I like hot sauces quite a lot. They’re a great way to add healthy excitement to food. In that interest, I decided to have my grilled chicken breast marinated in Tabasco Habanero Sauce tonight. (I had a little on hand.) Heh. It’s the hottest of the Tabasco sauces.
Don’t let the name intimidate you. Tabasco Habanero is a splendid little sauce, its heat carried in a spicy fruitiness. It’s my favorite mass-market sauce, and my standard go-to when I’m not in the mood for a blow-the-back-of-my-head-out boutique product. It’s somewhere between 7000 and 8000 Scoville units, so it’ll ring your bell about like a jalapeño will, or maybe a bit more.
(That’s Lea’s and the boys’ on the left in Dale’s, and mine on the right.)
The hot-sauce-as-marinade experiment was largely successful. It is sweet enough that it caramelized a bit, and it adhered to the chicken well. The tangier aspects of the sauce were enhanced, and the heat took on a cumulative quality that I’ve not noticed when shaking the sauce on food. I broke a bit of a sweat near the end.
I did make a mistake in letting it marinate too long. It was in for about three hours, which was long enough to “cook” it a bit and make it drier than it should have been. However, that’s easily corrected next time out.
Finally, I can’t finish such a post without mentioning fellow blogger and net acquaintance Scott Roberts. Scott’s blog is a nationally-known and entertaining resource for spicy food reviews. If you like hot sauces, go spend an hour or two catching up on all you’ve missed, and then bookmark him.
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bigdave on 
Bo on 
BamaDan on 
Jack Eason on 
Reminds me of my childhood days growing up in south Louisiana. The third grade field trip was to Avery Island where the McIlhenney Co. is located. They would give us each one of those tiny bottle of Tabasco as a souvenir. Of course there was always at least on kid you could bet (usually a triple dog dare) to chug the whole little bottle just as we got on the bus for the several hours trip back. The poor kid would be just sit there and sweat with a burning mouth for hours. Ain’t childhood wonderful!
Just curious…did you marinate the chicken in anything else or just straight up habanero tabasco? you’ve piqued my interest in grilling myself some chicken this week…
BB_FAN: Man, that’s gotta be a memory that hangs around for a while. Kids are mean…but I guess they’re also tractable.
Bigdave: The marinade was 100% Tabasco habanero sauce. If you have a taste for the hot and spicy, I’d recommend it. Try it for 60-90 minutes; three hours is definitely too long. I’m going to do a piece of fish in it soon. I can’t see doing a steak in it.
Also, if you try it, like it, and plan to do it again, get a gallon jug of it direct from http://www.tabasco.com. It’s $40 or something, which beats the hell out of the $1/oz. or thereabouts you’ll pay at the grocery store.
sounds great! i loves me some tabasco. i used to keep a bottle in my backpack during med school. never knew when you were gonna need it…