Tabasco, the iconic Louisiana-made hot sauce seen on dining tables across the country, is vying to provide one of the country’s hottest products with a new sauce 20 times hotter than the original.
Tabasco on Wednesday launched its Scorpion Sauce, made with the scorching Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper. By Thursday, the new sauce, made in a limited small batch and available only on Tabasco's website, had sold out.
A second new flavor, roasted pepper, was still available.
Today reported that scorpion sauce is typically made from the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper, along with the flavor of a tropical fruit to pay homage to the pepper's Caribbean roots. Tabasco's Scorpion Sauce includes pineapple and guava.
The description on Tabasco’s website describes the sauce as “a combination of scorpion peppers blended with guava, pineapple and a dash of Tabasco sauce (that) makes for a tangy sauce with untamed heat and a touch of Caribbean sweetness.”
The McIlhenny Company, which produces Tabasco on Louisiana’s Avery Island, calls the sauce “not for the wary.”
That description did not stop Tabasco aficionados from pining for the new sauce.
Today reported that, while regular Tabasco peppers come in at around 2,500 to 5,000 Scoville units -- the scale used to measure a pepper's heat -- the scorpion pepper can register up to 2 million Scoville units.
The Scoville heat scale measures the amount of capsaicinoids in a pepper.
Time reported in 2012 that the newly-discovered Trinidad Moruga Scorpion pepper was the spiciest on the planet. It has since been displaced by the Carolina Reaper, which the Guinness World Records has named the hottest pepper in the world.
The Carolina Reaper peaks at 2.2 million Scoville units.
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