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Food

MUNCHIES Presents: The Home of Hot Sauce

A visit to Tabasco's Home of Hot Sauce in Avery Island, Louisiana, hosted by Matty Matheson.

You can tell that spicy food is becoming a universal phenomenon when bottles of homemade hot sauce start popping up on dinner tables worldwide and chili pepper-eating contests become wildly popular.

In this MUNCHIES special, host Matty Matheson travels to New Orleans to meet the people who make TABASCO Sauce, and to sample the creative ways chefs use it in their kitchens.

He starts off at Bonafried, a food truck that uses hot sauce to make the best fried chicken and locally renowned "Tennessee Hot Chicken." Later, at Pêche Seafood Grill, Matty works alongside award-winning chef Ryan Prewitt to prepare a fish head in a flaming sauce. The next stop on Matty's spice trail? Chef Alon Shaya takes him fishing—at dawn, no less—in the Gulf of Mexico. Afterwards, they use their catch to prepare a meal using only local Louisiana ingredients.

Fresh from his culinary adventures (and the bracing ocean air), Matty heads over to the TABASCO Sauce headquarters on Avery Island. As a family-owned business that was founded in Louisiana in 1868, TABASCO is a tried-and-true sauce with more stories and more sizzling history than many spicy newcomers.

For Matty's final bayou adventure, he prepares his own version of gumbo, the classic Louisiana fish-and-meat stew. Nobody in Louisiana is a stranger to spice, but everyone who samples Matty's gumbo is glowing and perspiring—and this time, it isn't because of the hot summer weather.

Season 2 Episode 21 of Specials. Watch more