Hot Sauce: Zero Calories and No Trans Fats!

I’ve recently gotten into hot sauces which, unfortunately for my gastrointestinal tract, means that hot sauces have also gotten into me.

I blame the show “Hot Ones” on the First We Feast YouTube channel. If you’re unfamiliar with it, “Hot Ones” is a long running show wherein host Sean Evans, whose intestines must be the consistency of creamed corn by now, interviews a celebrity while they both consume ten hot wings, each wing covered in an increasingly hotter sauce than the wing before it.

The “Hot Ones” celebrity guests include pop culture icons like Donald Trump, Bill Clinton, and Prince Andrew. Wait, I was looking at the Epstein list. “Hot Ones” guests include pop culture icons like Awkwafina, Schoolboy Q, and Jack Harlow. I have no idea who these celebrities are because I was born in the 1970s, but I trust they are very popular and iconic and, so far, I haven’t found them on the Epstein list.

One of the hottest sauces in the lineup is called Da Bomb Beyond Insanity and according to the label it should be consumed “one drop at a time with extreme caution.” This sauce is so hot that the only way to truly enjoy it is under general anesthesia. On the plus side, though, while it might convert your lower intestine into 80/20 ground beef, it contains zero calories and no trans fats!

Surprisingly, Da Bomb Beyond Insanity is only 8th in the lineup with two more sauces being even hotter including the Last Dab sauce at number 10, an extremely delicious hot sauce, assuming your idea of delicious involves having your teeth melt out of your face.

As is the “Hot Ones” tradition, Sean and the celebrities (such as Joji, whoever the hell that is) put a “last dab” of the Last Dab (get it?) on the 10th wing making it extra hot. It’s amazing no celebrities have suffered major cardiac events on this show yet.
If you are familiar with the “Hot Ones” show then I apologize for wasting your time.

Every year my friend Zig Zag (not his real name¹) and I consume the current season’s lineup of “Hot Ones” hot sauces because we are not very smart. If we were very smart we would have stopped after the very first season lineup we tried, because in the words of myself by the end of it, “I think I’m dying.”

My wife has always loved hot sauce. For a very long time she used to carry a small bottle of Tabasco sauce around with her in her purse “just in case.” This seemed to me to be borderline psychotic behavior. But now that I’m into hot sauce myself I totally get it. Luckily, these days most restaurants offer not only Tabasco but several other sauces so we don’t have to carry around our own bottles like borderline psychotics. I’ve yet to find a restaurant that offers Da Bomb Beyond Insanity, though, probably because those restaurants end up killing off their own customer bases.

If you’re curious about getting into hot sauce yourself (I highly recommend against this) then here are a few things you need to know:

Hot sauce heat levels are rated on what is known as the Scoville Heat Unit (SHU) scale. A hot sauce’s SHU rating can fall anywhere between zero (ketchup) and one million (ketchup so spicy it could soften industrial steel²).
Never give hot sauce to toddlers unless they’ve been very naughty, although, my lawyers and I would like Child Protective Services to know that we are very much against this.
Hot sauce can, if you’re in a pinch, be used for many other purposes such as removing rust from combine gears, warding off roving bands of post-apocalyptic marauders, and punishing naughty toddlers because they will not shut up when I’m trying to watch the game. No! I’ve been advised that what I meant to say was that hot sauce can be used to cauterize wounds. Wounds on adults. Not wounds on toddlers. You paying attention Child Protective Services? I miss my children.

In conclusion, I would like to thank all the hard-working engineers and scientists who have brought us such technological wonders as touchscreen tablets, because I’m currently using one to write this while sitting on the toilet bleeding out. I hope that you, like myself and Zig Zag, enjoy your new and exciting hot sauce journey!