Texas Pete

Texas Pete is a retail brand name for a Louisiana-style hot sauce in the United States manufactured by the TW Garner Food Company in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The brand is best known for its 3.0 oz bottles with their bright red sauce, shaker top, and white and yellow label featuring the name in red and "Texas Pete", a red silhouette cowboy.

History

Texas Pete was created by the Garner family, who operated "The Dixie Pig Barbecue Stand." The sauce is Carolina style BBQ sauce and planned to be called "Mexican Joe" but renamed when Samuel Garner decided it should be an American name. cite web |url=http://www.texaspete.com/legend.html |title=The Legend of Texas Pete ]

Production

The cayenne peppers used in Texas Pete hot sauce are aged for two years to soften their skins, and the company claims this also enhances concentration of capsaicin. The peppers are then combined with vinegar, salt, xanthan gum, and sodium benzoate. One of the issues surrounding the sauce is the inclusion of xanthan gum, a thickener that allows for less overall pepper pulp in the recipe to achieve the desired texture, which some hot sauce fansWho|date=November 2007 find distasteful.

Heat

Texas Pete is a fairly mild hot sauce, registering approximately 1,000 on the Scoville heat scale, compared to Tabasco sauce which registers 2,500-5,000.

Chick-Fil-A

In late 2003, Chick-Fil-A opted to carry Texas Pete sauce (packet-form) in its restaurants nationwide. Same-store sales catapulted over 45% in 2004. Many analysts close to the firm heralded the decision to carry the sauce, largely attributing the company's success to the sauce itself.

In several third party surveys, Chick-Fil-A customers have exclaimed, "Texas Pete doesn't go on the chicken sandwich, the chicken sandwich goes on the Texas Pete," and "Best thing since the chicken sandwich."

cite journal
url=http://jchemed.chem.wisc.edu:8000/Contributors/Authors/Journal/laboratory/example06/supp266.pdf
publisher=Journal of Chemical Education, University of Wisconsin
title=Determination of the Scoville Heat Value for Hot Sauces and Chilies: An HPLC Experiment
date=2000

] It is considered to be mild by hot sauce enthusiastsWho|date=November 2007, but it has been suggestedWho|date=November 2007 that its relative mildness accounts for its widespread popularityFact|date=November 2007. The company also acknowledges this with the motto "Texas Pete Sauces are all about FLAVOR, not BURN!"

References

External links

* [http://www.texaspete.com/ The Texas Pete home page]
* [http://www.chilliworld.com/FactFile/Scoville_Scale.asp Texas Pete on the ChilliWorld Scoville Scale]