Search & Destroy: Hot Sauce

Cholula won one of those readers vote gizmodo things recently and I realized I had never tried it before. I am not a loyalist to any type of hot sauce and as long as it's not sweet I usually like it well enough. I do prefer certain hot sauce on certain foods though:
tabasco on bagels
franks or petes in pasta, pizza, chicken or eggs
valentinas, sriracha or trader joes green dragon sriracha on eggs
sriracha with soy sauce or ketchup mixtures
garlic red chili pepper with rice or raw fish things

Trader Joes has a new fresh ghost pepper salsa and it's probably one of the hottest products that they have carried.

yerac, did you ever go here and do the tasting?

https://heatonist.com/pages/nyc-hot-sauce-stores

Search:
Jock's Smoked Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce
East Coast Chilli Company - Caroline Reaper & Honey Chilli Sauce "Midnight 21"

These two are the gold standard of hot sauce for me. I don't add these sauces to meals, I make meals for these sauces.

xpost, no I haven't, have you been? I have time this week to go to wburg so maybe I should check it out. Although spending over $10 on any hot sauce is not my thing. When I worked at s0undf!x on bedford awhile ago they bought the coffee shop next door and tried to overhaul the space into a bar/venue. We were making savory waffles and we got this really really good blyn based hot sauce for them. I was buying it at cost for my own personal use. I thought it was called Petro or something but can't seem to find it online.

oh, derp. it was called Petro.

https://i.imgur.com/avuzmVx.jpg
from a roadside greengrocer / eatery near Dixon, CA, where we got some awesome tamales

I want something with just heat and nothing else which I can add to meals which are otherwise fine but not spicy enough, everything I buy has other flavour or is too strong, any ideas?

I put red pepper flakes or a little bit of red curry powder on things a lot. You can also infuse olive oil with red pepper flakes or fresh peppers.

red c

ugh. indian red chile powder i mean.

Yeah, thinking about using chili powder, for some reason I imagine it won't mix evenly, but won't know until I give it a go

we've been experimenting using it in things like making poke (when we don't have jalapeno or the red pepper flakes aren't doing it). It might depend on the type of chili powder you have but so far it's been surprisingly fine.

If you do the olive oil thing, it's super easy. It's the base of a spaghetti recipe we make but you just heat up olive oil and dump in a bunch of red pepper flakes (plus garlic and fresh basil for the actual recipe) and then strain. It's really delicious. I should try to use some fresh peppers in the same manner.

Valentina black label is my favorite Mexican hot sauce and probably the one I would pick if I could only pick one.

Cholula chipotle is the best overall hot sauce imo, followed by Valentina & Culichi.

Crystal is my go-to

I want something with just heat and nothing else which I can add to meals which are otherwise fine but not spicy enough, everything I buy has other flavour or is too strong, any ideas?

no idea if this is along the lines of what you desire but i sure as hell am getting some! xxposts

https://www.amazon.com/Reaper-Puree-Net-Wt-FL/dp/B0097YI480

Sounds to me like you want to be using capsaicin extract of some kind like this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P9P65WI/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_MmAACb91A4CQY

el yucateco green imo

classic. tried the black label (smoked version) once but don't recall if i felt a preference. marie sharp's is some finefine hot sauce, too

tapatio or die

local schwarma place makes delicious schug that i make sure to grab enough of whenever i eat there to last a month at home. the local acme carries on brand of schug that is not hot at all and kinda crap tasting :( - if u can find it good tho i prefer it almost 100% of the time over any hot sauce

i am not super into hot sauce as a rule but two things i know:

i do not like cholula
i fucking love crystal truly madly deeply

People talk about crystal a lot but I just looked up the bottle and I don't think I have ever seen it.

Although, when I lived in the south any type of hot sauce made my mouth swell up and then one day in my early-mid 20s it stopped happening.

trying to try more peri peri sauces now
tried so far: nando’s, African Rhino brand

gbx otm about el yucateco

best chili paste is the homemade one at my local vietnamese restaurant

*fistbump w VG* Crystal is the best value product in America

anybody try joe perry's "boneyard brew" or whatever

I like all the varieties of Yucateco that I’ve tried: red, green and Xxtra Hot. That’s probably my favorite widely distributed sauce. For Asian food I usually go with Sambal Oelek but it would be better if it was a bit spicier.

Crystal tastes good and is not very hot, it's pretty much a Tabasco style hot sauce. Some people also like it as it has no preservatives in it's recipe. Never seen the 'extra hot' version, but it and other products in that line are supposed to exist somewhere. Crystal is pretty ubiquitous, you can get it at discount groceries all the time.

I've got a bottle of Crystal, Yucateco Red and Rooster sauce myself. Yucoteco Red adds up the heat, it can have a bit of kick, depending on what you eat it with.

Crystal is far better than Tabasco imo

yeah crystal has more vinegar and pleasant heat -tabasco is v harsh imo

I dislike ketchup but love ketchup mixed with sriracha.

I once forgot the dressing for my salad and only had a bottle of tabasco in my desk. i tried it but would not recommend.

tabasco and a little oil maybe

Another vote for green El Yucateco here. I don't use a lot of hot sauce at home, but that's the main one I always have around.

Also, extremely hipster voice: secret aardvark

and tbh the hot ones house sauce, Los calientes, is also good

I live in NO,LA, the home of Crystal, and I don't like it. If I want a pepper flavored vinegar, I could concoct one pretty easily.

Tabasco is overpriced.

"Louisiana" brand hot sauce is all the aged-pepper flavor of Tabasco, without so much vinegar as in Crystal. It's cheap. It's my go to.

The best hot sauce distributed from Louisiana remains Melinda's, a Belizean/Caribbean style hot sauce where the peppers are sweetened with carrots and tartened up with lime juice. Made in Costa Rica, distributed from a warehouse near the New Orleans airport. It's not the right sauce for Monday red beans and rice. But its the right hot sauce maybe 30% of the time.

I keep Huy Fong Sambal Oelek, Huy Fong Sriracha, La Costena chipotles in adobo, Melinda's XXX, and Louisiana brand hot sauces in the house at all times. They're all good. The sambal oelek is the most useful in general cooking and Mediterranean dishes like hummus bi tahini, the chipotles in adobe in Latin dishes, the Louisiana brand in Creole dishes, the sriracha in dishes that want heat/sweet/garlic, and Melinda's at the table.

I have become a hot sauce locavore. I like to use a lot of Uncle Brutha’s (https://www.unclebrutha.com) in my cooking, and the annual editions of the Number One Sons’ Chili Bears (http://number-1-sons-kimchi-pickles-kraut.mybigcommerce.com/2018-full-chili-bear-lineup/) are important things because that is my source for travel hot sauce, a key item in my operational man bag.

The only non-DC area hot sauce I use is that Spicy Chili Crisp stuff that online people never shut about, because it’s really good with ramen and basically anything else, I just resent not knowing exactly what the hell is actually in it, just like every other American who finds themselves relying heavily on a product from China.

I've bought six hot sauces from Heatonist (the latest Hot Ones season's mellower 3 pack, 3 others earlier) and pleased with all of them. The Heartbeat and Hippy Dippy Green sauces are standouts on eggs. The mild to medium sauces add a nice flavor without tilting to too much heat, for me. Plus, it's fun to watch the Hot Ones interviews and know the tastes of some sauces.

Second Secret Aardvark, too. Will try the Serrabanero and Spicy Mayo versions, when I see them at my usual stores.

I love sambal oelek

I just learned what sambal oelek and spicy chili crisp is. I always just called them red chili garlic paste. Love those on poke.

oh, i like Melinda's too. currently have their naga jolokia version in rotation
xpost to Sanpaku

Melinda’s Naga Jolokia is in the fridge next to Uncle Brutha’s No. 9 but I rarely break it out because the Chili Bears are more fun

I live in NO,LA, the home of Crystal, and I don't like it. If I want a pepper flavored vinegar, I could concoct one pretty easily.

like good for you but honest to god between work parenting trying to move all this shit i'm not gonna spend time making my own inferior version of something i can buy a big bottle of for $1.50

louisiana is a good hot sauce will investigate melinda's

Now mix that Louisiana with some lemony tartare sauce. Lovely tangy sauce for fish and chips.

I haven't been able to find Louisiana Gold around here. Is it worth ordering online to try it?

I kind of would want to start making my own hot sauce just to know what is going in it. And to manage the hot and sodium level.

I have a nephew who regularly grows cultivars of absurdly hot peppers (bhut jolokia, red savina habanero, scotch bonnet). When he drops off a bag I'll make my version of a Belizean hot sauce, and give my nephew a couple jars of the product. Honestly, less hot supermarket habaneros work better.

If you have ripe (red) jalepenos, a Hoy Fong-style sriracha (just 5 ingredients) would be pretty simple, too.

Creole style hot sauces require aging the peppers, sometimes in staved barrels, so are less of a lazy afternoon project.