So who likes REALLY good hot sauce?

I make a lot of my own from fresh peppers. Some from dried peppers and hot vinegar too. Never was a huge fan of super hot peppers until i started using just a little bit of them in milder sauces. Such as adding a couple ghost pods to a ripe jalapeno sauce. I got some real screamers growing this year but until then ive been trying some super hot sauces. Only from peppers and not extracts like Daves.

One that is truly exceptional is Burn and McCoy Exhorresco. I aint gunna lie...it can be brutal. A few drops on something is a huge heat increase but the flavor is excellent. All natural, low sodium and only quality ingredients.


Another that will flat out light you up is Tropical Pepper Company Scorpion sauce. Its a very simple and quite salty hot sauce. The amount of salt though pales to the intense heat so you dont need to use much of it. A few drops on a taco cranks out the heat quickly. Not a great sauce but its cheap for a really freaking hot.


On the econo line of sauce i love Marie Sharps. Not nearly as hot but the ingredient list is pretty nice other than high sodium. A few drops in your favorite mild salsa takes it up just a little. Their smoked sauces i find very enjoyable added to some salsas like Jacks Cantina. Around here they are under $3 a bottle. Thats pretty cheap for a imported sauce. Works well if you want to add a little smokiness to a homemade sauce easily.

I normally get this one because its milder. They offer one almost the same that is much hotter. LOVE the ingredient list for a cheap sauce.
https://www.mariesharps.bz/portfolio-it ... l-edition/
Smoked habanero pepper, fresh carrots, vinegar, onions, salt, lime juice and garlic.

PexPeppers, High River and a few others have some really top shelf products too. Most of the really good stuff will set you back over $10 a bottle. Tabasco just added a Scorpion sauce to their line up. It was originally a limited run but it was so popular that its now available through retail outlets. I still need to try this one. Normally i avoid Tabasco but the reviews have been too good not to try it.

Thanks for the info and detailed write up. I was thinking we could be best buds until you said "normally I avoid Tabasco." J/K!

I'm true Cajun blood. My family is just a handful of miles from where Tabasco is made in LA. I love spicy food, daylight to dark. I honestly don't think I'm into the super duper hot sauces...but to the wimps in my friend circle you'd think I put molten lava straight out of hell on my food. So I dunno.....

Thanks for all the info. Come to supper!

I prefer Crystal to Tabasco. Mainly cause i use it on cold fried chicken. When i do buy Tabasco its on sale and its either the Jalapeno of the Chipotle.

Chipotle is my favorite also.

Have you ever heard of "Hurts so good" sauce? I met the husband & wife couple that makes it in the little TN town I lived in for 10 years. Its really good if you just want to try something new....

http://www.hurtssogood.org/where-to-fin ... -good.html

I love spicy food and hot sauces, but I really don't understand the infatuation with the ones that hurt. I don't mind sweating a little when eating tacos or crawfish, but I don't want to hurt for an hour.

Something hot that I can extinguish quickly is my favorite.

Oh and Tabasco is king. Probably not because it is the best tasting, but it is the industry standard, like a comfortable old friend.

BamaProud":1tjs700f said:

I love spicy food and hot sauces, but I really don't understand the infatuation with the ones that hurt. I don't mind sweating a little when eating tacos or crawfish, but I don't want to hurt for an hour.

Something hot that I can extinguish quickly is my favorite.

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Exactly!

Just not a huge fan of frutescens peppers such as Tabasco and a couple birds eye type peppers. I much prefer annuums and chinenses. Ive grown them. About the only thing i like them for is hot vinegar. At one time Tabasco hot sauce was decent but the recipe has changed over the years. They offer a family reserve that cost a lot more. Crystal uses cayenne as do most "Louisiana" style hot sauces. Not really my favorite either but i love it with fried chicken.

Probably my favorite milder sauce is made with ripe jalapeno and just a few other hotter peppers to give it slightly more zip. 314 makes a pretty good ripe jalapeno sauce but the best was PexPeppers Taco Fuego. They no longer offer it but it was outstanding.

It dont matter how mild or hot it is though if the flavor is not correct for the dish. Jamaican/Caribbean curries for example just wont taste "Caribbean" without a bonnet, hab or another similar member of the chinense family of peppers. The taste and aroma is distinctive. I can put a couple drops of Exhorresco in a big bowl of Singapore style curry noodles and the flavor completely changes.

The aroma of those 7 Pot Primos is instant when added to something like that. Some people like it and some dont. You will find almost no use of chinense peppers in most Asian and Indonesian cuisine and mostly only regional uses in Indian cuisine. Such as ghost peppers and nagas. I like it but im not a fan of habanero and cheese for some reason. Its ok but not really my cup of tea.

Thai, India, Japan and most of China rely on annuums for the heat. As well as most of the USA and lots of Mexico although chinense pepper is certainly common in some places too. Tabasco (frutescens) is by far the minority world wide. A couple in Africa and maybe Thailand but its use pales in comparison to other peppers. I think they are plain nasty eaten fresh but so are many peppers.

This is 314. Not sure if its sold outside Missouri. Very simple and affordable sauce with mostly ripe red jalapeno. Wont melt you face and all natural too.

Ingredients: Red ripe Jalapeno Peppers, distilled vinegar, salt and spices.

This one is outstanding too. So mild you can use it like ketchup. Its got a little smokiness going on and a little sweetness. Its called BliS Blast. They age the stuff in barrels that had bourbon and maple syrup. Solid top shelf sauce if you like mild. Its around $10-12 a bottle but the bottle is larger too. Seen it cheaper on Amazon also.

We have aged this unique blend of hot peppers for up to a year in seasoned oak barrels that once held Kentucky bourbon, BLiS maple syrup, and Founder's Kentucky Breakfast Stout. The result is a complex hot pepper sauce with a kick of chilis combined with hints of chocolate, maple, hops, garlic, vanilla, wood and spice in one giant blast of umami.

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I won a free bottle of Bold Badger hot sauce the other day. I should get it tomorrow. His sauces are all fermented for 6 months. Reasonable amount of sodium for a really hot sauce. You probably wont be using it by the tbs. Well at least not his Overkill sauce made with Reapers.

I chose the Smokehosue BBQ flavor but i will probably order a couple others. $5 a bottle and shipping is pretty reasonable if you are close to Kentucky. 4 bottles shipped to me is $30.15.
https://www.boldbadgersauces.com/smokehouse-bbq.html

It arrived. Had to sample some. Not as hot as i imagined but it is hot. Actually about perfect for me and WAY less salty than Smoken Marie's!!!! Not over the top in the "chinense aroma or flavor either". Its actually rather mild in that respect. On hot food i seem to notice that flavor more. I just put some in my palm and licked it up like a dog

Not a hot sauce but great all the same. I like Pickapeppa steak sauce. I accidentally picked up a bottle at the store but it was spicy mango sauce instead. I didn't notice it until I got ready to use it on a steak. I'm glad I did. The stuff is great on steak and probably the same on chicken.

Im a huge fan of Pickapeppa. The regular is like gourmet A1 steak sauce. Goes killer with spicy Jamaican beef patties.

If you mix Pickapeppa with some bonnet hot sauce or just peppers its almost like a jerk seasoning. You only really need a few more things and its super close to a jerk. http://www.pickapeppa.com/recipes/

This is one of my favorites for mexican food. Not vinegar based but more of a chili rojo style. It has some heat

https://www.juanitas.com/pico-pica/hot-sauce/

Ingredients:
WATER, CHILI PEPPERS, RED JALAPENO PEPPERS, TOMATO PASTE, SPICES, SALT, LESS THAN 2%: CITRIC ACID, ACETIC ACID, VEGETABLE OIL(SOYBEAN AND/OR CANOLA OIL, XANTHAN GUM, GARLIC POWDER, SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE), PAPRIKA (COLOR).

Acetic acid is vinegar but if im reading it correctly it does not have very much in it. Looks pretty easy to make a copy cat too.

GMB54":2on7bc46 said:

https://www.juanitas.com/pico-pica/hot-sauce/

Ingredients:
WATER, CHILI PEPPERS, RED JALAPENO PEPPERS, TOMATO PASTE, SPICES, SALT, LESS THAN 2%: CITRIC ACID, ACETIC ACID, VEGETABLE OIL(SOYBEAN AND/OR CANOLA OIL, XANTHAN GUM, GARLIC POWDER, SODIUM BENZOATE (PRESERVATIVE), PAPRIKA (COLOR).

Acetic acid is vinegar but if im reading it correctly it does not have very much in it. Looks pretty easy to make a copy cat too.

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yeah it has vinegar but not a vinegar taste like tabasco style. Ive been eating this sauce for 40 years LOL its what I grew up on. I haven't tried the knock off recipes but I heard they are pretty close. When I run out of the 2 cases my wife bought me for christmas I may have to give it a whirl. Growing up you couldnt get it anywhere but california but when I moved out here Kroger had it for awhile until they discontinued it and I bought what they had on the shelf.

One of the reasons i grow jalapenos is they are nearly impossible to find ripe. When ripe they make outstanding taco/hot sauce. Not terribly hot and sweeter than green. I add a little of my hotter peppers to give it some zip for hot sauce. No other peppers added for a taco sauce unless they are as mild or milder than the jalapenos.

I usually make a quart or more at a time. Usually all fresh and quality vinegar. No thickeners, oils or preservatives. Choosing a better vinegar can really tame down that bite. I use more fresh lime juice too when going lighter on the vinegar....I almost never use white vinegar. If i want something very neutral i use rice or cane. Almost always use cane vinegar for hab or bonnet sauces.

Oh man that looks delicious!

I love hot sauces but not as towards the top of the scale ,when I was younger hotter the better but not so much these days. Tabasco has came out with some new flavors recently that are great sweet and spicey and raspberry chipotle are great flavored without a burn , any body else tried them? looking for a source for the RC flavor in the knoxville area, found it at jungle jims in ohio :tu: