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This has led me to pretty much completely avoid all hot sauces, despite liking spice. Instead i have to use fresh or dried peppers with no vinegar added.

@azonenberg I hate the vinegar flavor, I find Cholula a great alternative. Mild heat, great on breakfast tacos.

https://sameday.costco.com/store/costco/products/18038059-cholula-original-2-pack-hot-sauce-12-fl-oz

@0h00000000 i usually just go for a combination of cayenne or chipotle powder, fresh jalapenos, and fresh habaneros

@azonenberg

@0h00000000 Years ago there was a resturant near me that served a dish called "nuclear mac and cheese".

It was a 3-cheese habanero sriracha sauce over pasta, and spicy cheeto crumbs instead of bread crumbs lol.

One day their chef quit and they stopped offering it.

So me and my now-wife tried to make our own version. We found a recipe for white cheddar cheese sauce online, added a bunch of sriracha, chopped up a habanero or two and added that, and poured it over some pasta and baked it, then added the cheeto crumbs on top.

A couple of housemates smelled it cooking and came out to see what we were making.

As soon as we told them that the sauce - which looked like normal orange cheese sauce - was made with white cheddar and that the color was entirely from spice, everyone ran away except the one guy who grew up eating spicy indian curry. He tried a bit and said it was good but strong.

I liked it, had to eat it slowly but it was pretty close to the original.

Wife took one bite and reached for the bottle of hot sauce.

@azonenberg My grandparents used to grow Scotch Bonnet peppers in their garden, I admired them from afar - the way one would admire a black hole.

I like some zing, but I like to actually taste the food too. I can't pass up a good jalapeno pico de gallo on a breakfast taco. The bar is pretty high here in Houston.

@GyrosGeier what do Portuguese sailors have to do with acidic sauces? Were they pioneers of food preservation or something?

@azonenberg yes — they introduced both chilies and cooking with wine or vinegar at the same time, so a lot of recipes have both — and that makes it convenient to preserve the sauces with lots of vinegar and just tell people that they don't need to add any extra.

@GyrosGeier Yeah but like asian sauces served fresh at a restaurant don't taste like this. it's not the cuisine in general.

It's that shelf stable stuff seems to always be preserved by adding so much acid it's practically inedible.

If I don't want to go to a restaurant I'm probably going to have to make my own orange chicken sauce from scratch.

The thing is, I can't imagine these sauces would sell well if they tasted as intensely sour to the general public as they do to me.

Next time I'm in the city (there's none my side of the water afaik) I should do a side by side taste test of orange chicken sauce from panda express restaurant vs the panda branded bottled sauce.

I'm nearly certain there's much more acid in the bottled version.

@azonenberg restaurants I would expect go a bit closer to local preferences than to original recipes.

That said, I'm not sure Panda branded bottled sauce is an original recipe from anywhere -- but the spicier sauces I find here in the supermarket are pretty much all fairly acidic, because that's how the Chinese, Vietnamese and South Indian customers like it.

I think you can improve it quite a bit by using a lot less of the sauce, marinate the chicken in it over night, and add chicken stock or a Velouté when cooking -- that's what the restaurant will be doing.

@GyrosGeier i'm not saying panda bottled is an original recipe, i'm more curious about the delta because they're the only brand i know of that has both a restaurant and bottled version readily available to me.

@GyrosGeier I've also thought about cooking the food under fairly low heat for a long time after saucing to boil off as much of the vinegar as possible, adding additional water if it desiccates too much in the process

@azonenberg I thought you were talking about the imported sauces like Sriracha -- all of these are fairly acidic.

For the Panda sauce, the answer is definitely to thin it down -- but instead of water, use chicken stock -- that's what the restaurant does, most likely as a Velouté, so a roux made with chicken stock instead of milk, so it doesn't get too runny.

Reducing vinegar by cooking it down will make it more intense, so you want something that doesn't need to reduce as much before it has a good consistency.

Cooking for longer doesn't help as much as just using less of it -- that's why I suggested a marinade to get all the flavour into the meat, and kind of pre-cook it.

@azonenberg Very good sauce tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xniS7kMpW4I

@jpm extreme nay.

Even carrots taste bitter to me often.

@jpm I'm told normies find them sweet.... They're generally bitter especially the central core (not sure of the technical term).

Organic baby carrots are usually more tolerable to me. Full sized carrots seem more bitter.

@azonenberg congratulations fellow TAS2R38-haver! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/TAS2R38

@jpm i think i did test for the PTC SNP in bio 101, but i can't remember the outcome.

I generally don't like the taste of fermented beverages (even beer cheese dip tastes bad to me) but am unsure if I'm tasting the EtOH or other fermentation products. Never tested with a pure distilled spirit like vodka as i have no interest in drinking in general.

@azonenberg … I was just about to ask that as a follow-up. Let me guess, even a high-end scotch tastes mostly like a mouth full of black pepper?

@jpm never tried. The only booze I've ever had was one sip of beer in 2013 to shut up my housemate who swore it tastee better than it smelled and wouldn't take no for an answer.

It tasted exactly like it smelled and i haven't had a drop since.

@jpm circa 2013-14 i went to the melting pot (fondue restaurant) with my wife. The appetizer was various bread products in a cheese fondue that contained a bit of wine to help it dissolve and I found it tasted generally off, kind of "fermented/spoiled". But again, no idea if it was the EtOH or some other yeast metabolite.

@acsawdey @jpm ditto on the coffee. I quite enjoy the smell but can't tolerate the flavor even in like mocha or something.

Starbucks hot chocolate usually tastes slightly of coffee to me because they steam the milk with the same steamer they use for coffee based drinks. It's usually not enough cross contamination to be a major turn off but i can detect it.