I love me a good hot sauce. Growing up, my dad travelled a lot and would bring me back hot sauces from across the world. At one point I had over 100. Aside from my dad using condiments to replace fatherhood- Focus Hot Sauce My favorite is technically a paste from a local Japanese Steakhouse called Gochujang. It's a fermented hot pepper medley that has just as much flavor as heat.
Hot sauce is just anathema to me for some reason. Yet I love spicy food. Guess a dash of Cayenne is more my style. But I know there are aficionados of the hot sauce and the chili pepper here.
I have a deep and abiding love for hot sauce of all kinds. As I'm sure many of you have also discovered, the cheap carbs that poor Uni students live on can be improved immensely by the application of hot sauce. From the ubiquitous Tabasco / Sriracha through to the formidable Dave's Insanity, they can transform bland pasta / stir fries / casseroles / anything into a taste sensation. It's a rare day indeed when I don't have hot sauce in at least one meal. (For the record, I prefer fresh bird's eye chilies to hot sauce in just about every conceivable circumstance, but chilies are a lot like sex; even when they're bad, I end up with an orgasm in my mouth and a burning sensation). So you can imagine my delight when I stumbled across this stuff: It is as close to perfect as I've found in a hot sauce. It is fairly spicy, but not overwhelming, and the flavour is divine. Usually I dislike sauces with sweetness in them, as the artificial sweetener is too strong and cloying. This has just a dash of sweetness, but not enough to overpower the spice. Just enough to take the edge off the burn. This goes well with just about everything; great in salsas, tomato-based pasta dishes, in marinades, everything. And on those rare occasions it's not suitable? The Red Cayenne Chilli Sauce with Lime or Green Jalapeno Chilli Sauce with Coriander from the same folks will be ideal.
I like my tacos nice and hot and my go-to hot sauce is Frank's Red Hot. I've looked for hotter sauces since with Frank's I'm putting in 3 tablespoons for a half-pound of beef and figure I could find something more efficient, but I haven't found a sauce I like better. Seems like all of the really hot hot sauces use a carrot base which I can taste and don't care for. Frank's is a vinegar based hot sauce and since I love vinegar I like the taste much better.
I like most of the Blairs range - <a class="postlink" href="http://www.gourmetmikes.com/blairshotsauce.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.gourmetmikes.com/blairshotsauce.html</a> I have two friends (a couple) who introduced me to the Blairs range, they eat 2 am sauce basically straight. A teaspoon of sauce to a tablespoon of salsa and slap it onto whatever they're eating. That's ungodly. I thought I was going to die the one time I tried at that level. I like the taste of the Blairs stuff, but I'm basically a pussy. I use it exclusively as an additive, and even then - most of my friends think it's too hot. I do like the flavour though.
I like Blairs as well and usually add the after or sudden death to my cooking. For sandwiches or someone elses cooking, I add the death rain dry rub, it's good stuff, tastes nice & has a good amount of heat to it. Anything hotter then that is crazy and even though I would try it, I couldn't eat it everyday.
Flavorful and not ass-kicking enough. This is my favorite for people who don't like anything spicy. Dear God, my life would be grey and dreary without this substance. This shit made fresh every day is incredible.
I've had an affection for Louisiana Hot Sauce for awhile, but when I was in New Orleans a few weeks back, I found a new love, and am preparing to depart from all other hot sauces once I finish them (it will be awhile since I have 4 different ones in my cabinet). My new love's name? New Orleans' own Crystal. I can try to describe it and tell you why I like it. I can tell you it's got an almost sweet and buttery flavor in addition to the vinegar pepper punch. I can tell you it's better than ketchup on fries, and makes mayo acceptable to someone like me that regards mayo as the product of Satan's flesh rocket. I can tell you that it and Raising Caine's sauce are the only savory condiments one needs in Louisiana. However, these musings are merely my humble attempt, and unable to truly show the goodness of said product. My patience may wear thin soon. In fact, I may find some way to rid myself of the other sauces, and buy a pile of it. My sister will be up sometime before the end of the year, and will procure me some. Hooray.
I love Sriracha (who doesn't?) but my general go-to is Frank's Red Hot. I put that shit on everything. But you want some good flavorful ethnic hot sauce, you've got to go with South Indian mango pickle brine. Oil, salt, garlic, chili powder, mustard seeds.
This is interesting. http://hotsauceaddicts.com/history-of-heat.html I use this for the heat. It comes in a 1oz. bottle with a dropper. This Cayenne/Capsicum Concentrated Extract is by far the strongest available anywhere. We label them 250,000 heat units, but that is a MINIMUM. Often, some of the peppers we use rate over 500,000 heat units.
I use Yucateco in conjunction with Valentina: I use a mixture of about 25% Yucateco and 75% Valentina, and I serve it out of an old Tapatio bottle. I also add El Yucateco to Sriracha sauce in roughly the same proportions.
I love a good hotsauce, but there is one that I had a long time ago that I could never find after that. It was a curry-apple-habenero hotsauce that was delicious and burning hot on sandiwiches. Does anyone know of it or something similar to what I described? I'd be eternally grateful. For everyday dinners I tend to just throw some Sriracha on it. Or add some jalepenos while making whatever. A teaspoon or so of Z-Sauce will make your chili infinitely better tasting.
I like hot sauce on a variety of foods, but haven't sampled a ton of exotic sauces. I do like Frank's and Sriracha best. The heat in habanero peppers/sauces is not too hot for me, but I do not care for the flavor of habaneros at all.
I'm with Dixie on the Valentina. That stuff is great. Here's one that I get locally. It's called Gator Hammock and the stuff tastes great. It's a little on the mild side but the flavor is amazing. If I want more heat I usually just add a generic "heat" centric sauce to it.
Virginia Gentleman. Made with the bourbon. This is a really good chipotle based hot sauce with great flavor. It works very well on sandwiches. We've got a good sandwich chain near here called Firehouse Subs. Not sure if it's a national chain or not. Well, they always have a large quantity of different sauces of many different heat levels to put on your sandwiches. Lots of great ones both mild and hot. I've always got a bottle of either Frank's or Texas Pete at home as both are great on just about anything. I'm not from the south but there is something magical about Texas Pete hot sauce on well cooked, slightly sweet collard greens.
I'm a big fan of Texas Pete as well, since my buddy moved to North Carolina and introduced me to it. It obviously isn't the hottest around ( I keep Sriracha around for when I'm feeling masochistic) but I like the way it tastes, and it's great on everything from ham sandwiches to eggs to chili to pancakes to - you name it. My favorite HOT hot sauce is Dave's insanity Sauce. I tried a drop on the end of a toothpick once and nearly burned my tongue off. But ith tathty.
Cholula is more about flavor than pure heat, but it has been my go to for years. Perfect with any Mexican-type food. I like spicy food, but I've never understood wanting something so hot it burns. At one restaurant where I worked, a produce supplier would drop off ghost chili peppers when he had them in stock. It was an Italian restaurant, and ghost chilis belonged nowhere near any of our food, but one of the other waiters would have the chef cook ghost chilis into other dishes. This big bald man would then sit there, sweating his ass off, insisting he was enjoying his bowl of pasta with nuclear ragu alla bolognese. I watched the man drink many nights after work, and I'd say the worst place on the planet had to be his toilet bowl those following mornings.
A lot of good mentions in here. I'm not too big on a lot of them myself, but: Cholula - great with Mexican food. Put it on anything else, and it's just meh. Srirachi - This goes good with anything. Maybe not cereal. If I'm feeling lazy I'll make a frozen pizza and squirt some on. Instant meal. Fuck, if Zoey Kravitz put a few drops between her legs I would never come up for air, and die happy.
I got into Cholula when i went to America recently and since i got back ive been putting it on fucking everything (although its pretty expensive here, $7 for those tiny little 5oz bottles). Just on its own i agree its meh (if it isnt mexican food) but if you mix it with a nice BBQ sauce or even Aioli i think its pretty fucking spectacular on a lot of things.