"How the hell did you get 3'rd degree stomach burns?"

I am a huge fan of spicy food particularly, I love sweet-spicy food - Thai, Indian, fucking whatever. If it's spicy, give it to me.

I also love hot sauce. Tapatio is amazing for Mexican food - which is great, since I live in an area where you can get legit Mexican food, not that Tex-Mex shit - but my absolute favorite hotsauce is:



Sriracha. Fuck. I grew up with this shit and it's almost universal - it goes good in soup, sandwiches, burritos, etc.. I noticed some recipes in the Cooking thread that calls for Sriracha, but I want to get a bit more general with fellow spicy food/hot sauce lovers, so...

Focus:
What is your favorite hot sauce? Sriracha? Tapatio? Habanero Hot Sauce? Dave's Insanity?

Alt. Focus:
What is your favorite spicy restaurant?

 

I like spicy food but not hot sauce, ironically. Throw a little cayenne on that bitch though, BAM!

 

What is your favorite hot sauce? Sriracha? Tapatio? Habanero Hot Sauce? Dave's Insanity?
Texas Pete's is my fave by far. It's mild enough to go on your morning eggs, but spicy enough to add some kick to your salsa. Also, raw jalapenos are fucking delicious.

What is your favorite spicy restaurant?

I love Thai curries. You really haven't eaten until you've cried from chicken massaman curry.

 

If you want "hot", Blair makes the hottest hot sauce on earth, period. Nothing even comes close to the strength of it. Below, a bottle of Blair's 3am (6am is the most powerful on earth, and for collector-novelty purposes only) one tiny teaspoon of 3am is more than enough for a GALLON of wing sauce.

This shit doesn't fuck around. One drop on a cracker will burn your throat like a firestorm for hours.

 

Cholula if I want some mild flavor for just about anything...burritos, ramen, burgers and sandwiches, the list could go on.

If I really want a smack in the mouth, I'll go for some Srirachi. Even diluted a bit with mayo, it has a great heat with actual flavor, a concept that seems to be dying out in most restaurants.

 

I just got a bottle of Franks today, I hope it's spicy.

I'm in the UK and am finding it hard to find spicy food that lives up to my expectations.

Just the other day I got a Lamb Vindaloo from the local Indian restaurant. Wasn't all that spicy, didn't need a single glass of milk, and that's the spiciest thing they do? Fuck off.

Nando's can fuck off too. I love their chicken but I got a bottle of 'Extra-Extra-Hot Perri Perri Sauce' and I mean, sure it was spciy, but nothing mind blowing.

Anyone got any ideas for someone in the UK?

 

Frank's and Tabasco. Both of which are not particularly hot, but have a nice flavour to them anyway.

 

Frank's is my go-to sauce as well. It's pretty mild - I put 3 tablespoons per 1/2 pound of beef when making tacos - but I really like the flavor. I've tried other hot sauces but haven't found anything that tastes as good. A lot of hot sauces seem to use some sort of carrot base, which I can always taste no matter how hot the sauce, which takes away from the experience.

I've been looking for a good hot spice as well. A long time ago I'd make microwave popcorn in the shop and someone brought in some hot spice, which make the popcorn absolutely delicious. Ever since then I've been looking for something I can put on my popcorn instead of salt.

 

I work with a man who is originally from Haiti and makes his own hotsauce as a side buisiness. He just gave me a jar last week, I threw it on some chicken wings, and I was in love. It was just hot enough to be uncomfortable without a glass of milk handy, and the flavour is what I imagine spicy food in heaven must taste like. I will never buy another hotsauce for as long as he is in buisiness.

 

Focus: I'm a big fan of Cholula. It's not really hot but it has really good flavor.

Alt Focus: I can't think of any restaurants in the area that have a lot of spicy food. They have the occasional spicy dish but not much more.

Off focus but amusing to me. My roommate and I went out to eat with a bunch of friends after a movie. We went to Old Chicago and he got the sausage calzone or something similar. Anyway, he gets about three bites into the thing and can't eat anymore because it's too hot. The regular red and green peppers are too spicy for him. My friends and I have laughed about this since. Now we give him ketchup for "hot sauce".

 

It's a bitch finding a good spicy restaurant. They're too scared of scalding their clientele. There's an Indian restaurant, Saffron, that doesn't fuck around. I haven't walked out of there yet without a snot mustache.

You have to be crazy to eat Dave's Insanity Sauce. One drop is good enough to turn a bowl of chili into napalm. I want good flavor as well as some heat. Dave's is mace with a hint of tomato paste. Nothing beats using the peppers themselves in cooking though. You can really screw around with flavor and heat profiles.

My favorites:


Gator Hammock. Pretty mild, but it's full of garlic and vinegar. It's more of a condiment.



Cheap, tasty, medium hot. Can actually taste the habanero itself, not just heat.

 

Chiptole Tabasco mother fuckers. It really doesn't pack even half the punch that cock sauce does but it tastes phenomenal. Smokey flavor with a slight kick, found wherever Chipotle burritos are sold.

 

My girlfriend has a serious allergy to cayenne, so Frank's and Louisiana are no longer welcome in my house. However, I usually keep a variety of Tabasco and Cholula around the house:

Regular Tabasco: Since this is basically just flavored vinegar, I just use it on anything I would usually put vinegar on (potatoes, eggs).

Chipotle Tabasco: Anything Mexican.

Habanero Tabasco: A bit too hot for me to put directly on food, but I like to mix it in to any sort of soup
or stew.

Chili-Lime Cholula: Started using this instead of the Jalapeno Tabasco. Tastes pretty good on anything Mexican as well.

Chili-Garlic Cholula: Usually my go-to for any kind of meat.

 

I think there is some unwritten rule that if you are from South Louisiana you are required to keep at least two bottles of Tabasco in your kitchen at all times.

However, Sriracha is also used regularly. I have a friend who had the good fortune to marry a Vietnamese girl and she turned us on to it.

Tiger Sauce isn't really a hot sauce, but it's spicy enough to qualify, I suppose. It has a good sweet, not too spicy taste to it.

What all three of those have is flavor. Anyone can come up with a hot sauce that burns the enamel off your teeth, but spice with flavor is a little more difficult to come by.

 

I mix Tiger Sauce with either Da' Bomb or Colon Blow habanero sauce, 4:1. Amps up the Tiger Sauce without losing its sweetness.

 

I enjoy all of the name brand stuff already listed, but when I can get my hands on it, this:



Is just un-fucking beatable.

Alt Focus: I love Blue Ribbon Barbecue. It would be considered good anywhere, but in the Northeast where good barbecue is hard to find it is AMAZING. I started making my own sauce modeled off their recipe.

 

My current favorite hot sauce is Blair's Ultra Death sauce. Its the only hot sauce I've been able to buy that is at my limit in terms of heat.