Hot Sauces

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HumbleHomeCook

HumbleHomeCook

Embrace your knifesculinity!
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Now, I know it might border on cliché, but what are some of your favorite hot sauces?

My love of hot sauces started 30 odd years ago with tiny little bottles of Tabasco in MRE's. I still love traditional Tabasco, along with their chipotle and jalepeno.

There's so many but my personal all 'round favorite is Fletcher's Hot Sauce. Mild heat and great flavor.

https://fletcherssaucecompany.com/
 
Sriracha
Red Rooster
Valentino's
Porfy's/Porky's (from what I was told, one is made in Jalisco, Mexico and the other in California, but it's supposed to be the same recipe 🤷‍♂️ I don't remember which is which. It's a bit uncommon)
 
I never liked hot sauce.. I don't know why... I don't mind spicy food, but more stick to bbq sauce or vinegar based bbq sauce, but not truly hot sauce....
 
I use so many I don't know where to start. I probably have a dozen or so in my refrig at any 1 time.

I have never heard of Fletcher's hot sauce. I don't remember ever seeing it in the store. I doubt there is much market in Texas for them. The competition is tough.
 
I like Louisiana hot sauce on fried chicken as I think it works better than Tabasco. I only use Tabasco on my morning fried eggs or pink pepper corns ground up. I don't vary a lot early in the morning. I do buy a large bottle of Tabasco as I really like it and use it a lot.

I might use both Louisiana hot sauce and Tabasco in red beans and rice. It just depends on how I feel.

I use habanero hot sauce in breakfast tacos during the growing season.

My hot sauce varies during the seasons and how I feel.

I don't really like cilantro in my hot sauce for breakfast. I do like cilantro.

I eat hot sauce almost every day.

There is no way for me to name it all.

I can tell you I don't eat jar hot sauce like Pace.

I guess I have no favorite as I like a lot of them.

To me there are 2 kinds, green and red. And then there are thousands of sauces in each category. I went to a hot sauce festival with over a hundred different stands all with multiple hot sauces.
 
Lars said:
I have become completely addicted to this Habanero Hot Sauce.
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Your hot sauce should be nice and hot. Remind me in the growing season around late May and I will try making it with my habanero peppers. I plant in March. The recipe looks good. I bought one of his books because of you but I have not had time to look at it.

If anything is weird, I have been drinking all night and it is late.

Habanero peppers are probably my favorite flavor for peppers. They are too hot for a lot of dishes. New Mexico green chilis may be my second favorite for flavor. I love New Mexico roasted green chilis mixed with olive oil and Mexicana Oregano. Then spread goat cheese on a water cracker topped with green chili mixture.
 
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coxhaus said:
I had a bottle of this for a while until we finished it. IT is hot. Not so much flavor as hot.
Amazon.com : Dave's Gourmet Insanity Hot Sauce, The Original Hottest Sauce in the World, 5 oz Bottle : Dave S Gourmet : Grocery & Gourmet Food
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Personally, I'm not a fan of the super-hot ones. The problem is that they are so hot that there really remains no chance to taste any of the flavour, other than heat.

Years ago, I had a bird's eye chilli bush in the garden that went absolutely bonkers. I harvested about 150 ripe chillies and decided to make sambal with them. The sambal ended up so hot that a pea-sized amount made a whole pot of stew insanely hot, to the point where people had a hard time eating it.

So, I don't really see the point. I do like hot food. A lot. But I still want to be able to taste it.
 
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Michi said:
Personally, I'm not a fan of the super-hot ones. The problem is that they are so hot that there really remains no chance to taste any of the flavour, other than heat.

Years ago, I had a bird's eye chilli bush in the garden that went absolutely bonkers. I harvested about 150 ripe chillies and decided to make sambal with them. The sambal ended up so hot that a pea-sized amount made a whole pot of stew insanely hot, to the point where people had a hard time eating it.

So, I don't really see the point. I do like hot food. A lot. But I still want to be able to taste it.
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I respectfully disagree with you there Michi - some of the very hottest peppers have phenomenally distinct flavours. The ridiculously hot moruga is surprisingly clean and delicate in flavour, the 7-pot probably the most overtly fruity of the lot - like a Habanero, but much more intense and satisfying. You‘ll tend to get these flavours first admittedly, gloriously taking therm in as the heat levels begin to build and rise and rise (and rise). Bite one raw whole and I doubt you’ll miss the serious flavour (and the pain after)

That‘s probably most true of the capsicum chinense types of chillies (habaneros, bonnets, superhots) rather than the quicker growing annuums like the Birds Eye. General rule of thumb is that the heat tends to be cleaner and shorter lived with annuums, but flavour and heat levels are much more muted,

Best pepper sauces are the ones made at home, I ain’t able with all this ‘5 pepper‘ and a quart of vinegar economy nonsense really, as much as like a dash of Louisiana style sauce once in a while. Prefer the old caribbean style recipes in the main - a half kilo of pepper, some vinegar, salt and a little water to taste (add onion, fruit, seasoning as required). Let the peppers speak for themselves.
 
I take your point. Bird's eye are rather one-dimensional, and I like habanero a lot more because, as you say, they have lots of flavour besides the heat.

I'm new to all the chilli thing. There is not much of a chilli culture in Australia, and I only started to dip my toes into the water last year by growing some of my own. I recently discovered the huge variety of Mexican dried chillies, and I admit that I'm having lots of fun with those. A whole new world to discover :)

As to super-hots, I admit that I might change my mind as time goes by. But I still do think that when I have an entire dinner table of guests sitting there turning red, sputtering, and with tears running down their cheeks, there is something I didn't do quite right ;)
 
Michi said:
I take your point. Bird's eye are rather one-dimensional, and I like habanero a lot more because, as you say, they have lots of flavour besides the heat.

I'm new to all the chilli thing. There is not much of a chilli culture in Australia, and I only started to dip my toes into the water last year by growing some of my own. I recently discovered the huge variety of Mexican dried chillies, and I admit that I'm having lots of fun with those. A whole new world to discover :)

As to super-hots, I admit that I might change my mind as time goes by. But I still do think that when I have an entire dinner table of guests sitting there turning red, sputtering, and with tears running down their cheeks, there is something I didn't do quite right ;)
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Don’t get me wrong, many of the (hundreds of) types I’ve chillis are actually a little too hot for me to comfortably eat easily too - I’ve managed to reduce a whole pub beer garden to tears with minute slices of one trini scorpion ffs - but I don’t want to discount the seriously distinct flavour levels on offer either. Folks seem to lap up the macho sauces too, so my cunning plans to offer milder sauce blends (heatless trinidad perfume + 7 pots) of carefully balanced peppers generally stir less interest

The holy grail chilli for me, for pepper sauce at least, is the Guyanese wiri wiri pepper (appropriately enough)!. It’s a small berry pepper from the same family as bonnets and habaneros, but at about a quarter of the heat - huge amounts of fruit flavour, but also a little aniseed note and real depth. Pretty much in the same 100k scoville range as the very hottest Birds Eyes fwiw,

Sadly it’s never one I can grow with huge success in the UK - tiny peppers on huge sprawling bushes that take over my small greenhouse . Pig to harvest and process - definitely not the most productive and cost efficient ones to grow. But if i lived in a warm country like Australia I’d be making every effort to sneak seeds past your ever eager customs bods….
 
Michi said:
Wiri Wiri pepper seeds are readily available here. I just bought a packet :)
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Excellent work. I wish you luck. Probably worth saying that there are multiple Wiriwiri typed name peppers (pili pili, piri etc), but fair to say the Guyanese one is much prized. We’d travel out with suitcases full of Cadbury’s chocolate and M&S vests back in the day, returning with bags of peppers and big bottles of casareep on the return. It’s a bit of a national./expat obsession
 
Lars said:
I have become completely addicted to this Habanero Hot Sauce.
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Seeing that I had some chillies ready to harvest in the garden, I decided to make this.
IMG_4644.jpeg


This turned out really nice. Definitely quite hot, at the upper end of the spectrum. But lots of flavour and fruitiness.
IMG_4647.jpg


I deviated from Rick's recipe in two ways:
  1. I added half the amount of water initially because I was dubious about things maybe getting too runny. That turned out to be the right call.
  2. I added another half teaspoon of salt and, because the flavour was quite one-dimensional and dominated by the vinegar, I added a tablespoon of maple syrup. That turned it into something really satisfying.
Thanks for the recipe, I look forward to having that with bacon and eggs in the morning :)
 
coxhaus said:
I had a bottle of this for a while until we finished it. IT is hot. Not so much flavor as hot.
Amazon.com : Dave's Gourmet Insanity Hot Sauce, The Original Hottest Sauce in the World, 5 oz Bottle : Dave S Gourmet : Grocery & Gourmet Food
Click to expand...
Finishing up the third or fourth bottle of this. Agreed, it is mostly heat. Probably be some time before I get another. Like you i have a bunch opened and need to clean some of those up. Have a 3 pack variety of Gingos my daughter got me to try out.
Lately, I have been on a Melindas creamy habanero wing sauce kick. Pretty different flavor from any I have previously tasted, and nothing close to Daves, but a step up in the heat department of the above listed ones, (excluding Bayless and Fletches which I never had)
 
Formerly Sriracha (a severe case of addiction)...but then came my wife's homemade chili paste (Vietnamese style) as a substitute.

And I've been really a happy addict ever since - my addictive substance is made at home, using 100% natural, legal and wholesome ingredients.
 
coxhaus said:
I use so many I don't know where to start. I probably have a dozen or so in my refrig at any 1 time.

I have never heard of Fletcher's hot sauce. I don't remember ever seeing it in the store. I doubt there is much market in Texas for them. The competition is tough.
Click to expand...

Old Man Fletcher was a local guy. The company has been bought out but it's still only a small regional operation.
 
I make my own with cayennes and habaneros but for me this often ends up a bit too spicy (especially if you, uh, dont deseed as thoroughly as you thought). I really like the flavor of habanero peppers though.

personally though I like buffalo sauces better than just plain hotsauce so Ill grab a bottle of Franks original, a stick of quality butter and some of my own hot sauce and that makes a pretty good sauce IMO. Frank's is generic enough to not be offensive as a filler. usually ratio is like:

2 parts franks
1 part my own which has some garlic and paprika in it already
2 parts butter
 
Michi said:
Personally, I'm not a fan of the super-hot ones. The problem is that they are so hot that there really remains no chance to taste any of the flavour, other than heat.

Years ago, I had a bird's eye chilli bush in the garden that went absolutely bonkers. I harvested about 150 ripe chillies and decided to make sambal with them. The sambal ended up so hot that a pea-sized amount made a whole pot of stew insanely hot, to the point where people had a hard time eating it.

So, I don't really see the point. I do like hot food. A lot. But I still want to be able to taste it.
Click to expand...
I agree. It was a gift and I wasn't going to not eat it. Its main use was to spice up dishes.

My latest buy maybe 2 weeks ago at Walmart was this hot sauce. I had never seen it before so I bought a bottle. It is made in Mexico with red peppers. It is on the scale of Valentina just different tasting.

IMG_0702.jpg
 
Michi said:
I take your point. Bird's eye are rather one-dimensional, and I like habanero a lot more because, as you say, they have lots of flavour besides the heat.

I'm new to all the chilli thing. There is not much of a chilli culture in Australia, and I only started to dip my toes into the water last year by growing some of my own. I recently discovered the huge variety of Mexican dried chillies, and I admit that I'm having lots of fun with those. A whole new world to discover :)

As to super-hots, I admit that I might change my mind as time goes by. But I still do think that when I have an entire dinner table of guests sitting there turning red, sputtering, and with tears running down their cheeks, there is something I didn't do quite right ;)
Click to expand...

One's ability to taste any notes other than heat is really dependent on how much tolerance to the capsaicin has been developed. The more spicy peppers you eat, the more you tolerate addtional heat while still appreciating the other flavors. You also begin to notice the effect of different types of capsaicin; some have an immediate sting, like Thai peppers, while others slowly build to their full heat minutes after you consume them (e.g., ghost peppers).

I rarely buy hot sauces anymore. I raise my own peppers (I'll plant 10 varieties this coming season) and I make and bottle my own sauces. My favorite sauce is simple: Carolina reapers, onions and garlic, all roasted, then blended with some vinegar and salt. I make some other varieties with various fruit bases (mostly, pineapple, mango or pomegranate) and I've just started making some fermented varieties. I'm pretty much a novice with the fermented varieties, although I've had a couple batches that turned out OK.
 
I would say if you are eating hot sauce and you cannot taste your food then you are eating too hot of peppers. Either use less sauce or change to a milder pepper. I stop eating when I can't taste my food. The whole reason for hot sauce is to accent your food not wipe out the flavor.

I grew up eating peppers. There were no super-hot peppers back then.
 
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An unusual one that I reach for a lot is a Scotch Bonnet/Mustard hot sauce from Double Take. They're local to me but available through Heatonist, which has a lot of great sauces (also available on Amazon if you want to pay through the nose).
 
WPerry said:
An unusual one that I reach for a lot is a Scotch Bonnet/Mustard hot sauce from Double Take. They're local to me but available through Heatonist, which has a lot of great sauces (also available on Amazon if you want to pay through the nose).
Click to expand...

I love spicy mustards. A different kind of bite but so good!
 
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