Ask Lemmy

Depends what I'm eating! Different heats for different meats, y'know?

Here in Chicago there a company called Coop Hot Sauce that makes an amazing array of sauces seasonally. Their "Unicorn Tears" is a good all-purpose hotsauce featuring fermented seranno. They had one two years ago made with habanero and pepitas that was amazing on anything with cheese.

For big brands, Yucateco is very good. Their green habanero is good in chicken soup or in mac'n'cheese. The black label aged habanero is fire on fried chicken or added to salad dressings. The 'Caribbean' roasted habanero is closest to the fresh roasted habanero salsas that the better restaurants on the West Side make in house.

With East and Southeast Asian dishes, sambal oeleck is tops. I have a soft spot for hot mustard with egg rolls, though.

I like High River Rogue. Not super hot (relatively speaking), somewhat sweet, fruity. I like it because it’s flavorful and an unexpected twist on what’s usually just a vinegar-plus-angry-pepper shelf.

Smokin’ Ed’s Unique Garlique. Garlic makes everything better, and this sauce is both tasty and really hot at the same time.

Melinda's Ghost Pepper sauce. Hot and delicious, available at the supermarket near me

Classic black Truff sauce. The black truffle elevates just about everything I put it on, and the heat has depth instead of just being heat.

Pepper Palace has a Cinnamon Habanero sauce that tastes like a really good BBQ sauce. It's amazing

"Ultra death sauce"...

Yeah, the name... I'm not sure what's wrong with people naming chili sauces. Also, it's pretty inaccurate as I am alive and well.

Anyway, for me it hits a good balance between being proper spicy and a rounded taste.

Gochujang and Sriracha's version of chili garlic sauce

Every pepper head should know: Scoville ratings for hot-sauce are bullshit.

Most sauces simply list the Scoville number for the pepper in the sauce, and never actually get the sauce rated. This leads to people thinking they can tolerate much higher ratings than they can. And encouraging them to try stuff that will lead to a bad experience.

Gringo Bandito!

El Yucateco Black Label Chile Habanero

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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.

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.

i love yuzu kosho, most brands are fine. i'll put it on anything remotely asian. panda express gets the yuzu kosho. instant ramen gets the yuzu kosho. homemade gyuudon gets the yuzu kosho. plain white rice gets the yuzu kosho. its so good

Vicious Viper has a really nice taste and has my preferred hotness level.

I love spicy olive oils infused with chilis

Scandinavian Gold from PepperPalace. A lot of Pepper Palace stuff is good.

I used to use Franks or Franks Buffalo sauce in everything. It’s not very hot but has excellent flavor.

Now you made me go count: I have 7 different ones on the counter plus 5 in the fridge, more if you count horseradishes and spicy mustards (probably the empty bottle in recycling doesn’t count). I love the home made one, the chili crisp, and the dragon sauce, but my best answer to the question has to be Mellissa’s because I have so many of their flavors. They’re all a little different: maybe sriracha is good with one food but too sweet for another. Maybe I want to taste that Louisiana flair on my shrimp but that chili can stand up to reaper sauce

Elijah’s Xtreme Ghost Pepper. Incredible flavor and the right amount of heat for me