I use pepper sauce three meals a day. I have 6 different brands in refrigerator three of which are Tabasco brand. I honestly can’t say I have a favorite. I can say the hotter the better though. What’s making your forehead sweat tonight?
Sriracha most of the time and Inner Beauty Real Hot sauce when I really feel like setting my ass on fire!
I grew up in Louisiana. We had stupid hot sauce drinking contests in day care of all places when I was a kid. Yeh, don’t ask. Anyway I have become a fan of Louisiana Hot Sauce and Tabasco’s jalapeno hot sauce. If it ain’t a desert I have some kind of hot sauce on it.
-Jax
I have some of that stuff. It’s really good. I’ve used it on wings.
I am by no means a connoisseur. I do have a pretty large collection of hot sauces. I am partial to the various Melinda’s brand sauces for every day use. Many grocery stores will have one or two varieties, but there are many more varieties available on line and at specialty stores in the Melinda’s line.
One I particularly like is their Amarillo Hot Mustard Pepper Sauce. Mix equal parts hot mustard sauce and honey to make an awesome dip that is great with egg rolls.
I also have several of the Melinda’s Habanero sauces and a Ghost Pepper sauce.
Nothing with Habanero peppers in it. I can’t stand those. Not that they are too hot but that pepper tends to remove the taste of everything else, and tastes like crap.
Ive tried better sauces but I keep Franks hot sauce around for eggs in the morning. I put black pepper on about everything I eat, and use lots of bell peppers in my cooking. Not that hot stuff really bothers me but Ive found most Habanero based sauces all you taste is the sauce.
Not a sauce, but I cook with alot of Chile de árbol/ Arbol peppers. They have a subtlety and add a little smoky flavor without covering anything up in the flavor of a dish. They do bring a decent ammount of heat at between 15 and 30,000 SHU.
There is a fella locally who makes a salsa that is without a doubt the hottest thing I have tasted that still had flavor in a good way, that is tasted good but was bloody HOT. I need to get in touch with him about a few jars, thatnks for the topic to remind me.
Anything hotter than habanero tastes like butthole, so I don’t really care anymore at that point. Good, fresh roasted green is still the most enjoyable, I’ll eat pounds of it until I start wondering if I need an EPI pen, it’s that good.
You must have tried crappy Habanero sauces. Habaneros are one of the hot peppers that actually have a flavor of their own, unlike jalapenos. A good habanero sauce is not only hot, but a mix of various things that blend well with the habanero. And that enhances your food.
Many of the Melindas ones aren’t actually even that hot as they add in a bunch of other complementary ingredients. I have had some crappy habanero sauces myself but not all habanero sauces suck.
Because I don’t always want to burn my mouth, I often just use a little squirt to anhance the flavor of whatever I am eating. A little goes a long way.
Anyone tried the Mad Dog 357 special edition? I had some colleagues have me take some of that stuff - tasted like crap and I was in the bathroom the rest of the afternoon. Mind you, I eat hot sauce on almost everything. This stuff was 750,000 scoville units. I couldn’t talk for almost 20 minutes after taking that stuff.
As far as normal hot sauces, I’m usually eating Sriracha, Tapatio or Texas Pete cause it’s easy to get.
My preference for mexican, however, is stuff you can buy from a restuarant in Mesa, AZ called Matta’s. They’ve been in Arizona since the 30s or 40s and have the best hot sauce. They used to have a place down on Main street, but closed down a few years ago except for a takeout place in east Mesa. They recently opened a new place at the Rivermark shopping area by Bass Pro - still great food. The hot sauce is not too hot(but still hot enough for me), not too mild and has tons of flavor.
I couldn’t agree more. Love habaneros! All of my favorite hot sauces use them and I cook with them all the time. Jalapenos add very little heat and taste like something that was scraped from the bottom of a dumpster, and they overpower the flavor of everything else so all you taste is wretched jalapeno.
My favorite hot sauce is El Yucateco Kutbil-Ik, the “original Mayan recipe.” Hot and delicious!
http://www.elyucateco.com/english/products/sauces/kubil-ik.html
Derek
That is actually a very good one and very inexpensive one and is available at local grocery stores here. Good call.
Because it is all I ever used growing up in Northern Mexico…err Los Angeles!
If you are looking for really, really hot sauce then buy a bottle of Dave’s ultimate insanity. Insane is a fairly accurate description for how friggin hot that stuff is. I don’t know if they still do it but they used to make you sign a waiver before selling it to you.
I eat fresh Serrano peppers. Screw hot sauce.
My wife grows her own peppers and makes hot sauces with jalapenos, serranos, chiles, habaneros and some hybrids. I like them all. Her fresh jalapenos have the most flavor for me. She stuffs them with a cream cheese mixture then grills them. My favorite hot food snack.
To answer your question, I really don’t like any of the sauces you listed. My least favorite is Tabasco or similar sauce. They have way too much vinegar for my taste.
Of the commercial sauce I agree with others who chose Sriracha. It has A LOT of garlic though if that’s not your thing. I don’t care for it much on mexican food but anything else is fair game. It doesn’t get any better for eggs in the morning.
I have tried Dave’s never again, couldn’t taste for awhile. When we had cookouts and grilled Carne etc… some of our friends would poach meat off the grill so we would spike a few scraps with Dave’s. That poaching shit stopped fairly quickly after they got a big suprise from “Dave”.
LOL. If used correctly it can be really nice. Half a drop in a large bowl of chilli gives you a really nice burn without destroying the food. Used like tabasco… well it seems like you know what that outcome is.
The great thing about having SO many hot sauces to choose from is that some add pure heat, some add flavor with a little heat, and some add flavor with a lot of heat. And then there’s such a wide range of flavors, from sweet to vinegary to smoky to garlicky to whatever else and with some so complex they’re hard to describe, that there really is something for everyone who likes hot and spicy food, as well as “the right sauce” for any dish. Half the fun is trying out new ones, and matching them to different foods. I’ve certainly come across hot sauces I didn’t care for, but rarely have I found one so awful it was inedible.
This thread is making me hungry! 
Derek
Well since I’m out of Hot sauce. I did pick up a small red habanero pepper. I used a small amount with what I cooked last night. I cut off a small piece too taste test how hot it is.