Those of us who correctly recognize hot sauce as a top-tier condiment always have a place on our tables and in our kitchens for this spicy liquid. Hot sauce on eggs? Of course. Hot sauce on sandwiches? Definitely. Hot sauce on pizza? Bring it on.
Hot sauce in cocktails? … Actually, yes.
With a few savory exceptions like Bloody Marys and micheladas, hot sauce is not viewed as a traditional cocktail ingredient. When most bartenders want to bring a strain of heat into their latest libation, they tend to muddle hot peppers into the shaker or infuse their spirits with chiles. But in recent years, Austin bars have started to dabble with hot sauce beyond the realm of tomato-based drinks, with bold and exciting results.
Whisler’s, the beloved East Austin bar known for its inventive cocktail program, regularly experiments with different hot sauce styles when building its nuanced flavor profiles. “Hot sauce can be a great source for getting salt and acid into your cocktail and building out a robust backbone for a drink,” says William Schweigert, the bar’s creative and beverage director. That said, he acknowledges that hot sauce can be a tricky cocktail ingredient because “there are more components of the drink that a sauce will alter. Depending on the sauce, you can get an influx of vinegar/acid into your recipe, [so] you have to alter the rest of your specs to make sure that everything balances out.”
Even considering these challenges, Whisler’s remains unafraid of trying out different hot sauces in cocktails. In addition to more conventional variants like harissa, which appeared in a recent libation, they include adjacent ingredients like infused chili oils and even the controversial “hot sauce” wasabi.
The Whisler’s menu currently features the Wasabi Western, which combines Japanese whiskey, aloe, lemongrass, honeydew melon, lime, and the very spicy Japanese horseradish spread. This isn’t the Whisler’s team’s first attempt at building a beverage with the condiment. “A few years ago, we were trying to find a way to give that kind of ‘burn’ of alcohol to a non-alcoholic drink and we were seeing if wasabi could help mimic that,” Schweigert says. That sparked an interest in wasabi’s unique flavor elements that carried forward to the development of the Wasabi Western.
“It started with wasabi and melon as a flavor pairing we knew we liked,” Schweigert explains. “I think where the drink gets fun is that it found a way to make wasabi and whiskey go well together, [and] the melon and the lemongrass was the bridge. Melons have really low acidity and a soft round sweetness that pairs well with whiskey, [while] lemongrass presents as citrusy and bright, so it almost makes the melon seem more acidic than it is without actually giving the burn of an acid. To add some more depth, we [brought in] sweetness with some aloe and then more acid with fresh lime juice.”
There’s nothing new about the desire to add heat to a cocktail, but some tried-and-true techniques aren’t practical at a busy bar. “We don’t have time to muddle jalapeños” during the height of service, explains Scotty Snider, bar and wine director at Justine’s. When a request for a spicy cocktail arose during a hectic night at the busy French boîte, Snider’s team ran into another challenge: Because of Justine’s style of cuisine, “we don’t have many hot sauces around or spicy ingredients in general,” he explains. So they looked in the pantry and grabbed the first spicy element they could find – the “old reliable” known as Tabasco.
The result? L’Oiseau de Feu, a mezcal cocktail with grapefruit, house-made cinnamon syrup, and Tabasco. “We have the acidity from the grapefruit, and then we use lime juice to add more acidity that isn’t as bitter. And then we have the acid from the Tabasco, and the [heat] brings a little punch,” says Snider. These tangy and zippy ingredients balance the rich smokiness of the mezcal, while the cinnamon syrup adds a touch of aromatic sweetness. Finally, instead of using a Tajin rim (like many other spicy margs available in Austin), Justine’s rims the glass with Espelette, “which is a pepper from the Basque Country [on the Spain-France border]. It’s smoky, peppery, and a little less spicy [than Tajin],” Snider explains. The L’Oiseau de Feu counts among the most popular cocktails at Justine’s, and Snider recommends it as a first drink: “It opens your palate and gets all your senses ready, which opens up your appetite.”
Bottled hot sauces like Tabasco can be valuable bar ingredients because they’re convenient and consistent. “How do you make the same drink thousands of times with Drink #1000 tasting just as good as Drink #1?” Schweigert asks. “Muddling a pepper can actually lead to a lot of inconsistency, simply because the heat level can change from pepper to pepper. A sauce can be great for consistency [because] you always know your heat level and if the drink calls for a quarter of an ounce, that quarter of an ounce will work every time.”
Schweigert offers another tip for at-home bartenders looking to spice up their cocktails: hot sauce should be incorporated “in tandem with other ingredients to build out one component of the cocktail, like acidity or sweetness,” he says. As a building block, it shouldn’t be “dashed in when we shake or stir” – hot sauce works most effectively when it’s fully integrated.
If you want an extra layer of consistency and control in your hot sauce-infused cocktails, trading in commercially produced sauces for homemade versions can aid that goal. At Siti, a new Southeast Asian restaurant now open on East 11th, Chef Laila Bazahm builds her own sauces for culinary purposes because “it gives me complete control over the flavor profile – whether it’s dialing up the sweetness, balancing the tanginess, or intensifying the garlic or spice.”
“There’s also a depth and complexity that develops naturally through the fermentation process, which is hard to replicate in store-bought versions,” she adds. “Making them from scratch allows me to make them truly my own.” General manager Eddie Zeitler and the bar team immediately saw the potential of Bazahm’s sauces as cocktail ingredients; Zeitler says that “including Laila’s sauces was a top priority.”
Bazahm’s take on sriracha became an essential element of the Die Die Must Try, Siti’s spicy margarita with blanco tequila, kalamansi, simple syrup, and a togarashi rim. “The minerality, pepperiness, and earthiness of the tequila naturally fit into the flavor profile of the sriracha. The acidic component of the Die Die Must Try, kalamansi, proved powerful enough to bring brightness to balance the intensity of the sriracha,” Zeitler explains.
Hot sauce may be an assertive ingredient with a lot of personality, but weaving it into a beautifully crafted libation isn’t as challenging as it seems. Zeitler offers three easy rules for any home mixologists interested in playing around with hot sauce cocktails: “Keep it simple, keep it balanced, and be intentional.”
This article appears in The 35th Annual Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival.