The Tabasco chipotle sauce is great on eggs, but I tend to prefer spicy brown deli mustard on my eggs.
Sriracha is awesome. It is absolutely stellar on pizza.
For Mexican hot sauces, though, it’s damned hard to beat Valentina. This shit’ll make you slap your mama. Not terribly hot, but so much flavor. I could just about drink the stuff.
Cajun Sunshine, Tennessee Sunshine.
So shoot me.
Another for Sriracha.
I also like El Yucateco, either red or green. Pretty hot!
Franks Buffalo wing sauce is a good version if that’s your thing.
Nando’s Extra hot peri-peri. It is good. Very very spicy, but flavourful at the same time. I use it as a cooking ingredient a lot – it adds a great kick to shepherd’s pie.
I tried a sauce at a restaurant once that was in a large (for hot sauce) squarish bottle, and the name and artwork was of Incan or Mayan or some similar culture. It was the best sauce I ever tasted, and I cannot find the sonofobitch (likely not knowing the name is the biggest reason).
It wasn’t El Yucateco or Yucatan Sunshine. If anybody has any idea what sauce I’m talking about I’d be very grateful.
I’m not the hot sauce expert that some of our members are, but I’m liking my bottle of Tapatio so far. Not that I use much, but I haven’t seen it mentioned yet.
I have found that I don’t care for the vinegar-based ones (too vinegary - that’s all you taste), but I’m dying to give the chipotle Tabasco a try. And since it doesn’t seem vinegar-based, I’m all set!
Cholula is great stuff. It was my regular hot sauce until I decided to begin making my own. Now that’s pretty much all I use.
I have a bottle of the Sriracha sauce, which I use when cooking with a hot sauce, or adding to home made mayonaise or ayole.
My home brew hot sauce changes slightly with each batch, depending on which hot peppers I have around from the garden. I grow several different types each year, and as a home grown produce product, they change flavors depending on the growing conditions of that year. I usually use about 2 quarts of the stuff a year.
Ingredients:
Peppers, reconstituted from dry in vinegar (a combination of white, red wine, and cider)
Garlic (fresh and granulated)
Salt
Sugar (just a bit to balance the flavors at the end)
Vinegar (I add the soaking liquid above, until the texture/consistincy is right)
-Boil it all for a little while, put in the blender and whip it up!
Keeps in the refridgerator nearly indefinitly. Though I use it up pretty quick.
I also crush up dried cayanne peppers to make my own pizza topping, which I put into a standard shaker bottle like you find in a pizza shop.
butler1850, you dry the peppers then reconstitute them?
My very favourite hot sauce is impossible to get in the States or in Europe. It’s pimenta no tucupi. Pimenta-de-cheiro is a brazilian variant of the habanero. There’s a nice picture here. That is then put in tucupi, which is fermented manioc (some call it cassava) juice. There’s a picture of it being sold (along with ground manioc leaves for maniçoba) at the market in Belém here. Add some Jambu (also known as toothache plant, because it numbs the lips :eek:; see here and here for more information) and you’ve got yourself a “partay”.
I’ll third Yucatan Sunshine. It’s one of the best habanero-based sauces out there. I’ve also enjoyed the spicy fruitiness of Jump Up and Kiss Me…it’s got stuff like habaneros, papayas, and ginger in it.
That said, I love my Tabasco, and while I love chipotle, I’m sick of its overexposure. Everywhere I go, it’s chipotle-friggin-this and chipotle-effin-that.
Gimme that vinegary tartness of regular ol’ Tabasco any day. Or Frank’s Red Hot. Nothing else belongs on chicken wings.
I happen to like Cholula a lot, but I only use it on food that already has a chili pepper taste to it. I don’t like it on my scrambled eggs. For that, I keep a bottle of Frank’s around.
The best hot sauce I ever had was a batch of VunderBob’s Original Kick-Ass Hot Sauce. I grew the cayennes myself, dried them, pulverized them in a blender, and added vinegar. Damn, that was good eating…
I dry them for storage, then reconstitute when it’s time to make a new batch of sauce.
I’ve made sauce from fresh peppers, but I find that it comes out better when they are made from dry peppers, too much water in the fresh ones.
Also, if you use fresh peppers, there is a green pepperish quality to the flavor that has to age out. It’s not there if you use dried peppers.
I love Cholula much like the OP. Tabasco is something I still keep in the house, but I rarely pick it up when the Cholula is still in stock. Just delicious.
When I’m looking for smething with a little more punch, for my money, El Yucateco simply cannot be beat. Got that great habenero heat with a good round flavor. I usually buy about 6 bottles every time I get to Mexico since you won’t find it in most mega-stores and its cheaper than in the specialty shops. Friggin delicious.
We get a brand here Bufalo Chipotle (spelled with only one “f”) and it does make great BBQ sauce. I mix equal parts Bufalo Chipotle, Bufalo Jalapeno, and Cholula into a vinegar and brown sugar base, a squirt of catsup for texture, a little salt, and a shot of whatever dry rub I’m using. Sometimes I’ll add some mustard or horseradish. Cook it down 'til it’s thick.
A great place to buy those hard to find hot sauces (I’ve ordered from them) is
They have all sorts of stuff, not just hot sauces.
That would explain it! I knew there was something that I couldn’t figure out.
I hate green peppers, but LOVE hot ones… strange, but it’s how it is. Somehow they just have a totally different flavor, even fresh (hotness aside)
At the local granola store, we used to get the best hot sauce. It was called “Reilgious Experience.” I don’t know why they quit carrying it, but it was great.
- about 4 by now - El Yucateco Green and Red are my faves. I go to mohotta.com and buy 5 - 6 bottles.
Cheap, hot and delicious - what more can you ask for?
Of course not. You’re supposed to put Toad Sweat on your ice cream.
You’re on your own to find the one for canker sores, though.