Time to Fight about Hot Sauces!

The 30 best, for your review and discussion:

high(?)lights: Does not include any form of Tabasco, or Rooster Sriracha (does have another Sriarcha style sauce)

I like his inclusion of Valenatia black label, but as he notes in that style, Cholula or Tapiato are also both fine.

I also share his love of Franks. It’s a good sauce. No need to hate on it just because it’s sold at Costco.

48 views and no Hot Takes (pun very much intentionally intended)? What a mild Honey Barbecue crowd.

I love Aardvark. An old favorite, not on the list, is J.T. Pappy’s Gator sauces. Apparently they went out of production for a while, now back on the market and available at Amazon. Time to order some.

That Lottie’s mustard-based sauce is seriously phenomenal stuff.

Which of those go well with asian food?

for asian food i’ve been loving Nam Prik chili sauce https://www.amazon.com/Nam-Prik-Chili-Hot-Sauce/dp/B01GQS6R6A

There’s a little cult following in LA for it. It’s zesty, high acid, sour and funky. I love it, the flavor is so different, like a mix of those thai spicy vinegars and green chili. I use it as a dipping sauce often as well as mix into rice/noodles

I get that the article is a plug for a specific shop. However, I am a little disconcerted by the absence of some fundamental hot sauce selections.

I like diversity in my hot sauce choices, but the initial qualifier is that the product must be HOT. I live in Louisiana, so we have to stock up on the various shades of Louisiana Hot Sauce: Tabasco for gumbo, Crystal for jambalaya, etc.

I do like the Char Man and I have enjoyed various “Peri Peri” sauces (the problem with the name is that Peri Peri can be the Bishop’s Hat pepper, or it can just mean “hot hot”). The “Pain is Good” Jamaican Sauce is yummy.

Oh! The Pickapeppa Sauce is mandatory for a lot of cooking, but I would never consider it hot sauce.

Inner Beauty is my all time favorite. I had no idea that it was being produced again A couple of bottles are in route. There’s always a bottle of Frank’s and a bottle of Nando’s Garlic in our fridge.

Over the holiday break we were in Vermont skiing. We stopped at the alchemist to pick up some Heady Topper and I grabbed a bottle of hot sauce made by the Alchemist which combined Crusher (double IPA) and habaneros…so good, but a little goes a long way

Kenji specifically limited himself to sauces but in true Berserker fashion I’ll drift to share that my current obsession is Sichuan Pepper Pickles. The pickling liquid provides moderate heat (using ‘moderate’ as Kenji does - I like hot sauces) and the peppers have the same ma-la effect as szechuan peppercorns.

I found them once at HMart and once mail order from an Asian grocer in Boston. The brand I found was FanSao Guang. http://ugou.de/index.php/lebensmittel/eingelegtes/eingelegte-gemuese/szechuanpfeffer-eingelegtes-280g.html?___store=en&___from_store=cn

I’ve become a fan of Susie’s Original.

Drew is correct in that leaving off the hot sauces needed for certain regional dishes makes the list entertaining but not useful. For example, Crystal is necessary for Jambalaya and Red Beans and Rice. Tabasco is necessary for Gumbo, Green Tabasco is useful for Grilled Oysters. I also prefer Crystal for Grits. Then there are the homemade hot sauces for collards etc. You can buy it, but most people around here just make up a batch and bottle it every summer.

Valenatia black label - I’ve never seen that one, but I generally like the Yellow. So I went and restocked both last night. The Black label is really good!

Cholula is my go-to for breakfast, I find it hard to beat on eggs.

I like the jalapeno based green ones on burritos and tacos.

I rarely ever like Habanero based hot sauces. I can handle the heat but rarely like the flavor of them.

The Lucky Dog items both sound good.

I also grabbed an Inner Beauty. It’s been a long time!

And to make this even more special, they offer the option to pay in Bitcoin. This was my first ever over-the-internet retail bitcoin purchase. I knew if I held those things long enough they would have some utility. Three clicks and it was done.

I’m always happy to see sriracha get snubbed (though I would have preferred a complete snub).

The Pickapeppa is a thing of beauty. Love the Red Rooster too.

This is a perverse list. To equate Tapatio with Cholula? Lost me there, as the former is ok and all over town here at taquerias, but the latter is my classy choice.

Nice to see pepper plant get some love. We like the original but love the Habanero and chunky. Especially great for breakfast as they have chunks of gilroy garlic and onions in them so no need to prep those pungent items first thing in the am. The Habanero is spicy but not overly so as its got those other ingredients. I have forgot to tell our harvest helper each year and they always apply it like choula the first time which does get a bit to hot.

Choula, rooster, and franks round out our never run out of sauces. We have some tobasco as well as a few made from home grown peppers for other items.

Agree on Aardvark. And Marie Sharps is great too.

Yeah, lots of good ones there. Though I’d quibble about many of the choices of which sauce from the line. example – For Marie Sharp’s, I have a slight preference for the Green Habanero over the plain habanero (of which Belizean Heat is one of the heat levels). But the Belizean Heat is damn good. Same with Matouk’s. I prefer both the West Indian and the Hot Pepper Sauce to the Calypso. But the Calypso is still quite good. And Melinda’s, we prefer the Jolokia (Ghost Chile) sauce. But we bought the habanero version for a long time, as the Jolokia hasn’t been produced for more than, I known, five or six years.

I love Aardvark, too, and it’s good to see some local product make the list.

I ordered a Todd’s, a Marie Sharp’s Belizean, and an Aardvark based on this list.

I agree about Tabasco and Crystal, fundamentals. For Mexican I really like the El Yucateco range. I have no use for Tapatio or Cholula. I like Sriracha, even the straight Rooster brand, though I prefer to use the Sambal Oelek. I also have become fond of a mixture of Gochujang and Sriracha. We Rub You makes a good Gochujang.