I've Got Hot Sauce in My Bag: Cookbooks for Chili Pepper Lovers

Like Beyonce, my co-worker Melanie has hot sauce in her bag. Melanie is very generous with hers, which I appreciate as I am both devoted to my condiments and like my food spicy.

If you like your food flavorful, then you'll likely enjoy these hot titles – they will burn you in a good way – ignite your taste buds and even leave you thirsty for more (dad humor!).

Hot Sauce:

Hot Sauce! Techniques for Making Signature Hot Sauces:

"Offers 32 recipes for making your own signature hot sauces, as well as 60 recipes that use homemade or commercial hot sauces in everything from barbeque and Buffalo wings to bouillabaisse and black bean soup. Try making spicy chowders, tacos, salads, and seafood – even scorchingly delicious cocktails."

The Hot Sauce Cookbook: Turn up the Heat with 60+ Pepper Sauce Recipes:

"Dozens of recipes for homemade pepper sauces and salsas–including riffs on classic brands like Frank's RedHot, Texas Pete, Crystal, and Sriracha–plus step-by-step instructions for fermenting your own pepper mash, The Hot Sauce Cookbook will leave you amazed by the fire and vibrancy of your homemade sauces. Recipes for Meso-american salsas, Indonesian sambal, and Ethiopian berbere showcase the sweeping history and range of hot sauces around the world."

The Veggie-Lover's Sriracha Cookbook: 50 Vegan Rooster Sauce Recipes that Pack a Punch:

"Devoted Sriracha addicts know that this fiery red condiment adds the perfect spicy kick to their favorite foods. But for those who want to take it to the next level, Randy Clemens shows how versatile this garlicky, pungent sauce can be when paired with the almighty veggie in everything from breakfast to dessert, and appetizers to entrées."

The Tabasco Cookbook: Recipes with America's Favorite Pepper Sauce.

"The authoritative cookbook on Tabasco sauce from previous McIlhenny Company CEO Paul McIlhenny, featuring 80 recipes with your favorite pepper sauce in a newly revised edition."

The Everything Hot Sauce Book: From Growing to Picking and Preparing– All You Need to Add Some Spice to Your Life!

"Readers learn how to grow and cultivate hot pepper plants and how to prepare delicious dishes with hot sauces. With so many scrumptious and spicy meals, it easy to see why readers are ready to get hot for hot sauce."

Chiles and Peppers:

The Chile Pepper Bible: From Sweet to Fiery & Everything in Between:

"This comprehensive book provides absorbing information on a wide variety of chile peppers including their historical and geographic origins, the health benefits of chiles, and as well, 250 delicious and inventive recipes."

The Complete Chile Pepper Book: A Guide to Identifying, Growing, Preserving, and Cooking:

"By world-renowned chile experts Dave DeWitt and Paul W. Bosland, shares detailed profiles of the one hundred most popular chile varieties and include information on how to grow and cultivate them successfully, along with tips on planning, garden design, growing in containers, dealing with pests and disease, and breeding and hybridizing. Techniques for processing and preserving include canning, pickling, drying, and smoking. Eighty-five mouth-watering recipes show how to use them."

The Devil's Dinner: A Gastronomic and Cultural History of Chili Peppers:

"Hot peppers are especially popular in the United States, where a superhot movement is on the rise. Hot peppers started out in Mexico and South America, came to Europe with returning Spanish travelers, lit up Iberian cuisine with piri-piri and pimientos, continued along eastern trade routes, boosted mustard and pepper in cuisines of the Indian subcontinent, then took overland routes to central Europe in the paprika of Hungarian and Austrian dumplings, devilled this and devilled that... they've been everywhere!"

Mr. Chilehead: Adventures in the Taste of Pain:

"This heated confession of one man who embraced the chile lifestyle details his obsessive quest for pepper pain. A look into the capsicum subculture and its strange denizens, this book discusses hot sauce phenomena-the endorphin rush that kicks in when the sauce is consumed, the mad desire to produce hotter and hotter sauces, and the trend toward raunchy and politically incorrect hot sauce labels. Explored are the reasons millions of people seek out the pain caused by hot sauce and why the pleasure following that pain has made the pursuit of hot sauce and chile culture so wildly popular."

The Field Guide to Peppers:

"A little spice can really take a meal to the next level--but with so many peppers to choose from, how do you pick one capsicum from another? In The Field Guide to Peppers, Dave DeWitt and Janie Lamson give expert advice on popular varieties like ancho, cayenne, jalapeño, serrano, and more. The 400 profiles in this fiery guide include all the major types of peppers, and each page features a color photograph along with all the details a pepperhead needs to know: common name, origin, source, pod length and width, plant height, color, harvest, and heat level, ranging from sweet to superhot."

See also these titles:

Chillies: A Global History:

"This book tells the story of the spicy berry’s rise to prominence, showing that it was cultivated and venerated by the ancient people of Mesoamerica for millennia before Spanish explorers brought it back to Europe. It traces the chilli’s spread along trading routes to every corner of the globe, and explores the many important spiritual and cultural links that we have formed with it, from its use as an aphrodisiac to, in more modern times, an especially masochistic kind of eating competition. Ultimately, the author uses the chili to tell a larger story of global trade, showing how the spread of spicy cuisine can tell us much about the global exchange—and sometimes domination—of culture."

How to be a Chilli Head: Inside theRed-Hot World of the Chilli Cult:

"Welcome to the world of the chilli cult. All over the globe, people are getting together to grow chilli, taste chilli and make sauce hot enough to blow their heads off. ... Find out the secrets of chilli science - why a slug of water won't help when your mouth's on fire, what effect eating a super-hot chilli has on your body, and how do you measure how hot a chilli is."

The Pepper Pantry: Chipotles

"Get acquainted with one of the most distinctive flavors the chile world has to offer: the smoky chipotle... approximately thirty recipes, from the basics (Guacamole con Chipotle) to the unexpected (Chipotle Hot Wings). Interested in smoking your own chipotles? ... you'll learn what kind of wood to use, how to build the fire, and how best to store your freshly dried stock. There's legend and lore about the colorful history of these peppers."

Peppers of the Americas: The Remarkable Capsicums that Forever Changed Flavor:

"From piquillos and shishitos to padrons and poblanos, the popularity of culinary peppers (and pepper-based condiments, such as Sriracha and the Korean condiment gochujang) continue to grow as more consumers try new varieties and discover the known health benefits of Capsicum, the genus to which all peppers belong. This stunning visual reference to peppers now seen on menus, in markets, and beyond, showcases nearly 200 varieties (with physical description, tasting notes, uses for cooks, and beautiful botanical portraits for each). Following the cook's gallery of varieties, more than 40 on-trend Latin recipes for spice blends, salsas, sauces, salads, vegetables, soups, and main dishes highlight the big flavors and taste-enhancing capabilities of peppers."

Fiery Ferments: 70 Stimulating Recipes for Hot Sauces, Spicy Chutneys, Kimchis with Kick, and other Blazing Fermented Condiments:

"The Shockeys present recipes for a tongue-tingling array of condiments sure to heat up your table. From ginger pickles to chocolate cranberry mole, you'll find new ways to make fiery ferments part of any meal!"

Other Chili Books:

There are even kid's books and novels about chilies:

The Core of the Sun:

"Set in an alternative historical present, in a "eusistocracy"–An extreme welfare state–that holds public health and social stability above all else, it follows a young woman whose growing addiction to illegal chili peppers leads her on an adventure into a world where love, sex, and free will are all controlled by the state."

Little Red Hot:

"A hot pepper pie exposes the big bad wolf in this southwestern retelling of Little Red Riding Hood."

The Oral/Visual History: The Red Hot Chili Peppers:

"The first and only official Red Hot Chili Peppers Story. An oral and visual autobiography from one of the world's greatest rock groups."

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