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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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
Agreed, that and yellow bird habanero are the two sauces that I need to have a supply of at all times.
Yellowbird Habenero
Depends on the application. Sriracha is good on hard boiled eggs, but Texas Pete is better on Mac and cheese.
Chipotle Tobasco or Chipotle Cholula
Chipotle Cholula for me
I love pretty much anything by Melinda’s
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.
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.
Vicious Viper has a really nice taste and has my preferred hotness level.
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.
I love spicy olive oils infused with chilis
