I’d like to take a moment to reflect on how much I appreciate hot sauce. I don’t just carry it in my bag to follow Beyoncé’s example (although that’s a darn good example to follow).
- Hot sauce makes so many bland, boring, or flavor-deflated leftovers edible.
- Whenever I have leftovers and no microwave (this is fairly often), hot sauce almost makes the food seem warm.
- Hot sauce on eggs can wake me up no matter how tired I am.
- Hot sauce on pizza (cold or hot) is manna from heaven.
- Hot sauce keeps me warm on winter days.
- Hot sauce (sufficiently hot) clears out my sinuses and lets me start anew.
- Hot sauce on breakfast poutine (fried egg on top) is enough to reliably wake me up and keep my spirits high the whole day.
- There are several kinds of hot sauce to bring you to particular kinds of bliss! Valentina is full-flavored, roasty, and robust. Cholula is zippy and tangy. Tapatío is charming and sweet. I don’t use Sriracha very much (blasphemy!) but it goes so well on leftover Asian food. Green hot sauces are so delightfully vinegary. I have more hot sauce favorites than I do favorite outfits.
- Hot sauce is so accepting. You can add just a drop of ghost pepper sauce for a touch of heat. You can add an epidermis of Sriracha to have lasting mouth flames. You can add just the right amount for you, splash by splash. Unlike other sauces, which may spurt out violently, hot sauces usually allow you to control the amount very carefully. To boot, hot sauce is always there for me when I need it. It never judges, it never lies.
—Art
Arthur Hovinc's Port Manteau 