Old Bay Seasoning is a seafood staple that has been around for decades and that has gone into any of a number of shrimp boils or crab boils as well as many other dishes featuring denizens of the deep. And now that popular spice mixture has a companion with a kick in Old Bay Hot Sauce. This is something I have been seeing popping up lately (I spend a lot of time at r/hotsauce and r/spicy over on Reddit) and finally found a bottle in the store. So you know I had to pick it up and give it a try.
According to the label, this hot sauce is for “Game Day, Brunch, and Happy Hour” which seems somewhat restrictive. If I splash a few drops on my egg and chorizo taco at breakfast or my fish n’ chips at dinner, are the hot sauce police gonna bust down the door? Hopefully they will give us some leeway because this new sauce has plenty of potential uses.
Taste-wise, the Old Bay sauce is basically what you would get when you mix a good Louisiana-style sauce with the seasoning in the title. This is a vinegar-based sauce, so it has the expected tang. And then the Old Bay taste kicks in which adds another layer of flavor. As for the heat level, I would say that it is approaching medium, typical for the Louisiana style. A few drops will not set your mouth on fire, but they will deliver a bit of a kick. But note that this sauce is very salty, coming in at 160mg per teaspoon (in comparison, Tabasco is just 35mg). The Louisiana sauces themselves are already pretty salty in taste, and Old Bay has celery salt as the first ingredient on its list.
The Old Bay Hot Sauce of course will go well with pretty much any type of seafood. But the dish does not have to be water-based to benefit from a few drops of the sauce. It would go well on eggs, burgers, tacos, and I am guessing it would pair up really well with some boudin (gonna be giving that a try soon). The label suggests making wings with the sauce, and I can see that working. Though I’m thinking I’m going to try some Buffalo shrimp with this one and will report back with the results in a future post. A Bloody Mary would also fair well with a few drops of this to top it off.
This hot sauce was introduced in January of 2020 before the Super Bowl and sold out right away. I had not seen it on the store shelves at all and it only came to my attention when I saw people posting pictures of it on social media. I couldn’t find it at my local HEB here in San Antonio, but I was visiting in Houston and found a bottle at Kroger. If you can’t locate it at your local market, you can find it for sale online, including the jumbo 64 oz bottle.
Old Bay Seasoning got its start in 1939 when Gustav Brunn founded the Baltimore Spice Company and sold the mixture as “Delicious Brand Shrimp and Crab Seasoning”. It was later renamed Old Bay after the passenger liner of the same name that went across the Chesapeake Bay between Baltimore and Norfolk. McCormick & Co bought up the rights to the seasoning in 1990 which was rather ironic as they had fired Brunn in 1938 when his employer found out that he was Jewish (those were less-enlightened times). Now we have the Old Bay Hot Sauce to pair with it, but be cautious about using it if there is no game on or if it is not brunch or Happy Hour!
Tale of the Tape:
Ingredients: Hot Sauce (Aged Red Cayenne Peppers, Distilled Vinegar, Water, Salt, Garlic Powder), Distilled Vinegar, Spices (Including Celery Seed), Mustard Bran, Salt, Paprika & Xanthan Gum (Thickener)
Serving Size: 1 Teaspoon
Calories: 0
Fat: 0g
Protein: 0g
Carbs: 0g
Sodium: 160mg