By: Tonya Hopkins aka The Food Griot: “Sharing Savory Stories on the Makings of America’s Cuisines”…
Hot sauce is a great example of a big American food and drink industry (estimated overall worth between $2 and $3 BILLION) that would not exist had it not been for the Black and Brown communities and food cultures from whence hot sauces and pepper sauces not only originate but also have some of the highest consumption indices. Yet nearly ALL of the top seling hot sauce companies in America are NOT Black or Brown owned businesses…
Nor are most top selling food items born out of “ethnic” food cultures. A topic i’ve been fervently researching and writing about — for years now — one that’s ready to be served up in a spicy nonfiction book — underway with a working title I assigned to it long ago: “You’re Welcome America!©™️ “…
For now though let’s talk at least briefly about creative culinary uses of hot sauce — like as an accent ingredient in cocktails — and especially in MOCKtails — the tasty making of which challenges us high achiever mixologists everywhere to create immersive sipping experiences with fun, safe, physical effects without relying upon the multi-faceted reverberations of alcohol to impart both tactile feeling AND complexity of flavor). Hot sauce is a wonderful work around for that! But not just ANY ‘ol hot sauce now — nah! The kind you gotta find IS ….
[WANNA SEE WHERE I’M GOIN’ WITH THIS?….
WELL THEN HEAD on OVER to MY NEWLY SET UP 👉👩🏽💻SUBSTACK (SITE?) 👀👈….
where i’ll pair a range hot sauces with different flavor profiles — and with which spirits for when applying it to the making of cocktails vs. mocktails…
AND WHICH YOU CAN CHECK OUT FOR FREE FOR NOW (‘TIL I FIGURE OUT HOW TO START CHARGIN’ FOR STUFF THERE :)
You can also Sign up to receive colorful copies of my newsletter and/or JOIN my Patreon for more fascinating scoop — or in this case sips! and GULPS of great under-discussed (and too oft outright MISSING!) American history…So many amazing options and choices….
*********************************************************************************