![]() Though standbys like Tabasco and Cholula endure, they rub shoulders with a parade of new sadistic concoctions, snarkily-titled, adorned with cartoon faces contorted in panic, their contents laced with lab-distilled capsaicin. It has never been the entire meal.Īnd somewhere along the way, heritage rubs and molasses glazes yielded the commercial spotlight to a new kind of hot sauce: the pain circus. But while heat has always made BBQ better, the sauces always had to have something to go on, even if it was just grits and government cheese. There are struggles in America too, struggles that lie underneath our deep tradition of complex spice and slow cooking. Her flagship hot sauce, Lao Gan Ma Chili Crisp, is a bridge across regimes, across cultures, across the gap between fabulous wealth and starvation. Her aged body contains three generations of struggle and taste. Though she leans on a cane, her wizened face betrays no weakness. So she took the company back, made things right. These things mean nothing to a hungry dog. But they cut corners, changed distributors, traded quality for scale and efficiency. They took jobs at her factory, learned the business, and eventually she gave it over to them to manage. More years passed and she started another factory, and another. A few years passed and she was able to start a factory. The dog lurked around her shop, watchful, but no longer snapping. She opened a small shop, spent all day chopping peppers, and sold sauce to local restaurants. This was her life for twenty years.īy this time, her chili sauce had gained a reputation. As she slumped past the hospital, she saw the dog waiting, lurking in the shadows, still all teeth and ribs. She brought homemade chili sauce to put on her steamed buns at lunchtime. She could not read or write, but she had strong hands. Tao went to the countryside to find work. Not long after the birth of their second son, her husband fell very ill. He was an accountant, but they still struggled. Every day she fought the dog, and most days she came home with something to eat. ![]() She took the peppers home, cooked them together with some roots she had found, and ate it with her family. The dog snapped at her hand, circling and nipping, but she managed to run it off without getting hurt. She stomped and swung branches and snatched at the peppers. He might be hungry, but she was hungrier. He must be hungry, she thought, but why does he want the peppers? Then she realized the dog wasn’t looking at the peppers. He was big and scary, but he was skinny-so skinny she could see his ribs. Peppers are special: they may not fill your belly, but the heat makes your hunger go away.Īs she reached for the peppers a snarling dog came out of the underbrush. One day she went out looking for food and found a patch of long, scraggly chili peppers. She was the eighth daughter of a poor family, so she often went hungry. Many years ago, in a tiny village in Guizhou, China, there was a little girl named Tao.
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