Hot Sauce & Oysters

Homegrown English Peas

Since moving to the suburbs a few years ago, I've gradually become an avid, borderline obsessive, gardener.  Testing soil PH, establishing fruiting perennials, composting aggressively, researching off season cover crops, and pretty much everything in between.  There's something incredibly rewarding about growing your own produce, plus my kids really enjoy it.  Put a plate of cooked peas in front of them and no way in hell they'll touch it.  "Yucky!"  But if they're pulling pods straight from the vine and shucking their own, they'll eat a full serving of English peas all at once.  Whatever it takes to get those veggies in, right?  Also, since I started gardening, I've been trying to connect my newly found horticulture enthusiasm with that of my legacy oyster and seafood obsession.  I struck a few short chords, mostly with my oyster paved garden path and an exploration of pairing oysters with eggs from chickens my neighbor raises.  Then, late this Spring, I realized the massive, classic pairing of garden produce and oysters that I'd been missing - homegrown hot peppers, in the form hot sauce, and oysters.

Chile Peppers

Peppers of The Americas by M. Presilla

As always, this sent me down the research rabbit hole of hot sauce history, styles, and methods.  However, no research on hot sauce would be complete with out some detailed background on it's primary ingredient - capsicums, more commonly known as chile peppers or just peppers.  This is a nerd blog after all, and I actually wrote my college thesis on the dissemination of flora by the Portuguese empire, largely focusing on peppers.  That C+ is long lost to time, but it was nostalgically comforting to read the abridged versions of what I once studied collegiately some twenty years ago. 

Peppers are native to the Americas, with archaeobotanists tracing their origins to the Eastern Andean lowlands and Western Amazon basin.  Their heat or spice primarily comes from capsaicin, a chemical compound produced to deter consumption by mammals.  Contrary to popular belief, capsaicin is produced by a pepper's placenta (the white, pithy core) and not the seeds.  The seeds pick up a decent amount of the compounds given they're also produced by the placenta, but they're not the source.  Capsaicin, and a few related capsaicinoids, bind to receptors on mammals' tongues and produce a burning sensation, causing most mammals to avoid them.  It's a naturally occurring defense because when eaten, chile pepper seeds are destroyed by mammals' mastication and strong digestive tracts.  Birds, on the other hand, do not have capsaicin receptors, and eat peppers with much aplomb.  Birds also do not have teeth and their digestive tracts actually aid the germination of a pepper's seeds.  A true symbiotic relationship with the birds getting a nutritious treat while their aviatory nature ensures the plants' wide and successful propagation. 

Wild Peruvian Peppers - via Pepper Geek

Humans have been ironically drawn to the spiciness of peppers as far back as we know and are solely responsible for the plant's global reach.  Capsaicin, despite its initial scorching sensations, triggers several revitalizing reactions in the human body including endorphin releases, increased blood flow, and perspiration for body temperature cooling.  Contemporary research has even shown the positive effects it can have in fighting autoimmune diseases, not to mention our penchant for benign masochism.  Evidence of the consumption of wild varieties of peppers goes back millennia with early domestication roughly 6,000 years ago.  Civilizations throughout the Amazon, Andes, Caribbean, and Mesoamerica all have deep histories with peppers not just in their cuisines, but medicine, warfare, and even religious practices.  Early conquest-era records detail the Aztec using peppers to treat toothaches, the Arawak as a form of tear gas, and the Inca revering the pepper as one of the four creators of humanity.  Culinarily, peppers were a requirement in practically all meals for native populations, seasoning every dish they ate.  Most notably, there are records of each culture mashing, mixing, or grinding peppers into one form or another of spicy condiment - the original hot sauces. 

The first step in the pepper's global expansion was Columbus' 1492 arrival in the Caribbean.  He and his crew were introduced to peppers by the Taino people inhabiting modern-day Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic.  Columbus' voyage was intended to find an alternate root to Asia, specifically China, India, and The Spice Islands.  Given the name of the latter, the ultimate goal was to gain better access to precious and expensive spices like nutmeg, cloves, and of course, black pepper (pimienta in Spanish).  So, when he encountered capsicums' spice and heat, he called them by a similar name, pimiento, and not the native name, ají.  Whether it was the taste similarity that caused the cross naming, or Columbus' attempts to hide his shame and embarrassment when returning to Spain without any actual black pepper, we'll never know.  Either way, capsicums are now known globally, in almost all languages, to have some nominal crossover with black pepper.  

Early Worldwide Dispersal of Chile Peppers - via Cornell Botanic Gardens

While Columbus and the Spanish did return to Europe with chile peppers and contributed to their dissemination within Western Europe, it was Portuguese merchants who truly spread them around the world.  They encountered peppers in both Iberia and Brazil, and sailed the world spreading them like wildfire.  They introduced them to Africa through Angola and Mozambique; India through Goa, Sri Lanka, and Calcutta; Oceania through Makassar and Malacca; and Asia through Macau and Tanegashima.  Practically everywhere the pepper landed, it immediately took hold.  As mentioned, spices and seasonings were rare and expensive, only accessible to the upper classes in most of the world.  Peppers, alternatively, are easy to grow, adaptable to most climates, and incredibly resilient.  They democratized flavor.  The Columbian exchange led to innumerable atrocities and tragedies, but the global dispersal of peppers was a major, outlying boon.  Cuisines around the world joyously welcomed them with several new hot sauce creations.  Could you imagine South African food without piri-piri.  Korean without gochujang, North African without harissa, or Southeast Asian without sriracha?  Practically every culture has made the pepper their own, both literally with their respective landraces and figuratively in their food identities.

Chile Peppers & Oysters

Top - Chili Pepper Institute Tasting Wheel Bottom - Oyster Master Guild Tasting Wheel

The more I researched peppers, the more I realized they had in common with oysters.  There are thousands of oyster varieties.  They each have their own tastes, textures, and nuances.  They can be briny, sweet, savory, vegetal, earthy, snappy, buttery, and more.  Peppers are much the same.  There are thousands of pepper cultivars.  They can be spicy, mild, sweet, fruity, floral, crunchy, supple, and more.  The diversity is so great in both that organizations have created entire tasting wheels to guide experiences when eating them.  However, despite this immense diversity, all oysters and all peppers mostly come from just five specific cultivated species.  The Wellfleet oysters you enjoy are the exact same species as Chincoteagues, just grown in different waters, different styles, and from different broodstock.  Sweet bell peppers are also the same species as spicy serranos, just selectively bred for different traits and characteristics.  There is so much in common here that each domesticated pepper species has its analogous oysters species and vice versa, at least in terms of how and what we grow or consume in North America:
  

Depending on your browser and / or device, you may need to expand for full legibility Photo credits to Oyster Master Guild, Pepper Geek, and Chilli Books

Hot Sauce & Oysters

Oysters, peppers, and hot sauces all enjoy strong subcultures with fanatical followings, including beloved festivals, heated competitions, and even Guinness world records.  They're all deeply rooted in various cultural identities, as well as experiencing simultaneous resurgences in mainstream popularity.  But hot sauces specifically have an even richer history and association with oysters in North America.  Tabasco and oysters were advertised together from the very start of the brand in 1868, with Tabasco salesmen targeting oyster saloons.  But there are written and oral records of the use of hot sauce on oysters well before then, especially within the African diaspora.  As noted, peppers were the great democratizers of flavor and widely used by poor, immigrant, and slave communities.  At the same time, oysters were widely available and cheap throughout colonial and reconstruction America.  Black culture has been paramount in both building America's oyster industry and sharing hot sauce across the country over the last four hundred years.  Certainly the two met with high frequency, leading to the classic pairing we know today.

1875 bottle of Tabasco, noting "one or two drops are enough for a plate of soup, meat, oysters, etc."

 Many cherished oyster recipes of America's past call for hot sauce, including oyster stew, fried oysters, and oyster pan roasts, but they've also been paired for more than just flavor.  Old wives' tales tell us that hot sauce can kill any dangerous bacteria an oyster may be carrying.  This was particularly important in the pre-food safety regulation and refrigeration eras.  There's even contemporary research suggesting it may be true.  Capsaicin does have some antibacterial properties, but I would never advise consuming questionable shellfish, even if drowned in hot sauce.  The connection is entertaining, though.  But of all the historical hot sauce & oyster connections, my favorite is the satirical "Swallowing an Oyster Alive" by John S. Robb.  Published in 1844 in the St. Louis Reveille, it's a comedic tale of a poor out-of-towner being pranked.  After a bit of banter, he was coaxed into trying oysters for the very first time.  The locals then tricked him into believing the oysters were still alive and could kill him by eating through his stomach.  The only remedy - drinking a bottle of spicy pepper-sauce.  Give it a read or listen if you've got a few minutes.  It was the equivalent of a viral video in its day, and demonstrative of how hot sauce & oysters were already a staple in American culture nearly two hundred years ago. 

Hot Sauce & Oyster Trials

Beausoleil Oysters

Now, finally time for some hot sauce & oyster trials.  Being up front, this is only a "dipping-my-toe-in-the-water" exploration.  It's exclusively hot sauce focused as I just used a single oyster variety for uniformity.  Even then, I only tested a handful of hot sauces available on the market.  There are thousands, especially with the craft hot sauce boom.  I had to draw the line somewhere, but believe me, my mind went pretty much everywhere.  Could chili crisp provide a nice textural contrast?  Would the fruitiness of Caribbean hot sauces go well with vegetal notes of Pacific oysters?  What about the complexity of sambal with the minerality of European flat oysters?  Eastern Carolina BBQ sauce and Texan oysters?  Nam phrik or nước chấm and Kumamotos?  The possibilities are literally endless. 

For a more robust hot sauce & oyster exploration, I suggest checking out Southern Maryland based content creator Rob Schou.  He's been going hard in the paint on all things seafood for the last 2+ years with an emphasis on various crabs, varieties of oysters, and fishing on the Chesapeake.  Over the last year, he's had a particular focus on oyster condiments, which naturally led to innumerable hot sauce & oyster combinations.  Mexican hot sauce reviews, homemade sriracha, a Hot Ones oyster test.  Several fans and brands have started sending him sauces to try, and he even did a March Madness Bracketology style hot sauce & oyster pairing competition.  Dude's been on a pretty envy-inducing journey over the last year. Scroll his channels for much more comprehensive hot sauce & oyster trials, as well as great seafood content in general.

Hot Sauce Lineup

Admittedly, I've proselytized on this blog countless times about being an oyster purist.  "No lemon, no lime, no horseradish, no cocktail sauce, and no hot sauce!  Taste your oysters in their true form to experience their nuance and flavor."  I still stand by this when eating a mixed dozen oysters from different regions.  It's the only way to appreciate their merroir.  However, my taste buds work, and oysters with hot sauce taste great.  That's undeniable.  So, over the course of a few weeks, I did my research and obtained fifteen hot sauces which I grouped into some loosely defined categories.  I reviewed them on a scale of 1 to 10, based on both overall quality and how well they paired with oysters.  And of all the hot sauce puns I could say here to kick things off, like "Time to turn up the heat!" or "Who's feeling saucy?," I most prefer my friend's brilliantly crass "Things are gonna get spicy...better put the toilet paper in the freezer!"  Let's go! 

Louisiana Style Hot Sauces

Best to start with the hot sauces you'll see at 99% of all oyster bars - Louisiana style.  After all, Tabasco is the original gangsta', and is largely credited with both commercializing hot sauce and stamping the hot sauce & oyster association on the American psyche.  The pairing makes a lot of sense too.  Oysters go well with acid to counterbalance the salinity, and Louisiana style hot sauces are always very vinegar forward.  Add a spicy kick to that and you've got a pairing that rivals peanut butter & jelly.  Tried and true, let's see what you've got:

• Tabasco - Original Red Pepper Sauce - Full transparency, I don't like Tabasco.  Never have and, as confirmed by this trial, never will.  It's an incredibly distinct flavor unlike any other hot sauce.  It can't be the fermentation, pepper species, or barrel aging, as I enjoy several hot sauces that use the same methods.  Perhaps it's just a combination of all three that leads to a sharp, astringent flavor that doesn't sit right.  To each their own, but 2/10 for me.   
• Crystal Hot Sauce - the true OG of Louisiana style hot sauces in my mind.  Crystal feels like a cleaner, brighter version of Tabasco.  Tangy, slightly smoky, and a much more cayenne pepper primary, vinegar secondary feel.  Solid 6/10.  
• Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce - Full transparency again, I love Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce.  Of all the Louisiana style hot sauces to pair with oysters, this has always been my go to.  It's definitely got that vinegar bite, but has a stronger, saltier pepper flavor, as well as a richer viscosity that texturally works well on an oyster.  7/10.
  
  
  
  

Chesapeake Style Hot Sauces

I love Old Bay.  Fuckin' love it!  Old Bay potato chips, Old Bay peanuts, even Old Bay Goldfish.  I simply can't get enough.  No joke, I've been talked out of getting an Old Bay tattoo on more than one occasion.  While traditionally paired with crab and shrimp, I had to explore how the classic Old Bay or Chesapeake / crab seasoning hot sauces might work on oysters.  My gut told me they'd be too overpowering, but I still had to find out: 

• Pepper Palace - Chesapeake Bay Hot Sauce - On the topic of OGs, Pepper Palace certainly claims that spot in terms of hot sauce makers.  Founded in 1989, it boasts 50+ hand-crafted hot sauces and 100+ retail outlets across North America.  The Palace was well ahead of the curve, decades before the hot sauce renaissance and outlets like Hot Ones' Heatonist.  No hot sauce exploration would be complete without a visit, and their Chesapeake Bay variety shockingly struck all chords with oysters.  Silky, spicy, comforting.  A delightfully surprising and highly recommended 7/10.  
  
• Delaware Sauce Co. - Ghost of the Chesapeake Hot Sauce  - I wanted to pepper in (all pun intended) a few locally made hot sauces in these trials, and Delaware Sauce Company is only a few hours from my hometown.  Unfortunately, going local didn't equate to quality this time around, at least when paired with oysters.  It felt like more of a heat bomb with subtle crab seasoning undertones, both of which overwhelmed the oyster.  It also had an unpleasant grittiness that was amplified on an oyster.  4/10.
• Old Bay Hot Sauce - Old Bay Hot Sauce is a bit misleading.  Don't get me wrong, I do like the product.  However, it's not a hot sauce.  It's more akin to Taco Bell hot sauce, just substituting the taco seasoning for Old Bay seasoning.  Deployed in the right situation, it's great.  On oysters, not so much.  It's very single note with the Old Bay, and had that same unpleasant grittiness.  9/10 for their seasoning, but 4/10 for their hot sauce. 
  
  

Seafood or Oyster Marketed Hot Sauces

This one was tricky and got a little out of hand.  There are hundreds of hot sauce styles and brands around the world that are either marketed to be paired with seafood, or are commonly known to go well with seafood.  Mexican salsa marisquera, a number of Caribbean hot sauces, Hawaiian chili pepper water, lemon pepper hot sauces, not to mention all the Southeast Asian staples like tuk trey koh kong, muối ớt xanh or nam jim jaew.  Even the Louisiana and Chesapeake styles fall into this category.  So, once again drawing the line somewhere, I tried to get a few branded hot sauces that broadly touched as many of these varieties as possible:    

• Culichi Negra Seafood Hot Sauce - I didn't have much familiarity with salsa marisquera until this project, but man am I glad I discovered it.  There are a few available on the market, but everything I read pointed to Culichi being the best.  And wow was it the best.  Toasty, savory, spicy, tangy, sweet.  All possible flavors packaged tightly into one drop.  It's viscous and has a slight pipián granularity to it, but goes great on oysters, and pretty much everything else I imagine.  Top of the charts with a 9/10, and I'm excited to try others.  
• Smoke City Foods - Lowcountry Oyster Sauce - While Louisiana arguably owns North America's preeminent hot sauce & oyster culture, the Southeast's Lowcountry is a close rival.  It needed some representation here, and Smoke City Foods' oyster sauce seemed appropriate.  Sadly, it didn't deliver, tasting like a mild, watered down cocktail sauce.  I guess their tagline of "Not Just Another Hot Sauce" was right, just in the wrong ways. 2/10.
• Pepper Palace - Horseradish Oyster Hot Sauce - I initially visited Pepper Palace for this exact variety.  Their Chesapeake Bay version was an auxiliary pick up that evolved into the entire Chesapeake Style category.  While Pepper Palace is wholly deserving of praise, it also feels kind of gimmicky or tourist-trappy.  Just look at their locations.  And their oyster hot sauce woefully echoed this.  It was mainly bland ketchup and horseradish forward with negligible heat. 2/10. 
• The Starboard - Raw Seafood Hot Sauce - I had to go local again for at least one sauce in this category.  Luckily, The Starboard in Dewey Beach, Delaware has their own line of retail sauces, and their Raw Seafood Hot Sauce seemed perfectly aligned.  Unluckily, it was yet another version semi-spicy, watery cocktail sauce.  What's going on, America?  Think creatively!  It's possible to make a good oyster hot sauce without reverting directly to cocktail sauce.  3/10. 
• Vastana's Citrus Hot Sauce - I scoured the internet for hours trying to find the right Southeast Asian style hot sauce, and I realize that only trying one is a massive disservice to the range and diversity inspired by the region's various cultures.  However, I think I chose well with Vatsana's citrus hot sauce.  Unlike any other sauce in the lineup, acid from the lime and umami from the anchovy extract brought a whole new complexity of flavor, especially when paired with an oyster.  It wasn't a powerhouse on the heat, but really opened my eyes to the possibilities of pairing any sauce with oysters.  9/10.     
  
  

Oyster Made or Endorsed Hot Sauces

Who better to ask "what hot sauce goes best with oysters" than those who grow them?  Surely their expertise would provide some legit pairings.  First, I turned my research to oyster companies making their own hot sauces.  There were quite a few, or at least quite a few that did at some point and time.  I encountered several broken links, out of stocks, and 404 errors.  Oyster farming and web coding aren't exactly the same skill set.  So, given the limited availability, I had to expand my search to hot sauce & oyster farm partnerships or endorsements.  I'm sure this won't age well, as links will have returned, new partnerships formed, and more oyster farms will start making their own.  But here we are:

• Rappahannock Oyster Co. Hot Sauce - I've always been a big fan of Rappahannock Oyster Co.  They're one of the more prominent voices in Chesapeake oyster restoration, help out-of-work fishermen establish new careers in aquaculture, and raise a phenomenal variety of oysters.  I had high hopes for their hot sauce as such, but it mostly missed the mark.  Felt like a bootleg Tabasco.  Sorry guys.  Love ya, but I've got to keep it real.  2/10.    
  
• Lowcountry Oyster Co. Hot Sauce - I'm not very familiar with Lowcountry Oyster Co. as they were recently formed in 2017, but it was one of the few oyster farms I found that currently made their own hot sauce.  And if their oysters are anything like their hot sauce, they're doing things right.  It was straight Louisiana style, both vinegar and cayenne forward, but had a depth of flavor and pleasing heat the mainstays couldn't hold a candle to.  Move over, Nawlins, there's a new hot sauce & oyster sheriff in town!  9/10. 
• Barnacle Foods - Bullwhip Hot Sauce - Located in Juneau, Alaska, Barnacle Foods sources locally grown seaweed and turns it into familiar culinary products.  Most notably, they make a hot sauce that's endorsed and sold by Island Creek Oysters, Taylor Shellfish, and several other oyster farms.  Made with kelp and piri piri peppers, it's rich, velvety, and packed with savory heat, almost like mushrooms braised in spicy seawater.  Great on oysters, and probably everything else.  8/10.  
  
• Splat - Hot Sauce Mignonette - Hama Hama Oysters and Splat Hot Sauce partnered to make this exclusive product, and it tastes exactly like it sounds; a perfect mixture of spicy hot sauce and piquant mignonette.  All of Splat's hot sauces are fermented, so it had an extra layer of flavorful funk.  And while it might not be the best multipurpose hot sauce, it works perfectly on oysters.  Mission set and goal accomplished by this partnership.  A praiseworthy 7/10. 
  

The SF Oyster Nerd Hot Sauce

Homegrown Peppers

After all fifteen hot sauce & oyster pairings, I really only landed on one truth - whatever tastes good to you will likely taste good on an oyster.  This is not a steadfast rule, as some hot sauces definitely heighten the qualities of an oyster, while others will eclipse them entirely.  But even with the latter, you've still got a texturally pleasant and briny delivery mechanism for your favorite hot sauce.  Perhaps not the most economical of choices, but certainly not a bad experience.  So, when approaching my own homemade hot sauce, I decided to simply make the best, tastiest, full-flavored hot sauce I could.  

L - Charred and Fresh Peppers R - Fermenting Peppers

Earlier in the year, with this very project in mind, I'd planted Hungarian Wax, Habanero, Jalapeño, and Cayenne peppers.  All the research I later did really piqued my interest in growing more obscure or heirloom peppers, but that's for next season.  After several weeks of devoted attention and cultivation, the peppers popped, ripened, and were ready for harvest.  As my goal was to maximize flavor, I combined several hot sauce styles and approaches into one.  I broke down the peppers, removing the majority of the seeds as they can bring an undesired bitterness.  I also removed most of the peppers' placenta, specifically the habaneros' and the cayennes'.  I wanted spicy, but not pain-inducing like those peppers can often deliver.  Next, I left half the peppers fresh to keep some bright flavor notes and charred the other half to get a smoky sweetness.  Finally, I packed it all into a brine solution in a fermentation jar, along with a little bit of garlic.  This would add savory, salty, and tangy to the final product.

After fourteen long days of closely monitoring the ferment, it was time to make hot sauce.  I strained the peppers and blended them with a little bit of the reserved brine and some lime juice, then ran it through a sieve to remove pulp and particulate.  I wanted a slightly viscous sauce, like the ones I'd enjoyed, so I refrained from running it through cheesecloth or a coffee filter.  Xanthan gum would have helped, but this sauce was going to be au naturel.  I tasted it a few times, adjusted with a few pinches of salt and sugar, then proceeded to bottling.

The SF Oyster Nerd Hot Sauce

The final product was quite tasty indeed.  Right amount of smoke, right amount of sweet, right amount of tang, right amount of heat.  I even created my own SF Oyster Nerd branding for the bottles, Little Fat Boy Frankie style.  The only issue I couldn't walk back was a slight bitterness, most likely from using a little too much of the ferment brine that had developed some kahm yeast.  Lesson learned for The SF Oyster Nerd Hot Sauce 2.0 version.  All in all, I was pretty satisfied, especially when enjoying it on half a dozen oysters.  I'll go with an unbiased 6/10 here, leaving ample room for improvement on my next batch. 

I thoroughly enjoyed my hot sauce & oyster pairing adventure.  From the start, I knew the tastings and homemade hot sauce would be fun, but I had no idea what a delight all the reading and research around the subject would be.  I hope you get out there and enjoy some hot sauce & oysters yourself sometime soon.  Better yet, make your own hot sauce and bring it along for a day trip to your closest oyster farm.  Trust me, you won't regret either.

Cheers,

The SF Oyster Nerd