‘Pepper X’ Creator Ed Currie Tastes 17 Hot Condiments From Around the World

I'm Smokin' Ed Currie.

I'm a professional hot sauce maker and pepper breeder,

and I'm here today to take you on a trip around the globe

for the spiciest condiments from A to Z,

from hot sauces to crisps to condiments to jellies and more.

Today, I'm trying pre-packaged versions

that are retail-ready, often from US companies.

Get your passport and tasting spoons ready.

We're going on this trip together.

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The very first thing we're gonna try

is Laoganma Spicy Chili Crisp.

This brand comes from a mountainous region

in Western China, and I love that it comes in a big thing.

Normally, when you get chili crisp,

it's a little six or eight-ounce jar.

That's a lot of chili crisp.

I'm trying to shake it up

because I wanna get some actual chili crisp

instead of just the oil on the bottom.

It smells like a traditional chili crisp.

Can you see how beautiful those pieces look?

And I can't wait to try a bite.

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What was hidden underneath all that chili was a big soybean.

You know, I personally don't like soybeans on their own,

but in the oil and that oniony flavor,

they tasted really good.

The very first flavor I got out of this was the onion,

and then you got the chilies and then you got the garlic.

It was overall just a well-balanced product.

Achaar Indian Tomato Chili Sauce.

This is a condiment you can find in India.

You can find it in Bangladesh.

Red chili pepper, mustard seeds,

and turmeric are listed as the heat.

It's got tamarind and jaggery,

which I love jaggery, if you haven't had it.

[sniffs] It smells really good.

You can see the pieces of chili in there.

You can see the tomato. It's got a very thick consistency.

Let's give it a taste. [lively rock music]

Even though the tomatoes are the number one ingredient,

the first flavor that came through was the turmeric.

It's a very tasty product.

This would be really good to add it to chili.

If I wanted to put a different zing

on an Italian-based food,

I would switch out the tomato paste with this.

So for example, a tomato sauce.

Sambal Oelek.

Most of us here in America

were exposed to very bland foods until the '70s.

Huy Fong is located in California.

This is the traditional condiment from Indonesia.

This is a beautiful, beautiful sauce,

and it's got a good texture to it.

But what it is, is it's salty.

Those red jalapenos on their own are very sweet.

I prefer something that's not fermented,

but for the everyday household that likes salt

and likes to add things to their food,

this is one of the best products you can get

and the best bang for your buck.

This became available in grocery stores

very early in the '80s.

It was used for stir fries. It was used on meatloaf.

We put it on our spaghetti. We would put it anywhere.

It's becoming rare in the United States

'cause there's a drought on red jalapenos,

so if you don't have some in your fridge right now,

you better go out and get you some.

Next, we're stopping in Louisiana.

This is Steen's Cane Pepper Jelly.

From the looks of it, it looks like raw cane syrup.

Every state has a different approach to making pepper jelly.

Deep down South in Louisiana, spice is not the superlative.

Spice is the additive.

It is meant to compliment your food,

not meant to masquerade your food.

The ingredients in this, sugar, Steen's Pure Cane Syrup.

They have these gigantic vats and a gigantic stone wheel

and they usually, you know,

they just throw the whole pieces of cut sugar cane in there

and that stone wheel rolls along the stone vat

and out of the bottom comes cane sugar.

You know, a lot of jellies are runny.

You don't see the ingredients that are in it,

but this one you can see all the little bits and pieces.

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The cane sugar in there is amazing.

They could make a hot sauce

just with that cane sugar and those peppers.

This would be a good base for a hot sauce, homemade.

It is absolutely delicious.

The pepper flavor is very forward on top of the sugar.

This is probably the best thing I've tried all week long.

There's a lot of good things that come from Louisiana.

This is a hidden gem.

I would use this for spicing up a yam, mixing it with butter

and making kind of a sweet gravy to put on something,

say, country fried chicken or something.

This is an amazing product.

I'd love to take this home,

but I'm afraid that TSA would take it

not because it has too many ounces

but because they know it's good.

River Nile Piri Piri Sauce.

It's a traditional hot sauce from Mozambique

made with piri piri pepper.

Piri piris are very, very small peppers.

They're really hard to pick and it's really monotonous.

To make a bottle of hot sauce,

you'd have to spend four hours picking the peppers

to get enough to spice up a bottle of hot sauce.

One bottle.

This hot sauce recipe is four generations old,

and it has very simple ingredients.

Lemon juice, purified water, garlic, onions,

piri piri peppers, chili peppers, and salt.

It's thicker than I would've expected

with lemon juice and water being the first two ingredients.

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So you don't really taste lemon at all.

Garlic is the predominant flavor.

You get some of the sweetness from onion

and then a little bit of pepper.

There's some kind of other chili in there

that's giving it that flavor that I can't quite describe.

If I had to take my guess, it's a cayenne mash,

a salted cayenne mash, maybe even fermented.

I think this is delicious.

It would be something that I would keep at home,

but I would only use really on fish or, say, chicken

or maybe some pork tenderloin.

Carolina Reaper Pepper Honey

from Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Honey is one of my favorite things to infuse with spices.

I love the way honey pours. It just looks so beautiful.

There's no indication that there's pepper in here,

and the honey looks crystal clear.

It looks like a really good spun honey.

However, when you taste the honey, pepper flavor comes out.

It's very forward. It's absolutely delicious.

They've done a really, really good job with this.

They've used such a minute amount of pepper

that all you're getting is the flavor and not the heat.

The best honeys I've had is with dry pepper,

unless you're going to cook the honey with the pepper in it.

This could go on anything from glazing pork chops

or, say, mixing it with some mustard

to make a honey mustard with a barbecue.

Crushed Calabrian Chili, the product of Italy.

It looks beautiful in the jar.

Calabrian chilies are not that hot,

but they're very, very tasty.

Of the Italian chilies

that are predominant in the United States,

this is the spiciest of them.

It's literally just peppers and oil,

and those peppers have been cooked

and they're really beautiful,

but it also lists salt, vinegar, and basil.

I get none of the vinegar or the basil.

They probably added the vinegar just to pH it

so it was shelf stable, and it is absolutely delicious.

This would really be good on hamburgers or hot dogs.

Mina's Harissa, this is the spicy version,

is one of the best shelf stable harissas you can get.

This harissa is a traditional Moroccan harissa,

but harissa is actually found all the way

around the Mediterranean through North Africa

and into the Middle East.

Now, the ingredients are red chili pepper, red bell pepper,

garlic, olive oil, cider vinegar, salt, and citric acid.

Let's give it a try.

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You get the kind of bitter tone

of the Hungarian-type pepper.

You get the sweetness of the bell pepper

and then the garlic just comes in

and it makes your whole mouth feel like,

Ooh, this is warm.

Anywhere that you use tomatoes, you could take this

and you could switch out a little bit

to give a new flare to anything you're doing.

I was thinking, mixing this in tomato soup

would be a delicious additive.

Yuzu kosho.

This is a traditional Japanese condiment of yuzu and pepper.

The ingredients are citron, which is yuzu,

green pepper, and salt, so my guess is this

is gonna be a fermented chili mash

that's flavored with citrus.

Citron, for me, all I've ever really tried it in

is the candied form in like nut breads

that you get in holidays.

I never would have thought to pair it with pepper.

The smell is absolutely captivating.

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It's extremely salty.

You get the sweet from the citron

and the sweet from the pepper and no real fermented taste.

This would be a really good product

to add to stir fries or, say, rice dishes

or noodle dishes that you're making at home.

[sniffs] It just, it smells like candy.

You don't really smell the salt.

The pepper note that I'm getting from this

is not any spicy pepper.

It's gotta be a very mild pepper, say like an Anaheim

or a shishito, and it's very complimentary to the citron.

And this is definitely a product I'll find to bring home.

This, to me, is like green candy in a bottle.

Mama Teav's Hot Garlic. Seven simple natural ingredients.

Cold-pressed grapeseed oil, garlic, chilies, onion, salt,

mushrooms, and celery salt.

You rarely see mushrooms in a chili crisp.

Peppers from this come from the Cambodian-Thailand border,

and it's a traditional chili crisp for this family.

The chilies, instead of being thick,

have been chopped up into little pieces.

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The flavor of the garlic, it's like it's been fried

and encapsulated in big chunks.

Then when you break into that crisp, boom!

I would recommend this for anybody who's looking

for a unique experience and enjoys that oily, crisp taste.

All right, next, this is the Walkerwoods.

It is produced in Jamaica,

and it is available in the United States.

It's one of the better marinades there is.

Ingredients are simple, scallions, hot peppers,

salt, black pepper, pimento that is ground, nutmeg,

citric acid, brown sugar, and thyme.

This is a traditional Jamaican jerk.

It's supposed to be rubbed on meat

and then the meat is slow cooked over a grill.

It is also extremely strong.

I don't have to lift the spoon or anything to get the aroma.

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Jerk sauces use Scotch bonnets or they use habaneros.

The spices that they use offset the oleoresins

that contain the heat, so it gets more of a balanced blend.

Immediately, you get the black pepper and the salt.

What this is, is a great marinade for meat.

It would add a good texture to any goat, pork, beef

or chicken that you wanted to throw on the grill.

We're now over in Germany, Löwensenf.

This is one of my favorite mustards.

This is like a traditional Düsseldorf mustard.

It's made for our wursts.

Anything from like a traditional American hotdog

to all the different wurst you'd get at an Oktoberfest.

[sniffs] I love the smell of this mustard.

It's got mustard seeds, vinegar, drinking water, and salt.

A Düsseldorf mustard, as we've read from the ingredients,

is just straight mustard seed.

Whereas in France, like say Dijon,

instead of using vinegar and water,

they use vinegar and white wine

so it has kind a sweeter appeal to it

and it's a lot smoother 'cause of the alcohol from the wine

brings out more of the sweetness in the mustard

than it brings out the bitter tones

like you get here in the Düsseldorf.

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It's got a little bit of a bold spice to it.

It's not overpowering, but it really goes well with meat.

Every time I'm making sausage, I use a Düsseldorf mustard

as a condiment to go on top of it.

Namprik Pao.

So we're going all the way from Germany to Thailand.

The traditional condiment in Thailand,

it has tamarind juice in it, which I love tamarind.

Everything with tamarind usually tastes good.

These traditional condiments in Thailand

are meant to be cooked with,

and some of them that are extremely spicy

are given to you on the table as an additive to your meal.

You're supposed to, instead of eating it directly,

you're supposed to put some on your food and stir it in.

There's a lot of oil at the top of this,

so you gotta stir it 'cause the paste is really thick.

The aroma that is coming out of the jar is fish sauce.

Fish sauce is very powerful.

I'm not gonna eat that much

'cause I know it's gonna be really salty,

so let's give it a try.

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The first notes that came out of that were very sweet.

The tamarind came right through. It's really beautiful.

If I had to guess what type of chilies that are in it,

it's just a Thai bird chili, picked ripe and sun dried.

That's the traditional method to making these pastes.

Something that this might be good in is a clam chowder.

It would just give it a different vibe

that would bring up conversation.

Salsa macha from Veracruz, Mexico,

which is slow-fried chipotles, peanuts in a smoky chili oil.

Four ingredients, canola oil,

chipotle, peanuts, and sea salt.

I got a spoonful with a lot of pepper

and a lot of the peanut in it,

and I'm really interested to see what it tastes like.

Really a garlicky flavor without it being overpowering.

The chili is very, very mild.

There's a flavor of pepper but no heat of pepper.

There's just as much peanuts, finely chopped,

as there are chilies.

The oil itself is very tasty.

It's been infused with that chili, that smoky chili flavor.

It's absolutely delicious.

Now, I would add this to rice and beans.

I would add this to like a goat dish.

This might even be a fun additive to a tuna ceviche.

Salsa Seca, chipotle fried nut and seed salsa.

The salsa macha we tried was really from Veracruz,

whereas this is from the other side of Mexico,

which is more focused on being a seed salsa.

The ingredients are canola oil, chipotle morita,

peanuts, pecans, almonds.

Again, there's a lot of oil floating on top,

but when you stir it up, it looks really, really good.

You can almost hear the sound

of the seeds rustling together

when you reach in for a scoop.

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You know, it's very good because of the nuts and the seeds.

It's more of a dry oil.

What your mouth is doing is tasting the nuts and the seeds.

Even though chili peppers are an ingredient,

they are not the predominant flavor.

They are a complimentary flavor,

but I could not taste the pepper through the seeds

and the nuts, but I can feel the pepper.

The nuts go really well with the oils and the chilies.

I don't know about the sesame seed

because I didn't get any of that sesame seed flavor

like you get in, say, a Korean dumpling sauce.

What I got is a texture in my mouth

that I've never had before.

What's next?

It's HERDEZ Salsa Ranchera.

In America, you can get a lot of different salsas.

This company makes excellent products.

I like their smoky chipotle peppers,

if you've never had them,

and I'm kind of getting that same vibe

just from looking at this salsa.

Consists of water, green chile peppers,

ancho chile peppers, tomato paste.

These ingredients are cooked down and blended

so that all the flavors come out.

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The peppers they use in here are not hot peppers.

They are flavorful peppers.

This is an excellent product if you want

to enhance the flavor of the food you're eating.

This is what we traditionally use at home

when we're making enchiladas.

All right, the next product we have, Vada Pav Chutney.

This is a chutney based on a product found in Mumbai, India.

Coconut is the number-one ingredient.

Then we got garlic, oil, chili, salt, sugar, mixed spices.

The blends of Indian spices are just amazing.

Just smelling them gives you a dance in the head.

I want to get down to where it's a little moist

so I can taste the flavors.

So there's two flavors that are predominant in this,

coconut meat and garlic.

I think this would be delicious in American stews.

This would be a great additive for chili,

but it could be used for just about anything.

People need to explore and find something that you like.

They're reasonably priced and they're all very, very tasty.

This is a traditional Yemeni Zhug.

This is more like a condiment, more like a salsa.

The ingredients are simple, jalapeno, cilantro,

parsley, lemon juice, garlic.

It's made here in Vermont, and it looks really beautiful.

I would use this as a marinade on chicken

or as part of the mix in a sausage.

Even, say, just taking bread

and spreading something on bread.

The jalapenos aren't really a predominant flavor,

but you can feel the heat from a green jalapeno.

It's not really that hot.

It's just got a little warmth to it.

A glow, I'd like to say.

Green jalapenos and a lot of the herbs and spices

that are used go really well together.

That's why people use them.

There you have it.

Different condiments from around the world

that you can add to your pantry from A to Z.

Different flavors, different textures.

This is Smokin' Ed Currie. I'm signing off for Epicurious.

I look forward to seeing you again and have a great day.

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