{"id":5745,"date":"2020-09-13T04:13:07","date_gmt":"2020-09-13T10:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/?p=5745"},"modified":"2025-08-02T23:08:50","modified_gmt":"2025-08-03T05:08:50","slug":"hot-sauce","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qualityofmercy.com\/blog\/2020\/09\/13\/hot-sauce\/","title":{"rendered":"Picx Picx: Gre\u00f1udo\u2019s Favorite Hot Sauce"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’ve been distracted lately by food videos sent my way by YouTube. A week ago America’s Test Kitchen posted Our Top Rated Hot Sauce<\/a>.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> At about the same time I was reintroduced to the first hot sauce I ever used on a regular basis.
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Growing up in Boulder in the 1960s, Mexican food was considered fairly exotic. Believe me, you wouldn’t be able to reconcile the restaurant landscape then<\/a> with what’s available today (or was<\/em>, until the pandemic hit). In the early \u201970s we’d go to a place on Walnut called Tico’s. I’d order something called the Oaxacan Red. I can’t tell you what it was, but it was flavorful enough that I wasn’t compelled to splash whatever table sauce was at hand. And so I never tasted the varieties of piquant condiments that are household names today.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I think the only thing we would have had in my childhood home was a small bottle of Tabasco.<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I left Boulder for L.A. in 1973 to work with the United Farm Workers’ boycott organization, the hot sauce in our households (we community organizers lived communally) was Pico Pica.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Such was my penchant for picante<\/em>, I was advised: “Gre\u00f1udo,” addressing me by the nickname the Mexican nationals in our number had given me,<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> “we’ll have to send you back to Colorado with a case of Pico Pica.”<\/p>\n\n\n

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\"David
I guess I was gre\u00f1udo. Me in front of a Safeway supermarket in the Los Angeles area, circa 1974, in a photo taken by a community supporter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

Of course I didn’t move back to Colorado for three decades. And Pico Pica always was on the shelves of the markets we frequented in Los Angeles. It was made in Arizona but in 1977 Pico Pica sold out<\/a> to Juanita’s Foods in Wilmington, in L.A.’s harbor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I stopped buying Pico Pica when we began trying to buy organic exclusively. This was not for our<\/em> health. It actually ties in to my work with the United Farm Workers. Pesticides maim and kill agricultural workers. They also kill beneficial insects.<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By buying organic we message growers that pesticides aren’t acceptable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Years ago my local Denver market King Soopers (a Kroger chain) began selling organic jalape\u00f1o hot sauce. Its recipe is nowhere near as simple as Tabasco’s peppers-vinegar-salt, but it’s organic.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span> I bought it by default. Once, when I couldn’t take it any longer and tried to find Pico Pica here, it wasn’t easy. (Tonight, when I tried to find Pico Pica here, it wasn’t easy.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then a week ago, at the local Safeway (I’d boycotted it for years in Los Angeles with the UFW), I found an organic jalape\u00f1o hot sauce in Denver that nearly mimics Pico Pica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pico Pica<\/th>O Organics Jalape\u00f1o Hot Sauce<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
Water, chili peppers, red jalapeno peppers, tomato paste, spices, salt, less than 2%: citric acid, acetic acid, vegetable oil (soybean and\/or canola oil), xanthan gum, garlic powder, sodium benzoate (preservative), paprika (color).<\/span><\/td>Water, organic jalapeno pepper puree (organic red jalapeno peppers, salt, organic vinegar), organic spices, organic tomato paste, salt, less than 2% of: organic vegetable oil (organic soybean oil and\/or organic canola oil), organic cultured dextrose, organic maltodextrin, xanthan gum, organic garlic (dried).<\/span><\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The only real difference is the absence of vinegar in Pico Pica\u2014that and no dextrose (aka<\/em> glucose, a simple sugar) or maltodextrin (a complex carb with a glycemic index higher than sucrose and also used as a safe insecticide). And I can taste that sweetness, which I very much could do without. But otherwise, now I have my “organic” Pico Pica.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There’s a great difference between Pico Pica and a vinegar-based hot sauce. It’s cruder. The pepper seeds float about (indeed they can clog the Safeway cap’s small opening). You can chew the dried pepper flakes. It’s earthy, maybe even a bit bitter. Back in the 1970s I’d say this is hot, but not anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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