How It's Made: Tabasco Sauce

I'll admit, I don't often think about the labor involved in making the food I eat. This morning I dribbled hot sauce on my eggs, and had no idea that the sauce itself took over three years to make. Fortunately, the TV show How It's Made has a five-minute segment detailing the incredible effort put into each batch of Tabasco sauce.

Things to watch for: McIlhenny Company president selecting the best pepper plants for seed extraction; color matching peppers to a "little red stick"; salting the (Jack Daniel's) whiskey barrel tops; a three-year fermentation process; lab workers taste-testing the batches and eating saltines and ice cream bars in between. Be glad you can't smell this:

Further reading: 15 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Tabasco Sauce; The Island Where Tabasco Peppers Grow; Dietribes: Hot Sauce; and Can Too Much Spicy Food Burn Off Your Taste Buds?