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.
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.
Almost forgot one. For those who love a vinegary type sauce, my personal favorite is Rogue from High River Sauces. Has the usual twang of a vinegar based sauce, but with a really solid balance of fruity flavors and heat. Its a go-to for burritos, quesadillas, sandwiches - basically anything that needs a little kick of acidity and fire.
And one more from the “sweet and hot” category, and one I love on ice cream as well - Blueberry Hell from Hellfire Hot Sauce. Whats’ not to love about blueberries mixed with Carolina Reapers? :smiling_imp:
Sure, I may have hot sauce issues, but its only fair that I share them with others since you jackwagons got me addicted to flashlights. Turnabout is fair play, right?
Sriracha is a no brainer and must have in the fridge.
Currently have a selection of different scorpion and ghost pepper sauces as well, usually with tropical fruits as the base. (sweet + heat = win). For the HOT hot sauce I am almost done a bottle of Flashbang from pepper palace. Looking forward to getting a bottle of their new sauce “The End” when the flashbang is done.
Will be making some sauce soon myself when the peppers in the garden finish ripening. Have Carolina reapers, chocolate scorpion, apache, habanero and jalapenos growing this year. Should be good for a tongue burn
Wasn’t the company embroiled in some hoo-ha, because the nearby town that at fir$t welcomed him (to their tax coffers) now made a stink about the spicy fumes coming from the factory? They wanted to shut him down. Keep his money, but shut him down.
Where I work, there’s a halal cart around the corner that makes great platters, but guaranteed, 2hrs later, I’m spending the rest of the afternoon in the can. Nice guy, but I swear, sometimes it seems he just wants to hurt me.
I could hear the rumbling, and yep, sure enough, Mount St Naz erupts.
The saying goes, “…because every now and then, everyone needs a good colon-blow!”.
So let’s just say I can absolutely understand the marketting behind this one…
I tend to value good overall taste more than pure spiciness. There’s a good one that I get that is mildly spicy and mixed with passion fruit, very nice combination. I also adore chipotle sauces.
As for the Pace / Old El Paso / Chi Chi’s type of salsas, if you make your own just once you’ll never go back to the packaged stuff:
Diced fresh tomatos, very ripe
Finely diced fresh white or yellow onion
Finely diced fresh green pepper
Fresh diced jalapeño to taste
Lots of fresh chopped cilantro
Juice of several small Florida key limes or a large regular lime
In reality the Mexican food snob around here is probably me. I hand make my own flour tortillas and corn tortillas that are good enough to make an Aztec blush. In the case of the corn ones, I actually follow the traditional nixtamalization process of soaking dried white corn in a lime (as in calcium oxide) solution for three days and then running it through a hand mill. Fried in pork lard with refried beans (also hand made) and shredded chicken or pork with the salsa I posted earlier here… shockingly delicious.
Picked up the chipotle salt and a couple of dried Reapers from them the other day, the salt is fantastic, wonderfully smoky…and I’m not sure what to do with the Reapers yet…
I tried their Reaper sauce too, nowhere near as hot as I was expecting.
The other sauces they produce really do offer a nice taste, I’ve tried some other brands but usually I find a lot are just heat without any real flavour although I am partial to the habanero jam that Tesco sell.
Interesting topic. I have been trying to source some Carolina Reaper seeds but without success. I am reading that some of you guys are already growing it. Maybe someone can kindly help me out with some seeds . Many thanks.
Never been a fan of the ones based on capsaicin extract, I find it’s just lots of heat very little taste. At least with the super hot chillies they have a characteristic flavour to go with the heat.