I keep my fridge stocked with the supplies to make a late night burrito when I need to put to rest a belly full of booze. Taco Bell Fire sauce is a critical component. Months ago my grocery store stopped carrying it, as well as Walmart, target or anyplace else so I’d get bottles off of Amazon. Now, they aren’t even there. Mild, Medium, Hot all available. No Fire.
Looks like it’s a national supply chain issue. No personnel to deliver supplies or repair parts. Damn, this is getting serious.
Does Taco Bell still have it in the packets? You could just go into a restaurant and grab a few handfuls. Hell, order something at the drive through and they’ll give you like 30 of them.
Is it just me or does anyone else think it’s the weakest, mildest hot sauce?
National chain/franchise restaurants generally aren’t known for having ‘offensive’ food. If they make their fire sauce so hot that too many people don’t want it, it wouldn’t be worth it to them.
Interesting. I just went to Taco Bell on Friday and they said they were out of Fire sauce. I got Diablo instead, which was fine.
I’m heading to Taco Bell tonight and grabbing mittfulls of the packets, that’s what I know.
This supply chain issue is worrying and they will be necessary for my own personal version of ‘The Purge’.
I find the packets in the restaurant to be spicier than the fire sauce in the bottle. Both, to me are spicier than the mild, but still not “hot” by any means. Taco Bell’s hottest sauce, Diablo, doesn’t even use chilis but paprika extract instead.
I like all their sauces, not for the heat but for the flavor.
Strictly speaking, paprika is a chili.
I think that for some of their “hotter” sauces, they keep the capsaicin level the same, but add smoke flavor.
I agree completely, the flavor is key to my ‘goodnight burrito’. Zombie Apocalypse is my current go-to for a kick.
When I go to Taco Bell (which hasn’t been very often, post-lockdown) I always opt for the Fire sauce, which, while not being particularly hot, tastes like a hot sauce. The Diablo to me has a strange, sort of fruity taste to it, which while not an unpleasant flavor, just seems odd for a hot sauce. Maybe they were trying to get a habenaro quality to it and went too far with the fruitiness.
I don’t know but I’ve always had a theory that they’re actually all the same thing, just boiled down to different levels. Notice how runny and watery the “Mild” is compared to the “Fire.”
Of course the fact that they all have similar but not identical ingredients lists totally fucks up my theory, but still I remain fairly confident that if one were to boil down “Mild” sauce to a thicker consistency, you’d get something at least in the ballpark of “Hot” or “Fire.” Not that I’ve tried this. 
“The internet” suggests the Diablo sauce has chipotles in it, which would give it a smoke flavor. The ingredients for the Fire sauce mention jalapenos. If they’re leaving them raw, or even close to it, they’re going to be a whole lot hotter than the smoked ones in the diablo sauce.
But, IME, if you’re eating something that you expect to be spicy, it’s easy to taste the smokey flavor and get tricked into thinking it’s hot.
I like spicy-ish food, my mom can’t stand anything hotter than salt. A few years ago I made something or another that I typically make with ground chipotle powder, but since she was eating it, I used smoked paprika instead. She looked like I poured lava down her throat until I told her it wasn’t spicy.
ETA: re-reading that first paragraph, I want to clarify I wasn’t suggesting what you [chronos] said was incorrect, just posting what I read.
Oh, yeah, smokey flavor is definitely suggestive of heat, especially if you’re primed to expect it. Which is probably why they do it.
I did not know that!
Now that I would have considered a chili. A pepper, anyway. Maybe I use the term too loosely.
A chipotle is just a jalapeno that’s been dried and smoked. And “chili” refers to all of the fruit-peppers (as opposed to black/white pepper and Sichuan pepper), including the mild ones like bells.
I’ve found the Fire to have a horrible chemical-y taste. Never tried Diablo. And I had no idea you could buy the stuff by the bottle. Not in my store, for sure, but now I gotta go find some!
I eat lots of tacos.
Maybe in an absolute sense, but for Taco Bell, it’s the highest octane stuff they have.
Mine just gave me a ton of them when I ordered a minor amount of stuff the other day- like 15, when I got a couple of tacos and a burrito.
Flavorwise Diablo is the worst!
What did you think it was, if not a (dried) pepper???