STORY TOOLS

• E-mail story
• Comments
• iPod friendly
• Printer friendly

More Latest Stories

• Third annual Hairball fundraiser slated for November 1
• Chef Q&A: Meet Chef Amy Wojcik
• On the Menu: Crazy over sushi at The Crazy Flamingo

Share and Enjoy [?]

So you don’t always know exactly what you’re ordering? Here’s some help.

Want to know more about the food you’re eating when you head out to dinner? The Marco Eagle offers a helpful glossary of some of the more common — yet sometimes curious — terms you’ll find on many of the island’s menus.

Like to have a little kick with you eggs in the morning, or just add a little spice to your life whenever you’re eating? Here are some helpful hints when biting into that pepper or covering your food with hot sauce:

Tabasco sauce is a brand of hot sauce made from Tabasco peppers, vinegar, and salt, and aged in white oak barrels for three years. It has a hot, spicy flavor and is popular in many parts of the world. Tabasco has been produced by McIlhenny Company since 1868. Several new types of sauces are now produced under the name Tabasco Sauce, including jalapeño-based green, chipotle-based smoked, habanero, garlic, and “sweet and spicy” sauces. McIlhenny also produces a Tabasco soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce. The habanero sauce and garlic sauces both include the Tabasco peppers blended with other peppers, whereas the jalapeño variety does not include Tabasco peppers.

Tapatío is a brand of hot sauce produced in Vernon, California, that can be found at most U.S. grocery stores. The hot sauce is named “Tapatío”, the name given to people from Guadalajara, Jalisco because the company’s founders come from Guadalajara. Many Mexican restaurants feature a bottle of Tapatío on the table.

The Scotch Bonnet is a variety of chili pepper similar to and of the same species as the habanero. These peppers are used to flavor many different dishes and cuisine worldwide. Scotch Bonnet has a flavor distinct from its habanero cousin. This gives Jerk dishes and other Caribbean dishes their unique flavor. Scotch Bonnets are especially used in Caymanian and Jamaican cooking, though they often show up in other Caribbean recipes. Eaten raw, these peppers are also known to cause dizziness, numbness of hands and cheeks, and severe heartburn.

The habanero chile is one of the most intensely spicy chili peppers of the species. Several growers have attempted to selectively breed habanero plants to produce hotter, heavier, and larger peppers. The habanero’s heat, its fruity, citrus-like flavor, and its floral aroma have made it a popular ingredient in hot sauces and spicy foods.

The jalapeño is a small to medium-sized chili pepper that is prized for the hot, burning sensation that it produces in the mouth when eaten. Jalapeño Poppers are a popular appetizer made of jalapeño peppers stuffed with cheese, usually cheddar, which are then breaded and deep fried.

Chipotles (pronounced chee-POHT-lay) are smoke-dried jalapeño chiles used primarily in Mexican and Mexican-inspired cuisine. Chipotles are a key ingredient that impart a relatively mild but earthy spiciness to many dishes in Mexican cuisine. The chiles are used to make various salsas. Chipotle chiles can also be ground up and combined with other spices to make a meat marinade known as an adobo.