Texas Pete. Makes great on everything and excellent base for buffalo wings.
‘Satan’s Sh*t’ by Chilli Pepper Pete
What is considered a hot sauce? Any hot, spicy or burning sauce? If so, consider myself of the DIY crowd.
I always have a small jar of dry cayenne pepper at home, like these:
The key here is dry and milled, as it maximizes the power and surface to weight ratios.
Milled a few rounds of this stuff in my coffee grinder and now it's waiting to be dumped, somehow the pepper substance got into the bearings and no @#$% way now.
When milled this way this inexpensive midrange spice kicks ass, and it's easy to mix with whatever sauce.
The branding is hilarious! :laughing:
Some really nice sauces made by these guys… http://justchillies.co.uk
I picked some up at the agricultural shows but need to order some more now, the chocolate habanero was a big hit here.
The Mango was a really nice sweet sauce, very mild.
The really hot one I tried at the show but gave a miss, it was pretty mean!
Trader Joe’s Green Dragon. You can get it at Amazon if you don’t have a Trader Joe’s near you.
It goes great with tamales, tacos, etc… Because it has jalapeños, tomatillos, cilantro, garlic, and habanero pepper powder in it, I find it a lot more flavorful than something like Sriracha.
I do love jalapeños!
I might have to drop by Trader Joe's. 
Now there’s a first. Someone from California who’s not well schooled in hot sauces. :laughing:
Sounds like you’re right about at the stage I was 30 years ago. 
Mom always had Pace salsa in the fridge. Can’t stand it now but it was a starting point. I’m a bit of a salsa snob these days. A Mexican friend of mine taught me how to properly make it years ago and now I rarely find any as good as my own. :zipper_mouth_face:
I have to disagree on Tabasco. The heat is fine but the flavor is awful. That of course is just my personal opinion. They’ve been around forever so obviously many disagree. Now green Tabasco on the other hand is delicious. Wonderful on chicken and a handful of other things.
For an entry level hot sauce you can’t go wrong with Franks Red Hot. It’s probably the most versatile at least to my taste.
Sriracha is very good but only on certain dishes IMHO. For any example on a good omelette or a frittata Huy Fong nails it. There’s a very cool documentary on the guy who started the company. He came over as a refugee fro Vietnam in the late 70’s and the company is named after the boat that brought him here. Dude is crazy rich now and just a kind humble man. Good watching. Huy Fong also makes my favorite soup spicer-upper Sambal Oelek.
Add some of this to cheap store bought Ramen and you’ll think that 25 cent meal is liquid gold!
Another very tasty one you’ll see in lots of restaurants particularly Mexican is Cholula. That’s a pretty versatile one and almost as good on egg dishes as Sriracha.
One overwhelming theme in my hot sauce usage is variety. Hot sauce pairing are like wine pairings to me. Each one has its place. It’s also very fun to explore. There is an insane amount of variety in the hot sauce world these days so your options are limitless. Great topic by the way. :+1:
Now let’s just wait for The Miller to chime in. He’ll have his own homemade hot sauce made from peppers grown on the slopes of a vineyard near his Castle that can only be harvested on a full moon at midnight then aged in sun, tied in hand woven sacks tied at precisely 8 feet to a Bamboo stalk where the fairies guard them at night for 3 weeks when they’re ready to be ground by hand with a mortar and pestle from the 14th century. 
This is such a personal thing I find it difficult to believe that a posted picture of sauce and a hugely subjective description will be of much use.
But I'm going to do it anyway. Then I'm going to make a practical suggestion.
https://www.amazon.com/Gator-Hammock-Sauce-Ounce-Bottles/dp/B007OULEQI
This stuff is peppery, spicy, hot, and savory. If you like hot but not mind melting hot, put some on your eggs.
Practical advice:
Go to a place like California Tortilla, who has a huge hot sauce bar. Grab 10 sauces and get a side of chips. Try them out. See what you like. Occasionally you can find hot sauce stores (there was one in DC that lasted a few years) with tasting bars.
Also see what the stores near you have. No point in getting into some obscure nonsense if you can never get it.
Some decent stuff that's easy to get that I've enjoyed (YMMV?)
- Tabasco green. a tangy spice flavor on the milder side.
- Whole Foods carries Scoville brand Garlic Cayenne which is tasty but not too hot.
- Trader Joe's Chili Pepper Sauce. Again more about heat and flavor, not blazingly hot. My 20 month old can (and does) eat this.
- Melinda's Habanero sauce. Pretty neutral habanero heat. great when you want to just punch up the pain a tiny bit. I'm sure most big stores carry something similar.
I tend to stay away from the silly, gimmicky novelty sauces. I'm a pretty un-serious guy but I don't usually go out of my way to be pandered to. Plus they all seem to have some combination of the same ingredients... vinegar, some variety of hot chili, sugar, garlic, water, etc. etc.
Curious about that Trader Joe's Green Dragon. Might have to grab some.
You can also amuse yourself with videos of people eating various hot chilis like the Carolina Reaper and the Dragon's Breath.
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anyone watch this channel? it ask the guest questions while eating chicken wings with increasingly hoter chili sauce?
some of the sounces has a silly name.
I think I saw that guy on The Late Show. 
A little sweet sour Colon Cleaner?
Agreed it’s all very personal. Kind of like asking someone here “What’s a good flashlight to buy?”
I can tell by your descriptions I’ll probably like the sauces you do. I’ve never even heard of gator sauce but by your description as well as the way it looks through the glass I’m fairly certain that could fall into the “new favorite” category. I’ll have to see if I can find a single bottle somewhere. Can’t be spending $20 on hot sauce right now but man I was tempted to put it right in my Amazon cart and take advantage of my Prime shipping. It could be in my belly by Sunday!
Good idea on places with hot sauce bars. There’s a chain of sub shops called Firehouse Subs that has an awesome selection of sauces and of course, really good subs. They even have the sauces labeled on a heat scale so you know what you’re getting into. I know they’re in a bunch of states in the US including California (I just checked). I only ate there once but my sub was excellent and I’ve been wanting to go back. I was out of state at the time but they’re starting to pop up all over Michigan now too so I’ll be going back soon.
Edit: RobertB that is hilarious! 
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I've been to Firehouse Subs a few times, but I didn't know about the selection of sauces.
I get a large sub with every kind of pepper they have! 
Look at the front row of that photo about 2/3 of the way from the left side... gator hammock!
Huy Fong Sriracha is pretty much required. I’ve tried some other brands and they just don’t get it quite right with the sweet/hot/salty. The green Srirachas are really good too and don’t quite seem so brand dependent. But these are more or less just mild sauces. If you are looking for actual heat I’d recommend Dave’s Gourmet Ghost Pepper. I’ve probably purchased at least 10 bottles over the past couple years and still have 3 in stock. I’ve tried their Insanity and Ultimate Insanity and they didn’t seem as hot to me as the Ghost Pepper one. I also like the taste of the ghost pepper better. I’ve tried quite a few hot sauces over the years and seem to always come back to this one.
Awesome!
Now I have a reason to get there even sooner. :student:
Good eye.
This love of heat thing is a fun filled journey. I started mine around 25 years ago when I was introduced to Thai food by a coworker. It tends to ramp up over the years as far as what you consider hot. There was a time I though a medium jar of Pace salsa was a bit too spicy.
This year in the pepper row of my garden I have Jalapeno, Habanero, Golden Ghost, Scorpion and finally the Mack Daddy of all…the Carolina Reaper. The heat is so intense it will bring a grown man to his knees. Personally I only use them in very small quantities. Many this year have gone into jars of dill pickles. I’ve got a quart jar in the fridge right now with a whole Golden Ghost and a whole Carolina Reaper. Wonderful stuff.
If you like a unique flavor sauce with a good amount of heat, I HIGHLY recommend the Bacon X (treme) sauce from Voodoo Chile Sauces. Probably on par with a good habanero sauce, or maybe a little more, but infused with bacon for added flavor. The base is ancho, guajillo, and pasilla peppers, so it is rich and smoky plus bacon.
I got so addicted to it at one point that my wife bought me a case of it.
They have a milder version called Porcus Infernum for the less daring. The Phoenix sauce they do is also really good on wings, and the Thai Dry seasoning is like powdered sriracha.
For a super blast of heat, I LOVE Burns & McCoys Exhorresco. One of the hottest non-extract sauces out there, and the flavor is amazing.
And for an odd, but awesome “dessert sauce”, Sam & Oliver’s Mind Flay strawberry reaper sauce is crazy good. Sweet, strawberry flavor with a kick of heat from the Carolina Reaper. Absolutely wonderful on waffles and also good on ice cream.
There are many others I could recommend, but those are a good start. I usually have 10-20 bottles of various sauces hanging around the kitchen or my desk at work, and I grow peppers at home for my personal creation “Powdered Doom”. This year’s batch includes datil, chocolate and red ghost peppers, fatalis, trinidad scorpion Butch T, aji chaparita, tabasco, thai, Carolina Reaper, lemon drop, and 7 pot primo dried and ground into powder. I carry a keychain pill fob full everywhere I go for adding a kick to bland food.
Hatch Green Chile from New Mexico is pretty much the best thing in the world in terms of the combination of heat and flavors. Give it a try roasted if you ever get a chance. I eat it as a garnish, side, or by itself.