I used to use Franks or Franks Buffalo sauce in everything. It’s not very hot but has excellent flavor.
Now you made me go count: I have 7 different ones on the counter plus 5 in the fridge, more if you count horseradishes and spicy mustards (probably the empty bottle in recycling doesn’t count). I love the home made one, the chili crisp, and the dragon sauce, but my best answer to the question has to be Mellissa’s because I have so many of their flavors. They’re all a little different: maybe sriracha is good with one food but too sweet for another. Maybe I want to taste that Louisiana flair on my shrimp but that chili can stand up to reaper sauce
I love all kinds of hot sauce (sate/sambal is my #1. Does that count as sauce? It’s more a paste). But my widespread you can find this anywhere go-to for eggs and potatoes is good ol’ Tapatio. I’ll take Valentina’s too, since it’s so similar.
This was my go-to for a while. I still keep this one on hand, but I recently have been defaulting to Hoff Sauce more recently. If you see it for sale, I recommend you give it a try.
Was coming to praise the Ghost Pepper Wing Sauce. It's so good on and in so many things, but especially a chicken sandwich from a local joint we go to on Wednesdays. I look forward to that every week.
Just want to soapbox here about the hot sauces that are sold to: 1) be as hot as possible; 2) have no flavor aside from pepper.
No one is enjoying XXX: Blow our ur Sphincter 3000 and as far as I am concerned these things are novelty items like pranks from joke shops. If the "schoville" number is factoring into your hot sauce buying decisions then I have personal beef with you and hope you step in a deep puddle next time it's raining.
I have an interesting biological quirk where my mouth doesn't register capsacin, the chemical that makes thing spicy/hot. It's been a thing my entire life. I can and have just chomped down on habanero and ghost peppers with no immediate problems (I don't tend to notice how spicy food is until it's on the way out).
Those super hot sauces you describe don't even taste like pepper most of the time. More often than not, they just taste like vinegar. Sometimes you'll get lucky and there's a hint of liquid smoke, but most of the time it's just vinegar and capsacin.
Nah. Since my mouth doesn't register the spicy, I don't get the flavor of the sauce drowned out by the overwhelming spiciness. So I feel like I get a better sense for the flavor of the sauce than most people do. And I can assure you, if they advertise themselves as being absurdly spicy, they taste like straight vinegar. And not good vinegar, just a bland white vinegar.
the “schoville” number is factoring into your hot sauce buying decisions then I have personal beef
Not everyone is looking for the highest number. Some of us take it as another piece of useful info about the sauce. For example if I’m going to have company, I need to compare to Tabasco, because that’s what normies know. I also like different levels of heat with different foods, and the Scoville level gives me that
Secret Aardvark habanero sauce is so, so good. I'll put it on just about anything. It's by no means the hottest sauce out there, but I'll put its flavor up against any other sauce. I buy this stuff by the case at this point.
It's not hard to find so you never feel bad about slathering it over anything in copious amounts.
Tastes good, but you can totally gourmand up with it without guilt. Plus, at least in the UK we don't have the variety that I think folks in the Americas have, Frank's is, whilst common, not Tabasco, Encona, or Reggae Reggae common.
There is a South American deli near me in Edinburgh that does amazing imported tins of salsa verde but that is literally the only place I can think of to get something non-Franks locally.
Frank's is cayenne pepper based. That is generally my favorite pepper, but it is also easily found in powdered form, and overall can easily add scoville with cayenne taste to any other sauce. Chili powder and Pepperoncini are also widely available in dry form, and layer taste to other sauces/spice without necessarily going over 9000.
Carrot based Habenaro sauce: although it appears they have a few versions. (Figured if I was going to search what these were I might as well share the quick results)
It really depends on the dish and what you want out of the hot sauce.
My general, everyday preference is Cholula or Crystal. Both those have a distinctly hispanic/tex-mex flavor profile. For east and southeast Asian cuisine, I prefer Sriracha. If I really want the hot sauce to be the focus of the dish, I tend to prefer Marie Sharp's, especially the carrot or grapefruit varieties.
While I have a few in the medium, and very hot categories, what I really use a lot of is a relatively mild green sauce. I like to be able to add a lot flavor without making something crazy hot. I used to use Tabasco green, later upgraded to Cholula green, but my favorite these days is Callahan's Poblano green chili sauce. The Bronx Greenmarket is really good too.
Crystal and Sambal, depending on the dish. Tabasco if it’s gumbo or soup or whatever but Tabasco is more concentrated and I like it best as an ingredient than as a sauce.
I like High River Rogue. Not super hot (relatively speaking), somewhat sweet, fruity. I like it because it’s flavorful and an unexpected twist on what’s usually just a vinegar-plus-angry-pepper shelf.
Every pepper head should know: Scoville ratings for hot-sauce are bullshit.
Most sauces simply list the Scoville number for the pepper in the sauce, and never actually get the sauce rated. This leads to people thinking they can tolerate much higher ratings than they can. And encouraging them to try stuff that will lead to a bad experience.
Depends what I'm eating! Different heats for different meats, y'know?
Here in Chicago there a company called Coop Hot Sauce that makes an amazing array of sauces seasonally. Their "Unicorn Tears" is a good all-purpose hotsauce featuring fermented seranno. They had one two years ago made with habanero and pepitas that was amazing on anything with cheese.
For big brands, Yucateco is very good. Their green habanero is good in chicken soup or in mac'n'cheese. The black label aged habanero is fire on fried chicken or added to salad dressings. The 'Caribbean' roasted habanero is closest to the fresh roasted habanero salsas that the better restaurants on the West Side make in house.
With East and Southeast Asian dishes, sambal oeleck is tops. I have a soft spot for hot mustard with egg rolls, though.
Best I can find locally is Enconas Carolina Reaper sauce but I will say it's nowhere near hot enough to justify that name imo. Always a bottle of Sirracha handy as well.
Grace Hot Pepper Sauce. It has this tangy, buttery flavour and a nice amount of heat that accentuates food without melting your face.
I think they use a few different peppers in the mash as while it has a little of the apricot fire Scotch Bonnet taste to it, as you'd expect from a Caribbean brand with a bunch of Scotch Bonnets on the label, it's not the predominant chilli flavour here. I think the mash gets slightly fermented too due to that buttery taste the sauce has.
Before the pandemic it was 50p for an 85ml bottle, I miss that. £1.50 for the same size bottle still feels like a rip off.
Edit: just looked Grace Hot Pepper Sauce
up as I've been thinking about it all day now since making this comment, and their website says the peppers used are a blend of Habanero and Cayenne in the mash. So my tasting apricot fire is likely a placebo from the image on the label, lmao.
i love yuzu kosho, most brands are fine. i'll put it on anything remotely asian. panda express gets the yuzu kosho. instant ramen gets the yuzu kosho. homemade gyuudon gets the yuzu kosho. plain white rice gets the yuzu kosho. its so good
Blair's death sauce: quite spicy and a really nice habanero flavour
Mad dog 357: VERY spicy. Great for when you just need to pump the spice level. One drop will make your dish spicy, two drops very spicy, three drops sweating and hiccups
Dirty Dick's. Besides the obvious, being able to say "Hey, lemme put some dirty dicks on your taco," and the like, the stuff is phenomenal. It is not for everything, like, say, a Tapatio would be, but I use it most of the time.
Dirty Dick's is a sweet heat, and they kill it in both departments. Nowhere on the bottle do they advertise how many Scoville units, because it's silly. They created a sweet yet spicy sauce that is perfect for pulled pork, or beef/chicken tacos, pretty much anything in the tex-mex spectrum (the texmextrum, if I may).
I have yet to try it with Asian or Indian fare, and I won't even begin to speculate, because I am far from some culinary genius, I just follow recipes well.
So yes, allow me to shill for putting dirty dicks on your food.
鴉PieFed
Depends on the application. Sriracha is good on hard boiled eggs, but Texas Pete is better on Mac and cheese.
Dave's Gourmet Creamy Garlic Red Sauce.
Not much more needs to be said, the name near says it all. Jalapeno based, vinegar for shelf life.
(Figured if I was going to search what these were I might as well share the quick results)
I used to use Franks or Franks Buffalo sauce in everything. It’s not very hot but has excellent flavor.
Now you made me go count: I have 7 different ones on the counter plus 5 in the fridge, more if you count horseradishes and spicy mustards (probably the empty bottle in recycling doesn’t count). I love the home made one, the chili crisp, and the dragon sauce, but my best answer to the question has to be Mellissa’s because I have so many of their flavors. They’re all a little different: maybe sriracha is good with one food but too sweet for another. Maybe I want to taste that Louisiana flair on my shrimp but that chili can stand up to reaper sauce
Scandinavian Gold from PepperPalace. A lot of Pepper Palace stuff is good.
Vicious Viper has a really nice taste and has my preferred hotness level.
Those Wings brand little packets that are white on the front and clear on the back
Home made version of Marie Sharp's with more smoke.
There's a smoked habanero they put out at one point-- not sure if it was a limited run or not but it had a pretty decent smoke taste
Easier for me to just make a half gallon at a time an jar it up.
Good ol' Sriracha because of its versatility. It goes well with so many foods.
Hmm it’s the sweetness that makes it not versatile for me. I love it in pho though!
I've tried a few different brands of sriracha, and there were only like two that I liked. The others had more sweetness that I didn't like.
Tapatio, Valentina's, or Cholula.
Cholula Chipotle!
Tapatío
I love all kinds of hot sauce (sate/sambal is my #1. Does that count as sauce? It’s more a paste). But my widespread you can find this anywhere go-to for eggs and potatoes is good ol’ Tapatio. I’ll take Valentina’s too, since it’s so similar.
Delicious sauce, but I personally wouldn’t consider that hot at all.
This was my go-to for a while. I still keep this one on hand, but I recently have been defaulting to Hoff Sauce more recently. If you see it for sale, I recommend you give it a try.
I love pretty much anything by Melinda's
I recently got a bottle of Melinda's Garlic & Habanero sauce. It might be my favorite hot sauce that doesn't cost an arm and a leg.
Was coming to praise the Ghost Pepper Wing Sauce. It's so good on and in so many things, but especially a chicken sandwich from a local joint we go to on Wednesdays. I look forward to that every week.
Frank's RedHot
I'm a pepper head, but for some dishes, that cayenne vinegar is a necessary flavor component.
Do you….
put that shit on everything?
You bet your ass I do
That's my favorite on most foods. For Mexican I go with Valentina and for Asian food I go with Sriracha
I like Franks in wing sauce but prefer Cholula for pretty much anything else.
Cholula with mayo and ketchup makes a great fry sauce.
Just want to soapbox here about the hot sauces that are sold to: 1) be as hot as possible; 2) have no flavor aside from pepper.
No one is enjoying XXX: Blow our ur Sphincter 3000 and as far as I am concerned these things are novelty items like pranks from joke shops. If the "schoville" number is factoring into your hot sauce buying decisions then I have personal beef with you and hope you step in a deep puddle next time it's raining.
I have an interesting biological quirk where my mouth doesn't register capsacin, the chemical that makes thing spicy/hot. It's been a thing my entire life. I can and have just chomped down on habanero and ghost peppers with no immediate problems (I don't tend to notice how spicy food is until it's on the way out).
Those super hot sauces you describe don't even taste like pepper most of the time. More often than not, they just taste like vinegar. Sometimes you'll get lucky and there's a hint of liquid smoke, but most of the time it's just vinegar and capsacin.
You get a pass.
Might have been slightly exaggerating my disdain for comic effect!
I'm agreeing with you. Those super hot sauces which only exist to prove hot they can make them are absolute ass. They taste gross.
Ah my bad misread it as you having some genetic predisposition towards them or something lol
Nah. Since my mouth doesn't register the spicy, I don't get the flavor of the sauce drowned out by the overwhelming spiciness. So I feel like I get a better sense for the flavor of the sauce than most people do. And I can assure you, if they advertise themselves as being absurdly spicy, they taste like straight vinegar. And not good vinegar, just a bland white vinegar.
Gotcha
Not everyone is looking for the highest number. Some of us take it as another piece of useful info about the sauce. For example if I’m going to have company, I need to compare to Tabasco, because that’s what normies know. I also like different levels of heat with different foods, and the Scoville level gives me that
Secret Aardvark habanero sauce is so, so good. I'll put it on just about anything. It's by no means the hottest sauce out there, but I'll put its flavor up against any other sauce. I buy this stuff by the case at this point.
I knew I would find this comment here. It's so damn good, got some in my fridge right now.
Agreed, that and yellow bird habanero are the two sauces that I need to have a supply of at all times.
Also highly recommend the smoky aardvark if you haven't tried that one yet. It's not in as many stores as the original, but it's delicious.
Damn, thought I'd beat you to it lol
Frank's Red Hot
Cholula
And a great that's hard to get: Yellow Dragon Lantern Pepper Mash (黄灯笼) from Hainan. Amazing fruity flavour and hotter than hell.
I feel basic saying Franks but it's Franks for me 90% of the time
It's not hard to find so you never feel bad about slathering it over anything in copious amounts.
Tastes good, but you can totally gourmand up with it without guilt. Plus, at least in the UK we don't have the variety that I think folks in the Americas have, Frank's is, whilst common, not Tabasco, Encona, or Reggae Reggae common.
There is a South American deli near me in Edinburgh that does amazing imported tins of salsa verde but that is literally the only place I can think of to get something non-Franks locally.
Frank's is cayenne pepper based. That is generally my favorite pepper, but it is also easily found in powdered form, and overall can easily add scoville with cayenne taste to any other sauce. Chili powder and Pepperoncini are also widely available in dry form, and layer taste to other sauces/spice without necessarily going over 9000.
Yep, seconded. For everyday use those two are really good. I’d also suggest Crystal and Louisiana, but I prefer Cholula out of the lot.
Holy shit Amazon is so useless. From your comment, I’m not surprised it wasn’t found.
However the search returned: cayenne pepper flakes and citronella torches. Wtf
Marie Sharp's, a hot sauce company out of Belize. Sooooo good.
Carrot based Habenaro sauce: although it appears they have a few versions. (Figured if I was going to search what these were I might as well share the quick results)
Yellowbird also makes a carrot based habenero sauce that's really good!
100%!! Probably also mentioning that Melinda's essentially ripped off Marie's recipes during some sheisty imporg deal.
I'm partial to the Dave's Carolina Reaper sauce.
If I'm in a different mood the El Yucateco habanero sauce has great flavor.
Gochujang for cooking. Usually the T. UP imported stuff from Korea.
Gochujang chicken with rice and veggies in a bowl has become a default "lazy workday dish" at our place.
Sambal Oelek
"Sambal is a spicy, chili-based condiment or relish that originated in Southeast Asia and is common in Indonesian, Malaysian, and Singaporean cuisine"
Yup, there's lots of varieties too.
Not sure if home made is what you have in mind but for me its this https://youtu.be/-wgZ7s3YxWI
Mahi Bhut Jolokia sauce is my go to.
Yellowbird Habenero
My wife got me a bottle of Da Bomb as a joke for Valentine's and I've been working through that for over a year.
I was just gifted a whole season of hot ones sauces. Came with da bomb evolution and havent tried it yet
It's definitely the worst of all of them. Zero redeeming features.
I've had da bomb beyond insanity before so im curious how i react to this one.
Its an experience, not a flavour.
Valentina Extra Hot
Great choice, and cheap compared to others!
The standard valentines is close to cholula sauce for a fraction of the price.
Frank's (extra hot buffalo, too) and Sriracha are always on hand in my house, too.
Classic black Truff sauce. The black truffle elevates just about everything I put it on, and the heat has depth instead of just being heat.
Hmmm. I never considered black truffle to have heat.
Oh it doesn't, it's a hot sauce and one of the ingredients is also black truffle
Ohh, is there a specific brand?
"Truff"
There's not much to choose from in Spain, I've been buying one called Valentina lately.
Same in baltics but valentina is indeed amazing. It's cheap, tastes good and is nice and acidic.
It really depends on the dish and what you want out of the hot sauce.
My general, everyday preference is Cholula or Crystal. Both those have a distinctly hispanic/tex-mex flavor profile. For east and southeast Asian cuisine, I prefer Sriracha. If I really want the hot sauce to be the focus of the dish, I tend to prefer Marie Sharp's, especially the carrot or grapefruit varieties.
Sirracha because it's easy to get everywhere. I also make my own Vietnamese chilli oil.
While I have a few in the medium, and very hot categories, what I really use a lot of is a relatively mild green sauce. I like to be able to add a lot flavor without making something crazy hot. I used to use Tabasco green, later upgraded to Cholula green, but my favorite these days is Callahan's Poblano green chili sauce. The Bronx Greenmarket is really good too.
Two come to mind: - https://hotsaucefever.com/hotsauce/el-yucateco-black-label-chile-habanero/ - https://www.californiahotsaucesolutions.com/collections/paulman-acre/products/fermented-garlic-hot-sauce
El yucateco has types with some decent heat while still being cheap. Usually if you want any kind of spice the price rises with the spice level.
The Tabasco scorpion one is pretty good heat for the cost as well
Crystal and Sambal, depending on the dish. Tabasco if it’s gumbo or soup or whatever but Tabasco is more concentrated and I like it best as an ingredient than as a sauce.
Good point about Tabasco.
Pepper Palace has a Cinnamon Habanero sauce that tastes like a really good BBQ sauce. It's amazing
Gringo Bandito!
Hot sauce made by a member of the band The Offspring, mostly aimed at being a taco sauce flavor, but hard to find much more info about taste/peppers
(Figured if I was going to search what these were I might as well share the quick results)
Bingo!
I like High River Rogue. Not super hot (relatively speaking), somewhat sweet, fruity. I like it because it’s flavorful and an unexpected twist on what’s usually just a vinegar-plus-angry-pepper shelf.
Every pepper head should know: Scoville ratings for hot-sauce are bullshit.
Most sauces simply list the Scoville number for the pepper in the sauce, and never actually get the sauce rated. This leads to people thinking they can tolerate much higher ratings than they can. And encouraging them to try stuff that will lead to a bad experience.
Chipotle Tobasco or Chipotle Cholula
Chipotle Cholula for me
Ordinary ketchup.
To me any heat at all is always a detriment to enjoying the food. (I can stand some weak heat, but would never prefer it.)
Valentina!
I love it, its sour and not too spicy to hide tastes.
Depends what I'm eating! Different heats for different meats, y'know?
Here in Chicago there a company called Coop Hot Sauce that makes an amazing array of sauces seasonally. Their "Unicorn Tears" is a good all-purpose hotsauce featuring fermented seranno. They had one two years ago made with habanero and pepitas that was amazing on anything with cheese.
For big brands, Yucateco is very good. Their green habanero is good in chicken soup or in mac'n'cheese. The black label aged habanero is fire on fried chicken or added to salad dressings. The 'Caribbean' roasted habanero is closest to the fresh roasted habanero salsas that the better restaurants on the West Side make in house.
With East and Southeast Asian dishes, sambal oeleck is tops. I have a soft spot for hot mustard with egg rolls, though.
El Yucateco Black Label Chile Habanero
I drink the xxxtra hot version, way too much, Amazon sells them in half gallons which really should be a felony honestly.
But it goes with everything and is just hot enough that I can tune the taste.
Gochujang and Sriracha's version of chili garlic sauce
We are pepper sauce soul mates, lol. Those are both my go-to sauces.
Smokin’ Ed’s Unique Garlique. Garlic makes everything better, and this sauce is both tasty and really hot at the same time.
Best I can find locally is Enconas Carolina Reaper sauce but I will say it's nowhere near hot enough to justify that name imo. Always a bottle of Sirracha handy as well.
Grace Hot Pepper Sauce. It has this tangy, buttery flavour and a nice amount of heat that accentuates food without melting your face.
I think they use a few different peppers in the mash as while it has a little of the apricot fire Scotch Bonnet taste to it, as you'd expect from a Caribbean brand with a bunch of Scotch Bonnets on the label, it's not the predominant chilli flavour here. I think the mash gets slightly fermented too due to that buttery taste the sauce has.
Before the pandemic it was 50p for an 85ml bottle, I miss that. £1.50 for the same size bottle still feels like a rip off.
Edit: just looked Grace Hot Pepper Sauce up as I've been thinking about it all day now since making this comment, and their website says the peppers used are a blend of Habanero and Cayenne in the mash. So my tasting apricot fire is likely a placebo from the image on the label, lmao.
I was going to buy some based on your description, but it's more than twice £1.50 here in Canada, $13.99 for two bottles.
Fucking hell. For two 85ml bottles? That's insanity.
Trappey Joes
Excellent cayenne hot sauce.
i love yuzu kosho, most brands are fine. i'll put it on anything remotely asian. panda express gets the yuzu kosho. instant ramen gets the yuzu kosho. homemade gyuudon gets the yuzu kosho. plain white rice gets the yuzu kosho. its so good
Queen's Majesty has a coffee & habanero sauce that is incredibly delicious, best I've ever tasted
Melinda's Ghost Pepper sauce. Hot and delicious, available at the supermarket near me
Elijah’s Xtreme Ghost Pepper. Incredible flavor and the right amount of heat for me
I love spicy olive oils infused with chilis
"Ultra death sauce"...
Yeah, the name... I'm not sure what's wrong with people naming chili sauces. Also, it's pretty inaccurate as I am alive and well.
Anyway, for me it hits a good balance between being proper spicy and a rounded taste.
Mexico Lindo Habanero is my latest favorite.
Dirty Dick's. Besides the obvious, being able to say "Hey, lemme put some dirty dicks on your taco," and the like, the stuff is phenomenal. It is not for everything, like, say, a Tapatio would be, but I use it most of the time.
Dirty Dick's is a sweet heat, and they kill it in both departments. Nowhere on the bottle do they advertise how many Scoville units, because it's silly. They created a sweet yet spicy sauce that is perfect for pulled pork, or beef/chicken tacos, pretty much anything in the tex-mex spectrum (the texmextrum, if I may).
I have yet to try it with Asian or Indian fare, and I won't even begin to speculate, because I am far from some culinary genius, I just follow recipes well.
So yes, allow me to shill for putting dirty dicks on your food.