Crystal hot sauce is my goto. Tangy and just the right amount of heat to casually throw on anything if you don’t want to go into battle mode. Frank’s come close. Surprised that I’m the only one mentioning Crystal.
Secret Aardvark I think would be my second goto if you aren’t looking for a hot sauce with the acidity of Crystal, Tabasco, Frank’s, etc.
Aw yeah Crystal is so good. I’m not in the US so it’s hard to get for me but I agree, it’s basically a sauce for everything.
Cholula garlic, Valentina, Melinda’s habenero garlic and various yellow bird.
BOMBA CALABRESE. Sorry, I can’t say it in lowercase. It’s just crushed peperoncini and oil. Yummmmm I put it on pizza, in soup, curry, stew, I dip my cheeses and fingers in it.
Cholula for eggs but it’s hard to find around here.
I’ll be on the lookout for Valentina as it’s been brought up often in this thread.
My own. I lacto ferment peppers with (and or) garlic, sjalots, ginger, veg, fruit, paprika, herbs, spices. It is easy to make.
Do you use an airlock or do you burp the vessel when you ferment?
I used to have those but now I just use weck jars and burp them every day.
I also make my own. I’ve tried a lot of different peppers and random ingredients. I think my favorite was a mango habanero (fermented with mango and some other goodies, also added some fresh mango at the end before blending and pasteurizing). I also made a few fun fermented sauces with those dried chilies you can get in bags from the grocery store, added some fresh ingredients like carrot and onion to get the ferment going.
I go for salsas and chunky condiments (e.g. black bean chilli crisp, hot Indian chutneys) than just a liquid hot sauce, even then it’s sriracha.
Valentina is the only true hot sauce. It makes Chalula taste like dogshit in comparison. That’s how perfect it is.
I like both but for different reasons. Valentina is thick and has a very vinegar tang, great if I want a punchier mouthful of sauce like on tacos. Cholula tends to blend in with the food, makes for a more even heat, plus the variety of flavors is awesome.
kinda boring if thats your perfect. To each their own i guees, but i hope you keep trying new ones as time goes by, theres so many varieties they arent all good for the same uses
Some good producers, Queens Majesty, Hot Ones, Heartbeat
Hot ones barbacoa is fantastic, Queens majest Ginger and scotch bonnet is so flavourful, secret Aardvark habenaro is amazing on pizza.
Tapatio for me.
Tapatio goes with everything!
-Homemade garlic cayenne hot sauce.
-Frank’s Red Hot. I put that shit on everything.
-Cholula for Mexican food.
Willing to share your fav garlic cayenne formulation?
I use Franks and Franks wing sauce a lot.
I live in NM so we have New Mexican Food, for that it comes pre covered in green or red chile.
Valentina. Not very hot, but I like it and use it like ketchup.
Try the black label if you want a bit more heat.
Love Valentina so much. Not too spicy, but it’s got such a unique flavour too.
Aardvark Habanero and Renfro’s Habanero Salsa. I just really like habanero, okay?
Yellowbird Habanero Sauce, Tapatío, Valentina, Sriracha.
Nando’s Peri Peri sauce.
El Yucateco Mayan Recipe
That depends. For pizza and Asian cuisine, Sriracha. Special shout-out to Underwood Ranch specifically, because that shit is top tier. For everything else, chipotle Tabasco. When that goes on sale, I buy a few bottles because I know I’ll go through it lol.
I bought a restaurant sized container of the Chipotle Tabasco a few years ago. Turns out that might be a bit too much for a single person to get through in a reasonable amount of time.
Sriracha on pizza, you’re my kind of people.
I actually had somewhat of a dependency on sriracha at one point in my life. I was working at a summer camp, and the food being kinda bland I brought in a bottle of sriracha one day. Then a few others did the same. At the end of the summer, we were basically daring each other to douse our meals in unholy amounts of that rooster’s sauce.
It took me three weeks after the job ended to be able to taste anything that didn’t have sriracha on it.
Really depends on the food and mood. Anywhere from basic crushed red pepper, Crystal, to ludicrous level stuff with ghosts and reapers.
I don’t use nuclear stuff as much due to intestinal stuff as I’m getting older though.
Also, for any upcoming spice hounds, pickle juice works very well to kill the burn, if you like pickles.
