Tabasco sauce facts for kids
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The original Tabasco red pepper sauce
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| Privately held company | |
| Industry | Food |
| Founded | 1868 |
| Founder | Edmund McIlhenny |
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Key people
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Harold Osborn, CEO |
| Products | Hot sauce and other condiments |
| Brands | Tabasco |
| Owner | McIlhenny family |
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Number of employees
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About 200 (per company website, August 2014) |
| Heat |  Hot |
| Scoville scale | 100–35,000 SHU |
Tabasco is a famous American brand of hot sauce. It's made with three simple ingredients: vinegar, tabasco peppers, and salt. The sauce is made by the McIlhenny Company on Avery Island, Louisiana. It was first created over 150 years ago by a man named Edmund McIlhenny.
At first, all the special tabasco peppers were grown on Avery Island. Now, most of them are grown in Central America, South America, and Africa. Besides the original red sauce, the Tabasco brand makes many other flavors. These include habanero, jalapeño, chipotle, and sriracha. Tabasco products are sold in more than 195 countries and are packaged in 36 different languages.
Contents
History of Tabasco Sauce
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The official story says that Tabasco sauce was first made in 1868 by Edmund McIlhenny. He was a former banker who moved to Louisiana. To sell his new sauce, he used old, empty cologne bottles that he got from a glass supplier in New Orleans.
However, some historians think the story might be a little different. They believe a plantation owner named Maunsel White was already making a sauce from tabasco peppers almost 20 years before McIlhenny. Some think McIlhenny might have been inspired by White's recipe.
After Edmund McIlhenny passed away in 1890, his family took over the business. For generations, the McIlhenny family has run the company and helped it grow. Today, a cousin of the family, Harold Osborn, is the president and CEO.
The company is so respected that it received a royal warrant of appointment. This means it was an official supplier to Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom.
In 2005, Hurricane Rita hit Avery Island hard. To protect the factory, the family built a tall wall called a levee and bought backup generators.
How Tabasco Sauce is Made
The process of making Tabasco sauce is a long tradition.
First, the peppers are picked by hand. Workers use a special tool called le petit bâton rouge (which means "the little red stick" in French). They hold the stick next to the peppers to make sure they only pick the ones that are perfectly ripe.
On the same day they are picked, the peppers are ground into a mash. Salt is added, and the mash is put into white oak barrels. These barrels were once used to age whiskey. The barrels are stored in warehouses on Avery Island and left to age for up to three years.
After aging, the mash is strained to get rid of the skins and seeds. The liquid that is left is mixed with vinegar. It is stirred every so often for a month. Finally, the finished sauce is bottled and ready to be sold.
Different Types of Tabasco
Tabasco makes many different sauces. Here are some of them.
Current Sauces
- Buffalo Style Hot Sauce
- Cayenne garlic
- Chipotle Sauce
- Family Reserve
- Green Jalapeño Sauce
- Habanero
- Original Red Sauce
- Raspberry Chipotle
- Roasted Pepper Sauce
- Salsa Picante
- Scorpion Sauce
- Sriracha
- Sweet and Spicy
- Smoked
Discontinued Sauces
- Rocoto pepper sauce
Some sauces, like the habanero and chipotle flavors, mix tabasco peppers with other kinds of peppers. But none of the other sauces are aged for three years like the original red sauce.
How Spicy is Tabasco?
The spiciness of a pepper is measured in Scoville Heat Units (SHU). The higher the number, the hotter the pepper. Here is how the different Tabasco sauces rank on the scale.
| Sauce | Scoville units | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Tabasco Pepper Sauce | 2,500–5,000 | The original, classic flavor. |
| Habanero Sauce | 7,000-8,000 | A much hotter sauce. |
| Chipotle Sauce | 1,500–2,500 | A smoky-flavored sauce. |
| Cayenne Garlic Sauce | 1,200–2,400 | Blends milder peppers with tabasco peppers. |
| Green Jalapeño Sauce | 600–1,200 | A mild green pepper sauce. |
| Buffalo Style Sauce | 1,200–2,500 | A tangy sauce, similar to the garlic flavor. |
| Scorpion Sauce | 40,000–60,000 | The hottest sauce Tabasco makes. |
Packaging and Fun Facts
The Tabasco bottle is still shaped like the cologne bottles used back in 1868. The factory on Avery Island can make up to 720,000 bottles of sauce every day.
The bottles come in many sizes. There are common 2-ounce and 5-ounce bottles, and huge 1-gallon jugs for restaurants. There are also tiny 1/8-ounce bottles. These miniature bottles are served on Air Force One, the U.S. President's airplane.
Since the 1980s, the U.S. military has put these small bottles of Tabasco in their Meals, Ready-to-Eat (MREs). The armies of Australia, Britain, and Canada also give their soldiers small bottles of Tabasco.
How People Use Tabasco
Tabasco is not just a hot sauce. The company also makes other products with its famous pepper flavor. These include chocolate, popcorn, olives, mayonnaise, mustard, and steak sauce.
Other companies are allowed to use Tabasco sauce as an ingredient in their own products. This is called "co-branding." You can find Tabasco flavor in things like Spam, Heinz ketchup, and Zapp's potato chips.
Tabasco has even been to space! It was on NASA's Space Shuttle missions, Skylab, and the International Space Station. Astronauts like to use it to make their food less bland while in orbit.
Tabasco in Pop Culture
Tabasco sauce has shown up in many movies, TV shows, and cartoons. It was in two James Bond movies in the 1970s. It also appeared in a Charlie Chaplin movie from 1936.
In the TV series Roswell, the alien characters loved spicy food and always carried bottles of Tabasco. When the show was in danger of being canceled, thousands of fans mailed Tabasco bottles to the TV network to show their support. The show was saved and ran for three seasons.
More recently, in the 2009 Disney movie The Princess and the Frog, the main character Tiana uses Tabasco sauce in her gumbo.
Images for kids
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Tabasco sauce Packaging
See also
In Spanish: Salsa Tabasco para niños
