Best I can find locally is Enconas Carolina Reaper sauce but I will say it's nowhere near hot enough to justify that name imo. Always a bottle of Sirracha handy as well.
this post was submitted on 13 May 2025
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Scandinavian Gold from PepperPalace. A lot of Pepper Palace stuff is good.
I love spicy olive oils infused with chilis
It really depends on the dish and what you want out of the hot sauce.
My general, everyday preference is Cholula or Crystal. Both those have a distinctly hispanic/tex-mex flavor profile. For east and southeast Asian cuisine, I prefer Sriracha. If I really want the hot sauce to be the focus of the dish, I tend to prefer Marie Sharp's, especially the carrot or grapefruit varieties.
El Yucateco Black Label Chile Habanero
Grace Hot Pepper Sauce. It has this tangy, buttery flavour and a nice amount of heat that accentuates food without melting your face.
I think they use a few different peppers in the mash as while it has a little of the apricot fire Scotch Bonnet taste to it, as you'd expect from a Caribbean brand with a bunch of Scotch Bonnets on the label, it's not the predominant chilli flavour here. I think the mash gets slightly fermented too due to that buttery taste the sauce has.
Before the pandemic it was 50p for an 85ml bottle, I miss that. £1.50 for the same size bottle still feels like a rip off.
Edit: just looked Grace Hot Pepper Sauce up as I've been thinking about it all day now since making this comment, and their website says the peppers used are a blend of Habanero and Cayenne in the mash. So my tasting apricot fire is likely a placebo from the image on the label, lmao.
I was going to buy some based on your description, but it's more than twice £1.50 here in Canada, $13.99 for two bottles.
Fucking hell. For two 85ml bottles? That's insanity.
Just want to soapbox here about the hot sauces that are sold to: 1) be as hot as possible; 2) have no flavor aside from pepper.
No one is enjoying XXX: Blow our ur Sphincter 3000 and as far as I am concerned these things are novelty items like pranks from joke shops. If the "schoville" number is factoring into your hot sauce buying decisions then I have personal beef with you and hope you step in a deep puddle next time it's raining.
I have an interesting biological quirk where my mouth doesn't register capsacin, the chemical that makes thing spicy/hot. It's been a thing my entire life. I can and have just chomped down on habanero and ghost peppers with no immediate problems (I don't tend to notice how spicy food is until it's on the way out).
Those super hot sauces you describe don't even taste like pepper most of the time. More often than not, they just taste like vinegar. Sometimes you'll get lucky and there's a hint of liquid smoke, but most of the time it's just vinegar and capsacin.
You get a pass.
Might have been slightly exaggerating my disdain for comic effect!
I'm agreeing with you. Those super hot sauces which only exist to prove hot they can make them are absolute ass. They taste gross.
Ah my bad misread it as you having some genetic predisposition towards them or something lol
Nah. Since my mouth doesn't register the spicy, I don't get the flavor of the sauce drowned out by the overwhelming spiciness. So I feel like I get a better sense for the flavor of the sauce than most people do. And I can assure you, if they advertise themselves as being absurdly spicy, they taste like straight vinegar. And not good vinegar, just a bland white vinegar.
Gotcha
Sirracha because it's easy to get everywhere. I also make my own Vietnamese chilli oil.
Frank's Red Hot
Cholula
And a great that's hard to get: Yellow Dragon Lantern Pepper Mash (黄灯笼) from Hainan. Amazing fruity flavour and hotter than hell.
Frank's is cayenne pepper based. That is generally my favorite pepper, but it is also easily found in powdered form, and overall can easily add scoville with cayenne taste to any other sauce. Chili powder and Pepperoncini are also widely available in dry form, and layer taste to other sauces/spice without necessarily going over 9000.
Yep, seconded. For everyday use those two are really good. I’d also suggest Crystal and Louisiana, but I prefer Cholula out of the lot.
I feel basic saying Franks but it's Franks for me 90% of the time
It's not hard to find so you never feel bad about slathering it over anything in copious amounts.
Tastes good, but you can totally gourmand up with it without guilt. Plus, at least in the UK we don't have the variety that I think folks in the Americas have, Frank's is, whilst common, not Tabasco, Encona, or Reggae Reggae common.
There is a South American deli near me in Edinburgh that does amazing imported tins of salsa verde but that is literally the only place I can think of to get something non-Franks locally.
Vicious Viper has a really nice taste and has my preferred hotness level.
Those Wings brand little packets that are white on the front and clear on the back
El yucateco has types with some decent heat while still being cheap. Usually if you want any kind of spice the price rises with the spice level.
The Tabasco scorpion one is pretty good heat for the cost as well
Yellowbird Habenero
Marie Sharp's, a hot sauce company out of Belize. Sooooo good.
100%!! Probably also mentioning that Melinda's essentially ripped off Marie's recipes during some sheisty imporg deal.
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Secret Aardvark habanero sauce is so, so good. I'll put it on just about anything. It's by no means the hottest sauce out there, but I'll put its flavor up against any other sauce. I buy this stuff by the case at this point.
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Valentina!
I love it, its sour and not too spicy to hide tastes.
Good ol' Sriracha because of its versatility. It goes well with so many foods.
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Valentina Extra Hot
Great choice, and cheap compared to others!
The standard valentines is close to cholula sauce for a fraction of the price.
Frank's (extra hot buffalo, too) and Sriracha are always on hand in my house, too.
Mexico Lindo Habanero is my latest favorite.
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