Clean Out Fridge Means Goodbye Old Friends

It’s hard to throw out old sauces

We cleaned out the fridge to make room for any new sauces that we’d be opening soon, and found bottles of stuff that was over 6 years old. There was even a bottle of smoked, dried tomatoes in olive oil that was at least 7 years old.

It’s sad to part with some of the one-of-a-kind hot sauces, but I’m sure with the internet, I could easily find
These photos don’t show the 2 dozen or so bottles of other sauces and condiments that we threw out. There were Thai and other oriental sauces and seasonings – taco sauces, steak sauces, BBQ sauces, bottled peppers and pickles – they all had to be recycled to make room for the new guys!

Left to right, the “dead soldiers” are:

Sontava, a Jardines product. Made in Belize Central America – Typical grocery store fare from the overpriced Jardines line
Crabanero – The Original Old Bay Seasoned Habanero Sauce – from the Philly Chili Co. produced in Reading, PA. Marilyn loves this stuff, and it was our 2nd bottle, which we probably purchased at Peppers.com but they have since added CraBBQ sauce and Crabanero Bay seasoning to their line up. Might be a future review in line for them.
Killer Bee from VirginiaBrand.com – apparently they’ve stopped making this sauce. Too bad, it was a nice, sweet hot sauce.
Tena Hot Sauce – Trader Joe’s product made in Ecuador from Tena Pepper Paste.
Blair’s After Death Sauce – ’nuff said.
The Greatest Grub Ever Fire It Up Serving Sauce – we got a mixed case of TGGE products at the Food Network’s Food Show in Pa a few years back. Great tasting stuff, but I forgot it was even there.
PyroMania Hot Sauce – One of my favorite sauces – chunky, sweet, hot, vinegar – from Garden Row Foods in St Charles, IL it’s available from HotShotsHotSauce.com here.
Mad Dog 357 – back when 357,000 Scoville Units was a big deal. I love Mad Dog Inferno, but I guess this didn’t pass the muster.
Santa’s Atkin’s Friendly – nevermind, even the website is a link farm now.
Parada – a Brazillian sauce. Eh.

A few of the other sauces that went to the great sauce / condiment place-in-the-sky are:

Dinosaur Bar B Que slathering sauce – it was just O.K. apparently
Nera’s Jamaican Jerk Spice – A *huge* favorite here at HotSauceDaily – gotta get me some more of this lil’ wonder! We reviewed Neera’s in our Jerk Seasoning Roundup
Danger Men Cooking Chipotle Grill Sauce – overpriced and overrated
TuttoCalabria Crushed red peppers – another great product that we just didn’t use often enough – bought this bottle at Chelsea Market, the home of Food Network – memories…

Just for grins, here’s a shot of our fridge door AFTER the clean out. Hey! There’s still alot of hot sauces in the bottom of that door! Hee-hee.

When we were done, I said to Marilyn “We didn’t get a BEFORE shot!” She said, “just wait a month and take a pic… it’ll look just like the BEFORE shot we would’ve had today!”

The End… or is it…?

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{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

Scott Roberts August 8, 2009 at 11:15 am

Great post! Instead of one big dump, I’ve been throwing out about 4-5 bottles/jars per month. I’ve barely been keeping up. Well, technically I’m not keeping up, as “citizens” of my fridge’s hot sauce/salsa shelf have been populating other shelves, and threatening the very existence of the milk, eggs and margarine, not to mention leaving no room for leftovers.;-)

brian August 8, 2009 at 5:11 pm: Thanks Scott, but 4 or 5 bottles a month? I just can’t bring myself to do that! And we just do without milk or eggs… or food, if there’s no room for them. Ha!

Scott Roberts August 11, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Well, I just got rid of about 25-30 bottles and jars of sauces, jellies, salsas, and other miscellaneous stuff. It hurt, because I had to throw away some of my precious super-hots such as Blair’s and DEFCON. Good sauces, but I couldn’t use all of them up in time, and now they’re 2-3 years old. I didn’t photo-document it because I cleaned out all kinds of other leftovers and spoiled/rotten food. Now if I can just go through the 50-60 bottles and jars of spicy stuff on my pantry shelves, we’d have room for food again!

Patty September 13, 2009 at 9:29 pm

I had some hot sauce that was never opened, but the date on it is 9/25/05. It was not refridgerated either. Can I still use this?

brian September 14, 2009 at 6:53 am: Patty, some folks think hot sauce never goes bad. But I wouldn’t trust a bottle that was 4 years old.
What is the brand and name of the hot sauce you have?