Dr. King White Turns Hot Peppers Into A Hot Sauce Hobby
Dr. King White piles crimson-colored cayenne peppers into his Cuisinart and presses the puree button. The sharp tangy scent of hot peppers fills his kitchen. He adds a pinch of salt, a dash of vinegar, and whirs the spicy slurry again. This local cardiologist is passionate about peppers.
“Peppers are graded on Scoville units,” White explains, as he transfers the pepper puree to a pot on the stove where it will simmer for thirty minutes. Cayenne peppers score around 20,000 Scoville units. Tabascos weigh in at 60,000. Habaneros boast a fiery hot 600,000. Ghost chili and scorpion peppers are the hottest peppers on the planet and pack around a million Scoville units. Look out!
White makes four kinds of hot sauce. His Mild sauce is made from cayenne peppers and his Hot from tabasco peppers. His Extra Hot recipe blends tabasco and habanero peppers and is his most popular. “It’s hotter than what you usually buy in a store,” he says. His XXX Hot combines tabascos and a bit of ghost chili pepper.
On a recent Wednesday afternoon, I shared the kitchen as White made Mild sauce with cayenne peppers picked from his garden the day before.
A One-Man Production
King’s Hot Sauce requires three and a half years to make, and White enjoys each step of the process.
In February, he tills the soil in his two large garden beds. He buys most of his pepper plants from local nurseries, but special orders the exotic pepper plants such as scorpions and ghost chilis. He plants the peppers around the end of March or April, after the last frost.
White harvests the peppers from July through September and makes the sauce in late summer and fall.
He marks quart mason jars with the date and type of sauce and places the jars of pepper puree on a pantry shelf where they age for three years.
In January and February, he bottles the sauce by straining the orangey-red concoction through cheesecloth, funneling it into hot sauce bottles, and applying a colorful label.
White makes 350-500 bottles of hot sauce a year. This summer, he doubled the size of his garden. “I hope to make more this year, but I’m limited by my garden size and by time — I work long hours,” he laments.
Popular With The Locals
Last November, John Bridges of KPLC-TV filmed a Louisiana Traveler segment about White and his hot sauce. “On the segment, I mentioned that I was going to put my hot sauce in the [Lake Charles Memorial] hospital gift shop (White works at Memorial). I took 96 bottles there the day before the segment aired. The volunteers wondered what it was. I told them people may stop by to buy some hot sauce tomorrow.
“They opened the shop at 8 am. At 9 am, they called me. Every bottle had sold and there were people in the shop wanting more. I brought them another 96 bottles and they sold that by 4 pm, and had 120 people on a waiting list. I went home and bottled 120 more. And it still wasn’t enough.”
Several years ago, White agreed to put his hot sauce in a Baton Rouge restaurant. That didn’t work out well. Patrons stole the sauce off the tables. “People like my hot sauce. It’s thicker than store-bought hot sauces.”
A Family Tradition
Making hot sauce has been a family tradition for White since he was a child. “When I was growing up in Lake Charles, I had a relative named Van King. He made hot sauce. He gave me a bottle for Christmas every year. It was delicious; best hot sauce I’ve ever had. The bottle would last me all year.
“I went away to college and medical school. While I was gone, [King] passed away. When I returned to Lake Charles, I decided to carry on his tradition.
“I asked his widow if she had his hot sauce recipe. She found some notes about how he made the sauce. I switched it up a bit, but basically I’ve been making hot sauce with his recipe since 1990.”
It’s a family tradition. But White also thinks of his hot sauce as a cultural heritage. “Louisiana is famous for its hot sauce. There are dozens of companies that make it. Tabasco is the biggest. This hobby I have is so popular because everyone [locally] loves hot sauce! If I lived in Boston or New York, there might not be so much demand for my hot sauce.”
Health Benefits of Hot Sauce
White encourages his cardiac patients to eat hot sauce as a replacement for salt on food. “People like to eat too much salt,” he says. “They like their food seasoned. Hot sauce can lower sodium intake if used as a substitute.”
Peppers are high in vitamins C, A, B vitamins and beta carotene.
Hot sauce can also relieve pain, especially for shingles patients.
Hot peppers can be addicting. “There’s a chemical in the peppers called capsaicin. That’s what gives it the heat and burns your tongue. When a person eats hot peppers or sauce, in response to the burning sensation, the brain releases endorphins, giving a sense of pleasure. When the burn goes away, the person wants more. Some people put hot sauce on everything. They become desensitized to it, and they need hotter and hotter sauce.”
White says he’s a big fan of his own hot sauce. “I put my hot sauce on everything — pizza, eggs, gumbo, seafood . . . everything but salads and desserts.” He appreciates other hot sauces, as well. He has a collection of 770 bottles of hot sauce from around the world. “I have some very interesting bottles. People bring them to me from exotic places.”
White has never sold a bottle of his hot sauce for profit. He prefers to keep it that way. “If I sold the sauce, it would become a job rather than a hobby. I give it away to family, friends, and charities. I give it to my patients if they quit smoking.
“I love the feeling I get when people tell me they really enjoy my hot sauce. It’s something I do to give back to the community. I like making people happy; bringing a smile to peoples’ faces when they eat my hot sauce.”
If you want to try King’s Hot Sauce, or if you’re already a fan and want to know where to get more, White says he’ll put it in the Lake Charles Memorial Hospital Gift Shop this October. All proceeds benefit the Lake Charles Memorial Foundation.
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