I'm one who enjoys a good hot sauce. It's gotta have hot, to be sure, but it also MUST HAVE flavor. I've found Ring of Fire XX-Hot Habanero Sauce to fill the bill. Great heat, excellent flavor. You can see chunks of garlic and onion in the sauce. It's actually thick enough that I'll use it as a salsa dip. Other very good sauces I can get at the local ShopRite are Yucatan Sunshine Habanero Suace and Tabasco Brand Habanero Sauce. mmmmmmm... good! What do you guys and gals like?
I like simple stuff. I like Frank's Red Hot, Tabasco, Tapatio, Valentina, and salsa that my girlfriend's mom makes. My girlfriend is Mexican, so their family likes all this hot stuff. I like food with a kick to it,but I don't see the fun in eating stuff that will burn taste buds.
I remember walking through one of those hot sauce shops in the South this summer where I tried a sauce made with chili extract, rather than chilis...One drop was enough to get my scalp damp! I enjoy making my own salsa and guacamole. The salsa usually has a variety of peppers: jalepeno, serrano and habanero, while I usually stick to serrano's for the guac. Good stuff!
I agree 100%. I'm not into the heat just for heat's sake, and there are plenty of those out there. It's gotta have flavor or I'm not buying it. I use hot sauce as a condiment, not an additive.
I have a coworker who is quite the hot sauce fan. He introduced me to Cholulahttp://cholula.com original. It is not overpowering, but adds lots of flavor.
I love the flavor of habeneros, but I dont always care for the...ah...afteraffects a few hours later. I try to find habenero sauce that's hot, but that doesn't give me the "ring of fire" later on. I love Melinda's but use it sparingly. Cholua is very good. I have one at home that I bought in Mexico, but I can't recall the brand. that one is at the perfect heat level for me and has excellent flavor. I also love Sriracha sauce (find it at Asian markets, dirt cheap), hot chipolte sauces (like El Yucateco), as well as ground dried chipotle powder. My favorite dish to add hot sauce too? scrambled eggs.
I go for the exotic! Actually I'm a big fan of the aforementioned Sriracha, which seems to go well with any & everything.....
^+1^ Back when I was in, there weren't any wars, so the rotation on field chow wasn't what it has been lately. All of the food was dry and gross and the little bottles of tabasco were even dried up.....just a little dried crust of pepper sauce rattling around. When we did find it in liquid form it was always brown and not red. We used it anyway. The Hershey bars were all chalky white too..... I like sriracha we use it on noodles. I have even used it to force a patina on my carbon steel knives. There is a hot sauce vendor down in the market in downtown Charleston. I'll try to take some pics next time I'm down there and will take some orders if you all want to try some different brands.
Texas Pete on rice is crazy good.....forgot to mention that above. It is a meal-treat all on it's own.
I currently have a pomegranate ghost chili sauce that I made. It only has a little Bhut Jolokia, but I also added some mid and lower level peppers to round out the flavor and heat. Aside from the pepitas, xanthan gum and pomegranate that I juiced, the rest of the of it is from my garden and dehydrated. I dont remember completely, but it has onion powder, smoked garlic powder, Anaheim, Poblano, Smoked Habanero, Bhut Jolokia, toasted pepitas, cumin, rice wine vinegar, and pomegranate juice. It is just about gone, but I still have more of the base left. I think next might be a orange pineapple sauce to finish out the grilling season. I am a big fan of the Rooster Sauce. It is inexpensive and tasty. There has been a bottle in my fridge for the better part of 20 years.
I am growing some Trinidad scorpion peppers, hope they produce good. Supposed to be hotter than the ghost pepper. Gonna make a hot sauce of mass destruction with them!!
I'm growing some Scotch Bonnet peppers and while I don't like "hot", I'm going to make some Jamaican jerk sauce with some of them. Jerk isn't right unless it's hot.
