I buy my local Mexican grocery’s homemade stuff, but I still go through a bottle of the El Yucateco Kutbil-ik every week or two. I rarely come across something that has the right balance of heat and flavor. This does.
I also prefer the habanero from Tobasco with the pinkish label to regular Tobasco. Problem is that I can’t find it very often. But it, too, has a good balance.
I’m not a fan of sriracha. It’s got a sickening sweet undertone that doesn’t sit well with me.
Piri piri sauce is pretty good, if you can find it.
I use the Tabasco Green for lots of stuff on my plate; eggs, burgers, tacos, etc.
I use Tiger Sauce on the pork butts I smoke in addition to the rub to give it just the right amount of sweet and spicy zing.
Got Cholula , Valentina and Crystal. Funny thing was that 2 were together and the other 1 was across the aisle. (can’t recall which one) I guess 2 were considered to be Mexican food and the other 1 was a hot sauce. Will try them soon.
El Yucateco Kutbil-ik for it’s outstanding balance of heat and earthy, fruity habanero. It seems to have a weird addictive quality to it where I get pumped up just thinking about more with every bite while the heat is growing and growing… I crave it as it starts burning, it’s weird and hard to explain.
I like old school Tabasco on anything seafood… fried fish, oysters, etc. all taste wrong with anything but sour, fermented Tabasco.
Also a big fan in general of fruity Carribean sauces typically yellow/orange in colour and made with habanero or scotch bonnet. There are dozens available in this category, most of them are pretty good as long as they arent gloopy and overly thickened with gums or cornstarch. I especially like these styles when they contain pureed mango or pineapple for a nice tropical contrast in flavour.
Frank’s red extra hot for mixing with melted butter and a smidge of fresh garlic and tossing home made wings in. It’s too one-speed for much else, but nothing works quite as well for wings.
Honourable mention to the Valentina in either black or orange label, both similar flavour/heat level and less of a hot sauce than a general tart chile flavour that is awesome on nachos or tacos.
Are there any hot sauces based on something other than varieties of the New World chili pepper? Say, the long pepper or the Sichuan pepper?
Do they still make “Scorned Woman”? It was some heat with a whole lot of flavor back in the day.
Odds are Cholula and Valentina were the Mexican sauces, and Crystal was the hot sauce.
Go to any Mexican restaurant around here that caters to a primarily Mexican crowd and you’ll find Valentina on the table.
I love Sichuan peppers, but I think they would make a horrible pepper sauce. They’re not really chiles, and they’re not at all hot. Lots of Sichuan dishes also combine them with chiles (yes, new world chiles). The Sichuan peppers are the “ma” in “mala” and the chiles are the “la.”
Yeah, it’s the same around here. Valentina, Tapatio, Cholula, and El Yucateco Red and Green are the hot sauces you’re likely to find at a Mexican place, in addition to the house sauces. (Not necessarily all of those at the same place, though.) The biggest bottle of sauce in my fridge is the Valentina 34 ozer.
Yeah, I can’t see myself liking a Sichuan peppercorn sauce, at least not one that is not balanced off with hot chiles. Szechuan peppercorns on their own are just kind of mouth-numbing (in a topical anesthetic sort of way, not in the pepper heat sort of way), cirtussy, and they make me drool. I went a little overboard with the peppercorns with a dish I was making last week and those peppercorns were just making me salivate for like a half hour and left my mouth with that numbing tingling sensation.
now I just need to figure out how to open the weird top on Valentina
What do you mean? It’s just a flip-top, or at least the ones I’ve had were.
IIRC, you pull the ring up and off. After flipping open the snap-top, of course.
The only thing I don’t like about Valentina is the top. It’s great for getting a goodly amount of sauce out and onto your food, but it’s messy and needs cleaning after every use.
Yeah, the first time. Like a carton of orange juice. That just doesn’t seem to be something unusual enough that you have to figure it out.
I could see that. It has that teardrop kind of opening that kind of gets gunked up occasionally. I don’t bother to clean mine, though, and have been fine.
A couple not yet mentioned - Gringo Bandito Hot Sauce. A relative newcomer but showing up in stores. The original hot sauce isn’t that hot, but it’s tasty. They also have a super hot which I haven’t tried.
Gator Hammock Gator Sauce - Decent heat and great flavor. Harder to find, butt covered by Amazon Prime shipping.
I like Tabasco’s Buffalo Style better than Frank’s, but my local store stopped carrying it, and it’s not so much better than Frank’s that I’ll go hunting for it.
You’re not as anal as I am. 
I figured out how to open Valentina. It is a non typical seal. Most hot sauces use a plastic wrap but they don’t.
New sauce at Casa Silenus: Secret Aardvark Habanero Sauce. This shit’s gooooooood! Hot and fruity and they aren’t kidding about slathering it on anything. The next order will include a bottle of their Drunken Garlic Black Bean Sauce as well.
Good job, Portland!
Pretty much. To me, Tabasco has a weird musty, vaguely moldy or rotten taste that the other Louisiana hot sauces don’t have. Given my druthers, I like Crystal or Louisiana Hot Sauce, but Tabasco will do in a pinch.
I’m also a fan of the Cholula garlic, and the greenish colored jalapeno Tabasco, along with Sriracha. I don’t like most habanero sauces though.
Honestly, the Mexican hot sauces (Cholula, Tapatio, Valentina and El Bufalo) are all kind of fungible; they’re all pretty similar- as much so as the Louisiana-style hot sauces are as well.
Personally, I can’t really stand sauces that are too hot; however I did have some sort of sauce with my chicked earlier and it was nice. 
It was a bit hot, so it must have had some sort of chilli in it, but other than that I don’t know what it was! 