no time. CC
road test