Tabasco has kind of a sentimental place in my heart. It was my gateway hot sauce.
Valentina and Siracha are the two that always have a place in my house. I cook with Siracha a lot, it’s great for soups. I also keep a bottle of chipotle Tabasco around for the smoky flavor.
I’m not a big fan of the really vinegary sauces like Tabasco and Franks. They seem to overpower my tongue in small areas of heat vs. the whole mouth hot I enjoy.
Thanks, this has become a great guide on some new hot sauces to try and good suggestions as to what each sauce goes best with. I do agree with some posters that both Tabasco and Frank’s Red Hot is too vinegar-forward, at least for certain uses.
IANA fan of vinegar-forward.
But sriracha is evil. Listen people: sugar is not the opposite of hot. Sugar does not belong in any hot sauce of any kind. If I wanted sweet I’d have chocolate sauce or jam or honey or something.
3rd party. I favor hot sauces that don’t use vinegar. Tapatio. El Yucateco. I am not entirely opposed to vinegar based sauces (Taco Bell!) but they’re used more like ketchup.
Them’s fighting words. I’d disagree with you in detail, but that’s be a hijack. 
As a diabetic, I decry the addition of sugar to all sorts of foods. When I had to give up on all things carby, and all things crunchy, and all things dessert-like, that left hot-and-spicy as my last best refuge for interesting non-bland meals.
Then some turdbird went and invented hot sauce loaded with friggin’ sugar. Which suddenly took the sugar-addicted USA by storm.
Now I can’t safely order even hot food in most restaurants without first interrogating the cook. And the hot hides the sweet flavor enough that folks can pour a lot of sugar into their spicy food before I notice. I’ve gotten hammered more than once by hidden sugared hot sauce.
Bastids!
I admit that’s my personal handicap and not your problem. But I’m part of a mongo legion of Americans sharing that same handicap.
Since I’m an inveterate label reader, and have bought lots of hot sauce:
Tabasco, Crystal, Frank’s, Trappey’s Red Devil, and Louisiana-brand hot sauces are all basically variants of the standard “Louisiana hot sauce”
They’re all made of cayenne peppers and vinegar. Tabasco is fermented, Frank’s has garlic, and Crystal, Louisiana and Trappey’s Red Devil are pretty much straight.
Sriracha is made from ripe red jalapenos, sugar, salt, garlic and vinegar. (I saw one of those “How It’s Made”/“Food Factory” type shows that visited Huy Fong in Irwindale, CA).
The Mexican hot sauces are typically chiles, vinegar, and spices of some sort, without much in the way of description of the chiles or spices. So there’s more variation among them.
Some of the habanero sauces have other ingredients- Marie Sharp’s has carrots and onions as the second and third ingredients respectively. I’m guessing for heat control.
I’m not including basic stuff like water or salt, and non-flavor additives like xanthan gum (a thickener).
I really like datil pepper sauce. But to be perfectly honest, Lao Gan Ma spicy chili crisp has completely replaced my hot sauces of the past.
@LSLGuy, I pull back my verbal aggression and bow to your circumstances. I have seen a number of hot sauces where the sugar is being added to mellow the heat, so that people can say they use a habanero hot sauce while making it utterly mild, and there are indeed many commercial sauces that see sugar long before any chile. There is indeed a trend to go the ketchup route of just add sugar until it sells. And having to check what a restaurant puts into its food is never fun, which is why I can count the times I ate out (prior to the pandemic) on the fingers of both hands in the average year when I’m not away from home.
Having said that, a hot sauce that is built around a hot and sweet flavor profile is amazing. I make one similar to this
But mine includes sweet limes and a bit of ‘silver’ tequila which I find helps extract alcohol soluble flavors. Here’s hoping you can find a place that serves good and hot food without extra sugar, perhaps a good Thai place? I love some Yum Neu, but the places that make it with a ton of palm sugar don’t get my repeat business. Give me the hot and sour of limes, vinegar, chile and some funky fish sauce and I’m in heaven.
I like Texas Pete. It’s pretty mild though; but it has good flavor. I wouldn’t mind if the hotness was kicked up a little bit. I feel the same way about Tabasco; it’s good, but the smell… whew!
Once you can’t eat noodles or rice then Thai sort of loses its attraction. I used to love it, but finding it not also loaded with sugar is always difficult.
And yes, I admit the flavor of a sriracha or your linked recipe can be pretty darn nice. Sadly, eating for flavor not for nutrition is no longer on my list. Damn.
But yeah, your last sentence is da’ bomb! Peace, my friend & fellow pepper-head.
And now time to hang up the 'Dope for another day and rustle up some dinner! With spicy something or other!
I buy Valentina extra hot by the liter, and go through a couple of them in a year. I also use a lot of Huy Fong sriracha. Right now, I have and am enjoying a bottle of Save-a-Lot’s version of Frank’s. It ain’t Frank’s by a long shot, but it is really good. I also like Cholula, Crystal, Tapatio, and practically any store brand of basic hot sauce.
My vote goes to Frank’s since I use it on a few different things. Chicken wings, of course, are first. It’s also good in a barbecue glaze for ribs, meatloaf or pork chops mixed about equal parts with Open Pit sauce. I’ve been known to add a dash to an individual spoonful of chili or soup. I don’t usually use hot sauce on pizza (that’s what giardiniera’s for) but, if I did, it would be a Louisiana-type. It’s good in a brine for meat. Louisiana-brand hot sauce was my gateway sauce as a kid. A little vinegar, salt & heat to perk things up.
I really only like Tabasco for diner breakfast food like eggs & hash browns and, in that context, nothing else will work right. I don’t keep it at home.
I don’t care for polls that have people choose between A and B or anything else since it, like this one, is no longer a poll thread. But to some of the other sauces mentioned…
- I tried to like them haven’t been able to get into Yellowbird or Secret Aardvark.
- Sriarcha seems to pair well with Asian food. I like it with pork egg foo young from the cheap place in the neighborhood, no gravy. It’s also a decent sandwich condiment though I don’t use it for that too often.
- I group Cholula, Valentina & Tapatio together as a class of sauces I don’t care for. I think they all have achiote which is ok in some recipes & marinades but not for a hot sauce. Never would I put it on tacos, that’s fresh salsa every time.
- El Yucateco has long been a favorite. I’ve settled on the Caribbean one but red or green are also good.
I agree except for Tabasco. The fermentation funk sets it apart.
Cholula. Best thing for a one-eyed Jack, also known as an egg-in-a-basket or any other number of names. Egg fried into a piece of toast. Gotta have Cholula on it.
There’s also some love for Merf’s, which my former I.T. Guy and I discovered while on vacation in Denver.
I see they’ve added several new flavors with pandemic themed names.
Well, Tabasco is made from tabasco peppers, which are quite similar to cayennes, but they are a different pepper. (And tabasco peppers are actually a different species. Cayennes, like many chiles, are Capsicum annum. Tabasco are Capsicum frutescens.)
I love the vinegary sauces. Not on everything, but on rich, fatty foods, nothing cuts through that fat like vinegar. I’ve grown up to always complement fat/fried stuff or rich foods with something sour. It could be a pickle (not necessarily just cucumber pickles, but all kinds, like peppers, both hot and mild, mixed vegetables, whatever), it could be sauerkraut, it could be straight vinegar (I LOVE malt vinegar on my fish and chips.)
So when I have something like fried chicken or fried catfish, I need some vinegary hot sauce like Tabasco or Texas Pete’s or Crystal. Or when I have a rich Creole or Cajun dish or even something like a hamhock and bean soup. I add a little vinegar to that anyway, but if I’m in a spicy mood, I could kill two birds with one stone and just use one of the vinegary sauces.
Sweet Baby Rays Hot Sauce, here.
Valentina first (regular or extra hot), then Tapatio or Cholula. I’ve never liked Tabasco, and like a few others here, can hardly stand the smell of it. But if I want heat nowadays, I’ll usually just add lots of crushed red pepper before I add hot sauce.
Same, except “a couple” equals three or four (one nice thing is that it’s cheap: <$2/liter). But I eat a lot of Mexican food. Sriracha is great but for some reason it doesn’t quite fit into my mental slot for hot sauce. Instead, it’s a ketchup replacement. Depending on my mood, I might mix it 50/50 with ketchup or have it full strength.
Of the Caribbean sauces, I prefer Trinidad/Tobago’s Matouk’s Calypso Sauce. It’s hot. In St Martin, a restaurant that doesn’t have Matouk’s on the table is second-rate.