If you ordered pizza for the football games Sunday or whatever the hell was on last night, chances are you got a little hot sauce on the side as well. For reasons known only to an advertising exec somewhere, Tabasco decided there was no better place to promote its famous pepper sauce than in boxes of delivered pizza and has teamed up with thousands of pizza places to prove the point.
Pizza goes so well with so many things -- honey, milk, ranch dressing -- but I've never heard one person say they prefer pizza with a touch of Tabasco. As both a pizza and Tabasco lover, have I been missing out by not combining the two?
I ordered a pizza over the weekend for football games to go along with my Boulevard Imperial Stout. Having a bottle of Tabasco on hand, I decided to see if they do indeed go together.
If people are going to put Tabasco on pizza they're going to have to get over the shock of actually putting it on the pizza. I hesitated at the thought or ruining perfectly good pizza, but I finally dumped it on -- and by "dump on" I mean two or three soft shakes of the bottle.
This may come as a shock, but pizza with Tabasco tastes exactly like pizza with some Tabasco on it. At first it just tastes like normal pizza and then, after a second, your mouth is burning. Take a drink of water and repeat.
The real test was when my friend picked a slice off my plate not
knowing it had Tabasco on it. He took a bite and his mouth puckered up.
"Is that Tabasco on there? Why?" I didn't have a good
answer besides telling him it's part of an advertising campaign. "So what's wrong with pepper flakes?" he shot back.
Nothing is wrong with pepper flakes. They are good on pizza because they give it a little zest and if you used a very small amount of Tabasco, you could probably get the same effect. Being in liquid form, Tabasco is harder to control than pepper flakes, so it's easy to add too much. Also, pepper flakes come free with any pizza, whereas Tabasco is around $5 for a four-ounce bottle.
It's not worth trying out yourself but you'll have plenty of opportunities with the millions of Tabasco packets soon to be clogging up people's fridges. In addition to the sample packets, every pizza will come with a $1 off coupon for Tabasco. I imagine most people will save the Tabasco coupon for non-pizza related foods. I know I will.
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The Foundry has a pizza called El Diablo. It has Sriracha ("rooster sauce") and lots of other spicy goodness on it. Worth a try if you like it hot.
I always put hot sauce on cheese pizza... unfortunately Tobasco is not a good option. Chalula on pizza, however, is divine.
To be qualified as a Tabasco lover, you pretty much need to carry some with you at all times and eat all of your meals while wearing a Tabasco tie.
One of my favorite pizza's from Wheat State has Tabasco on it.
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