Get Yourself in Geer For....

Wow. Me actually visiting the Lounge more than once every six months. I know, incredible. I am just as shocked as you are. This edition is a very special edition. For the first time, I am having a guest speaker in the Lounge. Revolutionary, right?? Now this is not just any guest speaker, this is a very close friend of mine, and former/forever coworker because we worked at the same job at UA and are now employed by the same company just at different locations. (He also took a job I interviewed for, but that's a story for another day...) 

Anyway, our special guest speaker is named Nick Geer. Nick is a senior in Aerospace Engineering, with a passion for drones and hot sauce. 

Now, this passion for hot sauce is a burning passion. There's gonna be a lot of puns and goofs in this one, get ready for it. Nick is so passionate about hot sauce, that he wrote a six page exposé on hot sauce. This exposé was not necessarily solicited by me, but wow, I have never been so happy to receive something. 

So, I introduce the aptly named: "Get Yourself in Geer for... Hot Takes with Nick" (Everything from this point on is by Nick, until indicated otherwise. Buckle up for a spicy ride). 

A Tutorial On Hot Sauce 

Hot sauce is easily the greatest condiment ever. Hot sauce has many different kinds and applications. I've yet to find a food that isn't improved by some type of hot sauce. However, each hot sauce serves its own purpose. You wouldn't put mustard on a waffle, would you? No you wouldn't. But if you would...may god have mercy on your soul. Just the same, you shouldn't put the wrong hot sauce on your food. Here is a tutorial on some foods and the acceptable hot sauce pairing for each. 

Food 1: The Taco 

The taco is a staple of the American diet. It is celebrated nationwide through holidays like Taco Tuesday and Taco Thursday. Let's go over some hot sauces that may go well with a taco. 

1. Any Taco Bell Sauce. It has taco in the name. Of course it tastes good on a taco (Comment from Leah: I just linked the bottles online, but this also includes the little packets from the store that have the phrases on them. I once saw a person on Facebook use the "Marry Me" hot sauce pack to get engaged to his now Fiancée. That was a choice.) 
2. Valentina Xtra Hot. The stuff is like $1/gallon,  it's basically Mexican water, and it tastes damn good. It'll really spice up your taco game without going over your budget. 
3. Bravado Spice Co Pineapple Habanero Sauce. It's not actually that spicy, but if you want some sweet and heat on your meat, then this is the sauce for you. 
4. Cholula Original. All of their other flavors suck but original Cholula is an excellent taco pairing. 
5. Anything from El Yucateco. Probably the hottest sauce sold in your average supermarket. It's pretty good and also accessible. 
6. A Hot Barbecue sauce can go well if your meat is tailored towards it, like a nice shredded pork or chicken taco. 

NOW. Let's go over some sauce that would NOT be good on a taco: 

1. Frank's Red Hot. What the hell is wrong with you? This is buffalo sauce 
2. That's pretty much it. Tacos are great, just don't put Red Hot on them. 

Food 2: The Quesadilla 

Quesadillas (pronounced kwe-sa-dil-la) are the most basic of cooked foods. Take a tortilla, some cheese, slap it on a stove or panini press (or microwave, I don’t judge) and you have dinner. Sure, you can add sour cream, meat, onions, tomatoes, whatever. But, there’s really no replacement for plain ol’ cheese disc. Here are some hot sauces that go great on a quesadilla:

1. Anything from the taco list above. I mean, it's pretty much a compressed melted taco so it makes sense that those sauces would be good here too. 
2. Buffalo Wild Wings Mango Habenero. It's good. Try it. 
3. Frank's Red Hot. It actually works here. There's no logic why, but it does, and I won't hate you for using it on a plain quesadilla. 

Are there any hot sauces that don’t go well on a quesadilla then? No, quesadillas are as simple as it gets. They are very accepting towards hot sauces of all kinds. However, as soon as you add things other than just cheese to it, your choices of hot sauces can dwindle. Say, you put ground beef or fajita meat on your quesadilla. What would no longer be good with it?

1. Frank's Red Hot. Don't do it. 
2. Just don't. 

Food 3: The Hot Wing

Now, the hot wing is a bit of a reversal from the Hispanic dishes listed above. They are better with sweet or more garlicky sauces. Hot wings are also probably the best way to push yourself to your absolute heat limits. You wanna try that new 4 billion Scoville hot sauce that tastes like your grandma's armpit? Sure, use a hot wing. Lets go over some of the best sauces for hot wings:

1. Red Hot. This is the purpose of Red Hot. Use Red Hot here. Do not use it in other places where it does not belong. 
2. Buffalo Wild Wings Mango Habanero. Actually, anything from Buffalo Wild Wings works with wings. This is just my favorite. 
3. A good spicy barbecue, such as Cherry Republic's Cherry Ghost Pepper sauce. Barbecue wings may not be your traditional hot wing, but damn, they are good. 

What about sauces that don't work with hot wings? 

1. Tabasco. It's a thin, vinegary sauce. How do you even get it to stay on the wing? 
2. Cholula. Just not the right flavor for wings. 
3. Valentina Xtra Hot. I may not hate you for using this, but there are many, better options. 

Food 4: Spicy Chili

Mmmm, it's a cold fall evening. You just got home from work/class/your Minecraft book club (hey!)/whatever, and you want nothing more than a warm, meaty soup. Chili is for you. There's not chili that isn't better when it's spicy. What hot sauces go best with Chili? 

1. Tabasco. It's perfectly thin and doesn't change the consistency of your soup, while adding some nice, acidic heat. There's no better chili hot sauce in my opinion. 
2. Pepper extracts. Really, your focus is just adding some heat and maybe a little essence of pepper to your chili. No reason to overdo it with garlicky sauces or fancy ingredients. 

Like I said, chili doesn't need anything super complex or fancy. That's why these sauces don't go well in chili: 

1. Frank's Red Hot. Why would you ever put this in a soup? That's just plain wrong. 
2. Any wing sauce. Wing style sauces are too thick to work well in a chili. 
3. Barbecue sauces. Y'know, I haven't really considered too much what this would taste like but I feel that barbecue is not the flavor to go for when making chili. Also it's too thick. 

Food 5: Chinese Rice and Meat

"If you put Red Hot on Chinese food, I will end you."

-Sun Tzu, Art of War

Chinese food is great. Some meat, some rice, maybe some broccoli, and 95% of your meal is sodium and MSG. It’s pretty good while spicy too. Here are some of the best hot sauces to put on your Christmas takeout:

1. Sriracha. I don't understand why people wear shirts and stuff for this. It's good but it has practically one application, Chinese food. Support a better hot sauce with a wider range of uses, like Cholula or something. 
2. Spicy Mustard. I don't mean like a Spicy Dijon or honey mustard, that would be plain wrong.  I mean a mustard that’ll clear your nose out in half a second much like wasabi does. It probably has the same chemical in it or something, I dunno. I haven’t done my research.
3. Sauces based on crushed red pepper, or anything similar.  A lot of Chinese restaurants have this generic honey red pepper sauce, they probably make it in house or get it in bulk from some nameless sauce producer. It’s a good simple sauce, sweet and heat, and it goes great with most Chinese dishes. 

There's a lot of sauces that don't go well with Chinese food though. Here are some examples:

1. Red Hot. I will end you.
2. Cholula. I know I said to wear a Cholula shirt over a Sriracha shirt but it doesn't actually work with Chinese food
3. Taco Bell Sauces. Then again, if you're broke and have a drawer full of Taco Bell packets, and you need to at least feel like maybe there is some heat in this meal, this may be your only option. 

Food 6: Sushi 

Sushi is surrounded in tradition. It's always served practically the same way at every Sushi restaurant. Some soy sauce, wasabi, ginger, chopsticks, and a flat plate. That's why my hot sauce list for this food has only one entry: 

1. Wasabi. That's it. Don't use anything else. You can put wasabi in mayo, put it in the soy sauce, just don't put any other sauces on sushi. 

Here are some sauces you shouldn't put on sushi: 

1. Red Hot. You deserve to be deported naked to Antarctica in the winter if you try this
2. Everything else   

Food 7: Popcorn 

I know what you're thinking. Hot sauce on popcorn? Really? Yes. It’s amazing and you need to try it if you haven’t already. Make sure you have napkins though, since its hot sauce covered finger food that’ll get everywhere so now you have hot sauce everywhere. These are my favorite hot sauces I’ve had on popcorn:

1. Valentina Xtra Hot. They had this at a movie theater, apparently for the nachos but I didn’t know that so I drenched my popcorn and now I’m hooked. That’s all I’ve tried that’s good on it.

I really only use Valentina on my popcorn, it works so well. But once, I tried Taco Bell sauce on popcorn since I was out of Valentia and man do I not recommend it. It just made weird tasting soggy spiceless popcorn. Don’t do this, it’s a bad idea. So, don’t put this on your popcorn:

1. Taco Bell Sauce

What goes into an acceptable sauce? 

I think you’ve got a good idea of what sauce to use where now. So, let’s go over what makes a good hot sauce. Now, we all know that the best hot sauces are micro-brewed small batch sauces made from single origin non-gmo organic peppers imported from a town with a population of less than 500 in rural Mexico, but what makes an acceptable hot sauce?

1. It actually has to taste good. Your 1 million Scoville sauce is worthless to me if it doesn’t at least taste good. You have to try to bring out the flavor of the pepper and not just drown it in vinegar and garlic. 
2. Any addition to the sauce must compliment the other ingredients. I’ve tried hot sauces that taste like baby fart. Sure, they tried to add some flavor to it, but it was just wrong. In my opinion, habaneros are best with some sweet, jalapenos are best with some savory, ghost peppers have awesome flavor on their own that just needs to stand out.
3. It has to be able to pour out of the damn bottle. My favorite sauce has me shaking the bottle for like a minute just to get a reasonable amount on my food. (Why don’t I just remove the thing from the end of the bottle? Its not what the creators wanted). Taco bell’s bottles have this perfect. Their bottle tops have almost a 1” diameter opening. The sauce just pours out with no resistance. Squeeze bottles are good too.
4. It has to stand out from other sauces in a way. There are like 30 brands of hot sauce you find frequently in restaurants that are all decent sauces, sure, but I don’t care because they all taste exactly the same.

What about heat?

The last thing to look for in a hot sauce is its heat. You may not be able to take a lot of heat, so take it easy and build your immunity up until you can get to the real good stuff. I find the best sauces lie somewhere in the 100k-300k Scoville rating range, where they have some solid heat but not too much to block the flavor. But, its ok if you don’t like that or can’t handle it yet. As long as you like spicy foods (and don’t think Panda Express’s orange chicken is spicy, that chili label they have is a pure lie), then you’re still an ok human being. You can tailor your sauce collection towards your own heat range. But never be afraid to try a new hot sauce!

Thanks for reading my rant, amateur hot sauce expert professional Nick Geer signing off.

I hope you read all the way through this, because honestly, it was incredible. Nick is a great guy and if you're interested in his instagram that is not at all related to hot sauce, here you go: @pitchonaswitch

I hope you enjoyed this spicy break on the lounge. Having a guest was fun! If you're interested in further guests, or want to be a guest writer, let me know! I only ask the following of potential writers:

1. Make it outrageously specific. 
2. Make it funny! 
3. Have fun with it and don't take anything too seriously. That's my rule for life too. 

Anyway, hope you learned a lot, and that you look further into your hot sauce exploration. See you later again in Leah's Lounge!