Tabasco Sauce Saves Lives!
My headline is no joke; although when I first read the actual headline “Tabasco sauce used to train Ebola health care workers” all kinds of strange thoughts ran thru my head.
The opening paragraph clears the matter up some.
“It may sound strange, but Tabasco hot sauce is proving to be a successful training aid for health care workers learning how to avoid contamination when taking care of patients with the Ebola virus.”
The idea is kinda neat, but my first thought flashed on a myth(?) that the Tabasco Sauce in C-Rats was there to kill bacteria IN THE C-Rats and sadly went downhill from there.
Anyway, read the story… it really is an imaginative way to use the stuff.
ETA: A memory (or maybe a memory OF a memory) can be strangely wrong at times. I would have bet money, and lost, that Tabasco Sauce was included in C-rats. Keeping in mind that it was more a curiosity in The TGYC and never primary rations; I DO recall the tiny bottles in conjunction with the ration packs BUT they were not, as far as my Google-Fu allows, ever directly issued with the things.
Category: Geezer Alert!
we used Tabasco as anti-nap devices. feel like nappy time on an FTX, expect to be sucking on a bottle like a baby.
worked great until that Private who just drank it like it was water.
We had a German Shepard that got bored during the day and tore the vinyl off of our hot Tub cover. The wife put hot sauce on it. He loved it. We finally had to fence it off to keep a cover on it. There is just no accounting for taste.
I had a black lab who loved to bark. The trainer at the obedience school we attended told me to use a spray bottle with lemon juice to stop him. When that didn’t work, he suggested watered down Tabasco. When THAT didn’t work he said go full strength. My lab promptly snatched the spray bottle off the counter when I was at work,destroyed the bottle, and nicely cleaned up after himself. I decided to let him bark.
It is also good on food…..
Great for use as a fuel octane booster. 2oz in 5 gal of MOGAS pops the octane up to 119.
Not really. Made ya think about it….
Does Tabasco still come in MRE’s?
I’m curious about that too? C-Rats were never a staple off shore, but we had ’em a time or two. Curiously the last time I had any was in’82 during the aftermath of Hurricane Iwa on Kauai. The Wife always figured my notion as a yarn until…
It did in 2013. That’s my most recent experience with an MRE.
Yes, yes it does. In the tiny little thumb-sized bottles.
I think it took them about two years or more before they even started adding a Tabasco bottle to the MRE’s after they were introduced(1981/1982?).IIRC,the first time I ever got an MRE that had Tabasco in it was at the NTC in 1986 that had a manufactured/lot date of 1985.
We always carried it in a bottle to use on our C-Ratfood shit they wanted us to eat that was left over from Vietnam and even Korea…
God that stuff was nasty… We had to heat them in a Deuce & a half exhaust when available in Alaska in winter… They hold about 10 cans, let it sit and idle for about 5 minutes then punch it and they all come shooting out the pipe, nice and hot !!!
They still sucked but at least they weren’t frozen…
Their idea of a hot meal in the field was to use one of those garbage can water heaters and dump a bunch of B-2 units in them then pass it out as hot chow…
Yeah right…
“Tabasco: it’s not just for tacos any more.”
“Tabasco: it’s not just for MRE’s anymore.”
“Tabasco: your best defense against Ebola.”
I am told by trusted sources that there were actually folks who went to the field and ate C’s without Tabasco. I, of course, discounted that as unrealistic poppycock.
Yes,it’s true. I am a survivor of the before Tabasco issue C-Rations. You put a clothes pin on your nose, ate them only during the hours of darkness and attempted to stay upwind at all times. And to top it off,they took away your separate rations while you were in the field,so your next paycheck was docked the appropriate amount for the field rations that were fed to you. Talk about adding insult to injury,especially for the married E-4’s and below.
During Viet Nam Tabasco offered gratis the “Charlie Ration Cookbook” (troops still had to come up with their own sauce, though). It was a small pamphlet and looked like it was illustrated by the guy that used to draw the Sad Sack comics. I regret not keeping my copy. Recipes included those that used only what came with the Cs and some that required purchase of local food. Never worked up much enthusiasm for Vietnamese cuisine, but concluded Tabasco beat the hell out of nuoc mam.
Yea,we had a couple of our guys write back to Tabasco and have some shipped over. We didn’t so much use it on C’s as we used it to spice up the LRRP rations we were able to get by trading comic books for rations with the CCN guys.
Here ya go, CC Senior. (smile)
http://www.1stcavmedic.com/tabasco_cookbook.htm
Or for a downloadable PDF version:
http://www.19engrvn.org/Resources/The%20Charlie%20Ration%20Cookbook.pdf
During the build up of Desert Shield I was in a tent city called Cement City … somewhere close to Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. During this time we received two hot meals a day and MREs at lunch. The only way to keep the flies off of your food (chow hall or MRE) was to liberally splash Tabasco (or other brand – and they had five or six different brands of hot sauce at every table) onto everything as soon as you possibly could.
OK, Vietnam-era guys – help me out here. Earliest C-rats I had were in the mid-1970s (still had cigs), and I’m not remembering any Tabasco in them. I also can verify that the earliest MREs (early 1980s) were indeed sans Tabasco.
Did the C-rats in Vietnam actually have Tabasco bottles in them? I’m pretty sure the stuff I ate in the mid-1970s were Vietnam leftovers or from shortly after the end of the war.
I dunno myself beyond this: The C-rats we had in the Tonkin Gulf most assuredly had The Sauce AND cigs. It was my intro to the stuff. ETA, the C-rats we were given by the CD folks on Kauai ALSO had both.
I don’t ever remember getting any C-Rations with Tabasco in them. That includes Vietnam,first tour to Germany and about half of the second tour to Germany and in all the time spent in the States. Like I commented earlier it was 1986 before I got an MRE that had Tabasco in it. This was strictly Army,no idea if the Navy or Air Force got a different type of C-Ration than we did.
No, no Tabasco in Viet Nam era Cs or the early iteration of MREs (the ones with the meat patties that looked like Brillo pads). I ate Cs from ’63 to ’91 and it wasn’t until DS/DS that I first noticed the small bottle of Tabasco. Worked great with the corned beef hash.
All I know is that no amount of Tabasco or any other type of sauce would help mask the taste of Ham & Motherfuckers (Ham and Lima Beans) or Beef & Shrapnel (Beef Slices w/Potatoes). Those were two of the most disgusting meals that were ever forced upon the American Fighting Man in the course of human history.
C’s from 77 to 84, then MREs 85-86- no Tabasco even in the older VN war era stuff. Tabasco was a bring-yer-own staple.
Fellows,
I can’t beleive for one minute that you guys would fall for all that bullshit about Tabasco, I think your in the right Pew, but the wrong Church.
LoL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t think I ever ate a can of “C”s with a production date later than 1945. We were still eating them into the mid 60’s. The only guys that ate Tabasco sauce were from the gulf, the southwest and a few african american GI’s. Tabasco didn’t gain much popularity until the late 70’s in most of america.
I think you all have Tabasco Sauce mixed up with Salt Peter,
both were approved by the USDA,
SERIOUSLY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
LOL
Yep,saltpeter,the main ingredient in corned beef hash,Spam,and powdered eggs. All part of the RDA for Basic Trainees.
Back in the late 50’s, when we’d go out in the field in Japan, we’d get rations from WWII much of the time. If the trip was scheduled, we’d get a full detail to feed us about as well as anyone got, but if we were servicing a problem, we’d get what we had. That corned beef was one of my favorites from the canned rations. We didn’t have Tabasco to help. Wish we had because lately I’ve noticed the effects of those loads of KNO3 catching up with me.
Your next.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Don’t ask about exact dates (don’t remember), but saw both C-rats and MRE’s with and without Tabasco in USAF. Seems like the ones we first had in Desert Storm had none but later ones did. No idea now how old those first MRE’s might have been.
Seems like back when there were some K-rats for something. May have been a joke? Like one mixed in with the C-rats. I just remember actually having one in my hand out in the field somewhere.
Weren’t both C-rats and K-rats, depending, issued/consumed in Vietnam?
Saved my life on many a breakfast plate of powdered eggs and spam.
Tabasco is poor man’s hot sauce. Cholula, now THAT’S some good stuff. Not too spicy, good flavor in everything from eggs to burgers to libations.
And an old trick I learned from my tenure working in a Mexican restaurant–put a little cooking oil on your hands before you cut up jalapenos, etc. Pepper juice won’t get on your hands and makes for a lot easier and effective cleanup afterwards.
Trust me on that one.
I keep a bottle of Tabasco’s chipoltle pepper sauce in my desk for lunches. Great stuff!
Sparky,
I love cooking with habaneros, but enjoy forgetting I did so and touching my eyes and nose less so. One thing I learned is that capsaicin is alcohol soluble. So if you’re a heathen (like me), dipping your fingers in whiskey (and then drinking it… no sense wasting it) can keep your bugger hooks from burning sensitive parts. I SUPPOSE you could use rubbing alcohol, but it’s less fun.
The idea of the Tobasco for training is to teach you not to touch anything with your hands. If you put it on your hands and then start your normal routines you will be surprised at how many times you touch your nose, eyes, arm, leg, or even privates.
The Tobasco will teach you to keep your fucking hands to yourself and off yourself. That is how the infection spreads.
Remember, flies spread disease, keep yours closed !!! H/T Band of Brothers.
I grow my own hot peppers, and have never needed to protect my hands while preparing them. A few years ago, I decided to grow habaneros. The first one I chopped went just fine, until I had an itch that just needed scratching. I think I spent the next 30 minutes sitting on the floor of the shower!
NO Tabasco in C-Rats from 65 to 72 My time in the Corps. In Nam from late 66 to late 68. Everybody had the Tabasco with them chow hall or brush. Joe
I enlisted in ’83. I never saw the small tabasco sauce bottles in C rats or in MREs until sometime in the 90s. Guys used to carry their own bottle before that. Tabasco even sold an LBE carrier for your tabasco bottle in the late 80s.
A historical endnote: Brigadier General Walter S. McIlhenny, USMC, was awarded the Navy Cross, Silver Star, and two Purple Hearts during his time on Guadalcanal. He was one badass Marine.
He was the fourth president of the McIlhenny, Tabasco, Company.
John Avery McIlhenny ran the business for a few years before he resigined to join the Rough Riders in the 1890’s.
There was another McIlhenny who served in Vietnam as an Army officer who I cannot recall right now.
I’ve read this somewhere and was going to look it up. You beat me to it.
You can purchase Tabasco in 1 gallon glass jugs via Amazon (ships from Avery Island distillery) for about $41 plus $10 shipping (about $7 shipping for each additional bottle). I bought a couple jugs about 3 yrs ago, and still have a half gallon left over. Keep it sealed in a cool dark cover & it will keep for a very long time.
For those desiring more “heat”…add a couple drops of Dave’s Insanity sauce or something similar in the Tabasco bottle & shake. Maintains the Tabasco flavor just fine & ups the Scoville heat index.
Somehow I have 1 of the little bottles,good for 1 serving only. I tnrought it was a promotion item. If you wrote the General’s company. They would send a case to be shared. I know they did it for the Maines as no charge. Semper Fi Joe
The first comment I can find for them sounds about right, just the time I transferred from Active duty to Reserve…
http://www.mreinfo.com/us/mre/menus-viii-ix-1988-1989.html
MRE Menus VIII (1988) – MRE IX (1989)
Acc Pkt B
coffee
cream sub
sugar
salt
gum
matches
tissue
towelette
hot pepper sauce
+100 on Cholula sauce.
Another good one is “Da Bomb” – a tablespoon in a half-gallon of BBQ sauce will warm it ‘way up, to where you have to cook with it for it not to be too hot to eat.Just right.
Cholula is indeed excellent.
Two others that are excellent are Tapatio (out of Vernon, CA) and Valentina (#1 selling hot sauce in Mexico – in my area, Food Lion carries it). Very similar in taste; the Tapatio is much hotter, IMO too hot (the heat overpowers the taste, which is quite good). Valentina has a nice bite and a good flavor.
The Buffalo brand (from Mexico) Chipotle Hot Sauce is also quite good and is an excellent change of pace (dark brown, smoky, and quite spicy). Recommended. Their Jalapeno Hot Sauce, however, IMO kinda sucks – to me, it tastes like a bad Tabasco imitation. Not recommended.