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Fire it up! WQAD takes on a hot sauce challenge

To celebrate national hot sauce day on Jan. 22, James Zahara, Shelby Kluver, Jon Diaz, Kory Kuffler and Matt Randazzo snack on some spicy sauces!

MOLINE, Ill. — National hot sauce day is Sunday, January 22. To celebrate, we here at WQAD decided to have our own little hot sauce challenge. Safe to say, things went downhill fast. 

Jon Diaz and Kory Kuffler - who are known at the station for their spice prowess - were hardly phased by the increasing heat levels. But James Zahara, Shelby Kluver and Matt Randazzo ran into some difficulties. 

The groups started at a very mild hot sauce, then progressed up in spice. Each jar is ranked by its 'Scoville' level, which is how heat in food is measured. It judges the pungency of the peppers and gives a sauce a Scoville rating based off the concentration of capsaicin (the part of the pepper that's hot). 

During the segment, we used 6 sauces in the following order: 

  • Frank's RedHot: 450 Scoville 
  • The Classic | Hot Ones Hot Sauce: 1,800 Scoville 
  • Tapatío: 3,000 Scoville 
  • Dave's Gourmet Ghost Pepper Jolokia Sauce: 650,000 Scoville
  • Elijah's Xtreme Regret: 800,000 Scoville
  • Hot Ones The Last Dab: 1,000,000+ Scoville 

But of course, suffering through six hot sauces wasn't quite enough for this crew! Following in Jon and Kory's lead, everyone decided to go back one more time - after it was all said and done - and try the most painful sauce again. Despite only being third in Scoville rankings, it was the Ghost Pepper Jolokia Sauce that hurt the worst. And it was just as painful the second time around. 

By the end, everyone decided all their taste buds had been burned off. The full video is linked above, for your enjoyment! 

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