Simple Ingredients Vs Complex Flavors
The problem with using simple hot sauce ingredients is that you are competing with name brands that have mastered a hot sauce recipe using just a few ingredients. Trying to duplicate these sauce recipes would prove to be possible but trying to compete with them on the same level could turn out disastrous.
If You Want Your Hot Sauce Organic: Naturesta
Naturesta hot sauce is techincally sriracha-flavored, which I’m not sure I would have picked up on if I hadn’t looked at the label. That said, there was a nice sweet element here, but it doesn’t hit the other notesacidic, spicy, saltyin a way that I’d hope. It was, however, undeniably the reddest option, so if you’re a visual person, have at it, I guess.
Brooklyn Delhi Tomato Achaar
This is a chili sauce rather than a hot sauceso it has a thicker, jammier texture. But it’ll serve you just as well as any hot sauce on eggs, sandwiches, curries, and wherever you want some heat. In addition to spice it offers tangy sweetness from tamarind and savory depth from asafetida and fenugreek.
Don’t Miss: Salsa Raos
Truff Gourmet Hot Sauce
Truff has taken the hot sauce world by storm. They are all over the internet being talked about on podcasts. They are for sure a bit on the pricier side at $3.21 an ounce. Then again what can you expect when you have a hot sauce made with black truffle oil. You can get a bottle for $17.98 and it has a 4.3 star rating on 15,000+ reviews.
La Costea Mexican Hot Sauce
This hot sauce is in a league of its own. The second ingredient listed on the La Costeña label is carrots, followed by red jalapeño peppers, vinegar, onion, dried peppers, and wheat flour. Those who abide by a gluten-free lifestyle should, unfortunately, steer clear of this tasty sauce, though. Don’t worrythere are plenty of others on this list for you to enjoy instead!
Recommended Reading: Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce Where To Buy
Tips For Making Your Own Hot Sauce
If youre ready to take your devotion for the hot stuff to the next level and experiment with creating your own, there are plenty of options and resources for novices, from cookbooks to DIY kits. When I first started making hot sauce at home, I used peppers that I could get easily and were budget-friendly, explains Seabury. Every grocery store has jalapeños and habaneros. These peppers taste great and will complement a number of ingredients that you want to incorporate into a sauce. He recommends starting with your favorite flavors and then trying to find the perfect heat level for your preference.
September is the month to make hot sauce, adds Walsh, since all kinds of chile are ripe. The secret of all great chile sauces is fermentation. Start with bright red cayennes for Louisiana-style sauces or red jalapeños to make homemade sriracha.
The Hot Sauce Cookbook: Turn Up the Heat With 60+ Pepper Sauce Recipes by Robb Walsh
Walshs book provides recipes for tons of pepper sauces and salsas including riffs on classics like Franks RedHot and sriracha plus recipes for spicy dishes. Peppered with historical facts, this book is both instructional and interesting.
Fiery Ferments: 70 Stimulating Recipes for Hot Sauces, Spicy Chutneys, Kimchis With Kick, and Other Blazing Fermented Condiments by Kirsten K. Shockey and Christopher Shockey
Make Your Own Hot Sauce Kit
Hot Sauce Kit
Note: The prices above reflect the retailers’ listed price at the time of publication.
Ninja Squirrel Hot Sauce
Ninja Squirrel hot sauce is the Whole Foods version of the forever-famous Sriracha hot sauce, and it’s the 10th most popular, according to Instacart. The sauce was created by Derek Sarno, the Senior Global Chef at Whole Foods. What makes this version stand out from its fellow contenders is its garlicky taste, which is not overpowered by the heat from its top three ingredients: red jalapeño purée, red chili purée, and a habanero pepper powder.
Read Also: Texas Pete Recipes
If You Want The Best Hot Sauce: Cholula
Without a doubt, Cholula is the ultimate workhorse hot sauce. It’s well balanced, with acid, heat, salt, and a touch of vinegar shining through. It goes just as well on tacos as it does on fried potatoes, and I love it on eggs as much as red beans and rice. If you can only have one hot sauce in your kitchen, Cholula would be my choice.
Wing Time Garlic Buffalo Wing Sauce
This hot sauce starts with cayenne peppers and tomatoes. And then they add the Parmesan cheese. Yes, Parmesan cheese. Which is no doubt the reason that proponents call it the “creamy sauce that met hot sauce and made even terrible ramen taste like Heaven on Earth.” Also, this is obviously the best hot sauce for wingsimagine your standard Buffalo wings, but creamier and with more umami flavor.
Also Check: Roas Sauce
The Verdict: Hot Sauces
With these hot sauces coming from all corners of the world, its very hard to choose a favourite. Weve awarded our best buy to the crowd-pleasing Cholula original hot sauce, which offers a full flavour, but with a level of heat that almost anybody could handle. Although, with such a strong line-up, wed recommend experimenting with as many as possible.
Tidy up your kitchen with the best food storage containers that look after your leftovers
IndyBest product reviews are unbiased, independent advice you can trust. On some occasions, we earn revenue if you click the links and buy the products, but we never allow this to bias our coverage. The reviews are compiled through a mix of expert opinion and real-world testing.
The Generals Hot Sauce Heat Seeker
I mean, if something is served to you in a frag grenade-shaped bottle, what are you going to expect? The Generals Hot Sauce Heat Seeker is meant to razzle, dazzle, and put hair on your knuckles. You get three epic sauces in this pack, and each contain at least 86% real peppers, despite most sauces only having around a fifth of the bottle. Thats pretty good, and keeps things natural while keeping products sourced from right here in the United States.
We were going to say something about the flavor being explosive, but thats a pretty bad pun, yknow? That would be cheap of us but the flavor will leave you a bit shell-shocked. Theres a very small concentration of vinegar in here, so you wont get that lip-puckering, but youll get all the heat. Dead Red, Danger Close, or Shock & Awepick your spicy poison, and let the rest be history. Our guide to the best pizza stones features some excellent products for your kitchen, so check them out.
Don’t Miss: Rao Sauces
The 23 Best Hot Sauces You Can Buy On Amazon
All products featured on Epicurious are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.
When you’re in pursuit of the very best hot sauce, the familiar bottle at the corner store just won’t cut it anymore. Maybe you’ve built up a toleranceor maybe you’ve realized that its tepid flavor doesn’t give your scrambled eggs the oomph you were looking for.
At a certain point it become necessary to branch out. Luckily, the internet has made it more than easy to explore the best hot sauces that the world has to offerand have them delivered conveniently to your front door. Below we offer a collection of some of the best-tasting hot saucesboth favorites of the Epi staff and fan faves of the Amazon community.
The #1 Best Hot Sauce Ismelinda’s Original Habanero Hot Sauce
Sodium: 80 mgIngredients: habanero pepper mash , carrots, onion, lime juice, vinegar, salt, garlic, citric acid, xanthan gum
Low sodium? No artificial ingredients? Added superfoods? No wonder Melinda’s is our No. 1 choice for supermarket hot sauce. Melinda’s is made with fresh carrots, a vegetable that improves vision, boosts immunity, improves skin health, reduces cholesterol, and more. Plus, those carrots are paired with garlic and lime . If you can’t tell already, we are all hot and bothered by this hot sauce!
Recommended Reading: Texas Pete Original Hot Sauce
Best Unique Hot Sauce
Looking for something a little different? From strawberries to cold brew to horseradish, theres pretty much a hot sauce for every flavor combo imaginable.
Wake Up Call Hoffs Sweet & Spicy Hot Sauce With Cold Brew Coffee
Cant decide whether you love your coffee or your hot sauce more? You dont have to choose between the two with the umami-rich Wake Up Call, made with red jalapeño and habanero peppers along with cold brew and curry powder.
Fat Cat Strawberry Serrano Hot Sauce
When you think hot sauce, you may not immediately think strawberries, but this strawberry serrano blend is the perfect addition to ice cream and savory dishes alike. Adding any fruit-based hot sauce to any dessert is unexpected and also amazing, Seabury says. Its such a mind warp. Your body/mind doesnt expect the heat eating your favorite after-dinner treat. But once you try it you can never go back. It also makes for a fabulous dipping sauce for things like spring rolls.
Mikes Hot Honey
Theres a reason why this honey infused with chiles has gained somewhat of a cult following over the years: Its the perfect blend of sweetness and heat, and can be used to jazz up everything from pizza to salads to ice cream to cocktails. If you need further convincing, see for reference its nearly 10,000 positive customer reviews.
Torchbearer Sauces Smokey Horseradish Sauce
Huy Fong Sriracha In Bottle
Yeah, you can get standard Sriracha bottles on Amazon, but these packets are perfect for stashing in your bag, your back pocket, or your desk drawer to fuel that Sriracha craving, whenever, wherever. And the bottle shape of the packets isn’t just for the cute factorthey also serve as easier-to-rip-off tops than your standard fiddle-with-each-corner-til-the-ketchup-explodes-all-over-your-shirt condiment packet. Stop stealing handfuls of mediocre hot sauce packets from your deli. Spring for the good stuff because you’re worth it.
Don’t Miss: Rao’s Marinara Costco
You Might Also Like: Here’s How Nct Dream Beat Bts As Top K
During the entire May 2021, the month of its release, NCT Dream’s “Hot Sauce” remarkably sold over 1.99 million copies, becoming the group’s first work to record one million sales in the first month.
Notably, “Hot Sauce” is NCT Dream’s first double-million seller album, attaining the feat in only 16 days.
The Best And Worst Grocery Store Hot Sauces
High school superlatives for mass-market hot sauce
They say variety is the spice of life, and nowhere is that more true than in the hot sauce aisle of the grocery store. Multi-colored bottles of every shape and size hold a dazzling number of orange- and red-hued liquids, just waiting to be dotted on, well, literally any and every food.
With so many options, what’s a spice-lover to do? Who’s hot and who’s not in the mass-market hot sauce game? I sampled ten hot sauces on olive-oil-fried eggsa classic in my breakfast routineto figured out what’s good, what’s bad, and what should always, without fail be in your fridge.
Don’t Miss: Raos Costco Price
Nct 127s Sticker Is The Second Best
Taking second place on Gaons year-end album chart for 2021 is NCT 127s Sticker with 2,427,559 copies sold. Impressively, the sub-unit was in eighth place on the 2020 list, which means they saw greater popularity in the previous year.
Whats more impressive is that this is the first time that NCT 127 recorded two million sales on the Gaon Chart in a year. Previously, their second full album NCT #127 NEO ZONE only sold over one million copies.
How To Make A Hot Sauce Popular
What is making certain hot sauces stand out today is using unique ingredients and complex layers of flavoring. There are two ways to make a hot sauce popular that concern the heat level. Either make it to a level of extreme heat and market it toward the thrill seekers or reduce the heat level and market it toward a larger audience.
Although the millennial generation has proven to love hot sauce, who is the next generation to indulge? There isnt any census data on Generation Z yet and there certainly isnt much evidence that they consume hot sauce. However, I can tell you me children are becoming increasingly interested in trying my new hot sauce creations.
Recommended Reading: Rao’s Homemade Marinara Sauce Stores
If When You Say Hot You Mean Hot: Texas Pete
Woo-ee. If you’re a spice-seeker, Texas Pete’s option will do right by you. The heat hits your tongue hard andunlike many saucesit hits you right away. The spice mingles with a hearty helping of white vinegar, which means your tongue tingles and burns at the same time. This is one for the extremists.
El Yucateco Kutbilik Exxxtra Hot Habanero
Spice rating: Really, really, ridiculously hot
The Yucateco Salsas Y Condimentos company was founded more than 50 years ago by Priamo J. Gamboa in the heart of the Yucatan. Gamboa named the company for after the Spanish word foras you may have guesseda person from the Yucatan.
There are three varieties of El Yucateco hot sauces, including the red sauce habanero pepper, the green sauce habanero pepper, and the KUTBILIK EXXXTRA HOT Habanero. Made from the habanero pepper rather than the other primarily cayenne-pepper hot sauces on this list, all three of the El Yucateco hot sauces are spicier than average. The KUTBILIK EXXXTRA HOT Habanero, which gets its name from the Mayan word for “crushed chili,” predictably, is the spiciest.
Seasoned smokers who have otherwise lost all sense of taste may appreciate the blazing heat of the KUTBILIK. But even as spice aficionados ourselves, we found that the heat of the KUTBILIK overwhelmed the flavor. It’s the kind of lingering, mounting heat that makes you abandon your fish tacos and go running to the freezer for a Creamsicle, STAT.
You May Like: Rao Pasta Sauce Costco
Top Selling Hot Sauces Online Retailers
Top-selling brands of hot sauce sold through online retailers are not much different from sauces sold in stores. Amazon encompasses about ¼ of all online sales and doing a search of popular hot sauce sales will bring similar results as stores. The selection of hot sauces by popularity will bring similar results as online retailers. However, popular hot sauce brands may be marketed differently through smaller online retailers.
Bts”butter’ Nct 127’s ‘sticker’ Nct Dream’s ‘hot Sauce’ And More Are The Top 30 Best
On Jan. 7, Gaon Chart released its year-end album chart for 2021, unveiling the best-selling K-pop albums in the past year. Among BTS’ “Butter,” NCT 127’s “Sticker,” and NCT Dream’s “Hot Sauce,” which work do you think landed on No. 1?
Continue reading to see the Top 30 best-selling albums of 2021 on Gaon!
Don’t Miss: What Is Rao Sauce
If Good Breakfast Potatoes Are Your Top Priority: Crystal
Crystal is one of the more vinegar-heavy hot sauce options, which makes it perfect for pairing with starchy breakfasts, like diner potatoes. The vinegary acid brightens up any food vehicles that can be a bit one-note. It has a good amount of heat, and it lingers. This is the hot sauce to jazz up so-so food that really needs it.
Melinda’s Original Habanero Pepper Sauce
Home cook and breadmaker Laura Wolfgang freely admitted to buying this hot sauce at the airport on a return trip from Mexicoeven though it’s pretty widely available in the States. Laura loves the mild heat and “lovely flavor” and doesn’t care if you judge her for not coming home with something more esoteric.
Read Also: Arby’s Sauce Walmart
Why Trust The Spruce Eats
Donna Currie is a writer and product tester for The Spruce Eats. She specializes in product reviews and recipes, has written her own cookbook, and knows what to reach for when she wants to add a spicy kick to everything from eggs to tacos to marinades.
Lindsay Boyers, who updated this piece, is a functional nutritionist specializing in gut health and mood disorders. She’s written more than a dozen books and cookbooks and created over 1,000 original recipes, using the highest-quality and tastiest ingredients she can find.
Grocery Store Hot Sauces Ranked Worst To Best
The invention of hot sauce is credited to the ancient Aztecs, who cultivated chili peppers to add some flavor and nutritional value to their limited food choices. By the time the conquistadors arrived, the Aztecs were already mixing peppers, herbs, and water into sauces and serving them on ancient versions of the corn tortilla.
Fast forward several hundred years, and hot sauce has spread from its birthplace in Central America to North America, Europe, Asia, and outer space. Walk into your average grocery store, and you’ll be confronted with a dazzling array of hot sauce bottles filled with liquids in red, green, yellow, and orange. Different brands come with different types of peppers, ingredients, spice levels, and suggested food pairingsand not all are created equal.
To help you find a spicy sauce worthy of drenching over your eggs, bloody marys, pizza, tacos, hot pockets, Chinese takeout, girlfriend’s cooking, and more, we’ve ranked grocery store hot sauces from worst to best:
Read Also: Pete Sauce
The Best Hot Sauces For 2021 Are:
- Best overall Cholula original hot sauce, 150ml: £2.59, Souschef.co.uk
- Best for wings Sauce Shop hot sauce challenge set: £19.99, Sauceshop.co
- Best for heat and flavour Kold Sauce original, 150ml: £7, Eatyourgreensleeds.co.uk
- Best gift set Eaten Alive fermented hot sauce discovery box: £29.99, Eatenalive.co.uk
- Best for a long shelf life Chilli No.5 kitchen collection: £20, Chilli-no5.com
- Best for noodles Flying Goose sriracha, 200ml: £2.50, Souschef.com
- Best for eggs Truffle Hunter truffle hot sauce, 250ml: £11.95, Trufflehunter.co.uk
- Best for Indian food Pico naga ghost pepper sauce: £2.65, Aberdeenshirelarder.co.uk
- Best for a Bloody Mary Fortnums hot chilli sauce, 100ml: £5.95, Fortnumandmason.com
- Best marinade Orriss and Son even flow, 200ml: £7.25, Orrissandson.com
- Best for chicken Dr Trouble bundle deal: £19.99, Drtroublesauce.co.uk
- Best medium hot sauce En Roots raja bonnet sauce the original, 250ml: £5, Enrootldn.co.uk
- Best Thai hot sauce Woolf’s Kitchen the woolf pack: £13.45, Thewoolfskitchen.com
- Best for buffalo wings Franks Redhot original cayenne pepper sauce, 148ml: £1.50, Ocado.com
- Best for pizza Dr. Wills sriracha, 250g: £3.50, Dr-wills.com
