It’s that magical time of year when food companies have decided to dress themselves up for the holidays, with more sugar and spice and sometimes garlic. Tabasco, the Louisiana-based hot sauce company, is no exception. This year, Thrillist reports, it’s introducing Rocoto Pepper Sauce.
Rocoto peppers grow in Central and South America and have a fruity taste profile. On the Scoville scale, which measures hotness, they’re between 50,000 and 350,000 SHU. (Yeah, I know.) That’s between four and 40 times hotter than a jalapeño. Which is also imprecise, but the salient information here is that it’s very, very hot. Original Tabasco is in the 2,500-5,000 SHU range. Scorpion Sauce, the hottest Tabasco manufactures, is 5,000-10,000 SHU.
Rocoto Pepper Sauce, Thrillist assures us, won’t be as hot as that. It won’t even be as hot as the Original Tabasco. It will be a mere 1,500 SHU. “This is because the Rocoto peppers are tamed with a blend of maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, nutmeg, and black pepper — resulting in a sweet, spicy, and fragrant sauce,” Thrillist explains. Wait... maple syrup, cinnamon, cloves, cardamon, nutmeg... This all sounds eerily familiar. Is Tabasco going pumpkin spice on us after all?