Here's Which Type Of Tabasco Sauce Is Actually The Hottest

Tabasco sauce has been around for quite some time. According to the company's website, this spicy sauce got its start when Edmund McIlhenny received some pepper seeds. Lucky for us, he grew those seeds, originally from Mexico or Central America, into healthy plants on Avery Island in South Louisiana and produced some piquant peppers. He saw he was onto something, and in 1868, he began growing peppers commercially. The following year, he sold 658 bottles of sauce labeled "Tabasco," and in 1870, he secured a patent. Talk about a hot streak!

Fast-forward to today and a lot of things have changed for the Tabasco company. Of course, McIlhenny has long-since passed, but his great-great grandson, Harold Osborn, was elected president of the company in 2019 (via The Acadiana Advocate). Also, the octagonal bottle cap we all know has since been introduced, and a variety of flavors have been added to the lineup (via Tabasco). One of those flavors, Scorpion Sauce, was created in 2017 and, to date, is the hottest of them all (via Inside Hook).

According to Today, Scorpion Sauce is traditionally made with Trinidad Moruga Scorpion peppers and tropical fruits. Tabasco's version is not far off, as it contains scorpion peppers, guava, pineapple, and a splash of Tabasco. According to the product description in Tabasco's country store, it's the scorpion peppers that bring the heat. The site says that, while the typical red peppers used in their Original Red sauce measure between 2,500 and 5,000 Scoville Units, one scorpion pepper often comes in at a whopping 2 million Scoville Units!

So, is Scorpion Sauce too hot to handle for most people? Though the sauce is 10 times hotter than Tabasco's original flavor, that has not stopped hot sauce lovers from stocking up on it, according to Inside Hook. Harold Osborn told the outlet, "Our sauces have gotten hotter with time because that's what the consumer demands." It turns out giving the people what they want really was a good idea for Tabasco — just two hours after making Scorpion Sauce available, they sold out completely!