The Tabasco pepper is a small, hot Capsicum frutescens chilli, named after the Mexican state, whose juicy pods are the basis of the aged Louisiana hot sauce and of Southern pepper vinegar.
What it is¶
The Tabasco pepper is a variety of Capsicum frutescens, the species of the African bird's eye (piri piri) and the Brazilian malagueta. Its pods are small, 2.5–4 cm long, slender and tapering, and borne upright on a bushy plant. They ripen from pale yellow-green through yellow and orange to bright red, and a plant often carries every colour at once.
The Tabasco pepper is unusual in being juicy: most small hot chillies are dry inside, but a ripe Tabasco pod is full of liquid, which makes it ideal for a mash and sauce but hard to dry. Its heat is around 30,000–50,000 SHU, similar to cayenne.
"Tabasco" is also a registered trademark for the hot sauce made by the McIlhenny Company of Louisiana. The pepper variety took its name from the Mexican state of Tabasco on the Gulf of Mexico, though whether it originated there is uncertain.
Origins and history¶
According to the McIlhenny Company's own account, Edmund McIlhenny, a banker who had moved to his wife's family's estate on Avery Island in southern Louisiana, began growing peppers from seed said to have come from Mexico or Central America, and around 1868 made a sauce from mashed peppers, salt and vinegar, bottling it in used cologne bottles. He obtained a patent in 1870. Some of the early history, including where the seeds came from and whether others were already selling similar sauces, has been questioned by historians, but the sauce became one of the first nationally sold American condiments and is now sold around the world.
The method has changed little: peppers are picked by hand when red, mashed with salt from the salt dome beneath Avery Island, and aged in oak barrels for up to three years before being mixed with vinegar and strained. Seed stock is still grown on Avery Island, but most of the peppers for the sauce are now grown in Central and South America, where the climate allows year-round cropping. The name also lives on in the Southern "pepper sauce": whole Tabasco peppers steeped in vinegar in a bottle on the table.
Flavour and aroma¶
Fresh Tabasco peppers taste sharp and clean, with a juicy, slightly vegetal, almost celery-like note and less fruit than a C. chinense chilli such as the habanero. The heat is quick and bright. In the aged mash, fermentation adds sourness and depth; in pepper vinegar, the peppers give the vinegar heat and a fresh green edge.
In the kitchen¶
- Pepper vinegar: fill a clean bottle with fresh Tabasco peppers (or other small hot chillies), pour in hot distilled white or cider vinegar, and leave for a week or two. Shake over collard greens, black-eyed peas, beans and fried fish, and top up with vinegar as it is used. A Southern US staple.
- Hot sauce: blend a fermented or salted mash with vinegar for a thin, sharp Louisiana-style sauce. See hot sauce and fermenting chillies.
- Cajun and Creole cooking: Louisiana hot sauce goes into gumbo, jambalaya, red beans and rice, and on oysters. See cajun and creole cuisine.
- Drinks: a few dashes in a Bloody Mary or Bloody Caesar.
- Fresh: chopped sparingly into salsas and stir-fries in place of bird's eye chillies.
💡 Make a simple mash
Roughly chop 250 g ripe red Tabasco peppers (stems removed) and mix with 1 tbsp (about 12 g) salt. Pack into a clean jar, cover and leave at room temperature for one to four weeks, until pleasantly sour, then blend with 150–200 ml vinegar and strain. Wear gloves throughout.
Buying and storing¶
Fresh Tabasco peppers are rarely sold in shops outside the southern United States; they are usually home-grown. They keep a week or two in the fridge and freeze well for sauces. Pepper vinegar keeps for months at room temperature, the peppers covered by vinegar. Bottled Louisiana sauces keep for years unopened; opened, they keep well but slowly darken and lose colour, which refrigeration slows.
Substitutes¶
- Piri piri or other C. frutescens chillies: very close in heat and character.
- Bird's eye chillies: similar heat, drier flesh.
- Cayenne (fresh or ground) for heat in cooked dishes.
- A dash of bottled Louisiana-style hot sauce in place of the fresh pepper.
Pairs well with¶
Vinegar, salt, garlic, tomato, oysters, prawns, crawfish, fried fish, chicken, collard greens, black-eyed peas, red beans, eggs, vodka and celery.
Growing your own¶
Tabasco plants are handsome, bushy C. frutescens plants 60–120 cm tall, with small upright pods held above the leaves. Sow indoors in February–March at 22–27°C; germination can be slower than for C. annuum. In Britain grow in a greenhouse, polytunnel or conservatory, or in a large pot on a very warm patio in a good summer. They need a long season and fruit heavily from late summer into autumn; pick pods fully red for sauce. Plants are perennial and can be overwintered frost-free. See growing chillies and overwintering chillies.