I love hot sauces and am trying all that I can find. Most of them aren't really that good: Tabasco and Crystal sauce are kinda hot, but too sour and taste like too much like vinegar. Tapatio and Cholula taste good, but aren't very hot. Frank's isn't hot at all, it's just bottled ketchup XD The only good and hot ones I found so far were from specialized stores, the Voodoo sauce from New Orleans, and the Reaper sauce from SF, but I've never seen those in regular grocery stores. Another really great one was the homemade salsa from our local food truck that used habaneros, but they retired at the beginning of the pandemic. What hot sauces do you like? Can you recommend some?
There's also a 16/10 strength I love good Indian food, but hot for the sake of hot never appealed to me. I still want to taste the food.
Heat for the sake of heat isn't good. My current staples are Tabasco, Tapatio, Frank's, and Kikkoman's Wasabi Sauce. Wasabi is a great heat as it hits hard and rapidly retreats. The pepper based hot sauces will build slowly and often stay past their welcome. How a WASP from Indiana developed a tolerance for hot sauces is unknown. I was out with a group at an Indian restaurant and one guy, who was a bit of an ass, asked for something really hot. A sauce was brought out and I happened to get it first. Yes, it was pretty hot; however, I can take heat without showing any effects. I shrugged it off and said it wasn't too bad. He eats it and starts to sweat profusely while drinking all the water he could.
I don't a lot of spicy stuff, but I agree a good sauce needs a balance between heat and flavor. I don't like stuff that's really super hot and spicy, to the point where it makes the eater uncomfortable. Wasabi is a good example of something that's great in small quantities.
We used to sell this barbecue sauce at my store that was so hot it had warning labels and closeups of people screaming.
I used to like the hot sauce made by the makers of Bone Suckin' (barbecue) Sauce. It was a bit smoky, the perfect thing to mix into barbecue sauce to make it spicy. But I haven't seen it in stores for ages. I'll have to see if they actually still make it. Maybe it's possible to order some. Kor
I would never order sauces like the ones described in this thread. They'd probably make my head burst into flames. I mean, the spiciest thing I've ever eaten in my life were the grasshoppers I ate in Seattle a few years ago...that's an experience I'm not keen to repeat... And yeah, I meant that literally. Grasshoppers!
I don't eat really spicy food much anymore, but I used to, and the Inner Beauty, Ass Kickin, and Pain is Good, and a few others I can't even recall were the best imho. Pain is Good used to do a mustard-based one that was excellent. No 9 or something; not quite the one at the link below. https://innerbeautyhotsauce.com/ https://www.asskickin.com/ https://www.hotsauceworld.com/1096.html
In my experience the key to good hot sauce is, don't pay attention to expiration dates. Like wine it improves with age. The vinegar taste will eventually dissipate leaving only pure flavor. I have an unopened bottle of this. https://www.amazon.com/Ass-Blaster-Hot-Sauce-Outhouse/dp/B002IN5HT6 that expired in 2007. The bidding is open at $100. Kidding. It's five hundred. My open bottle of Franks, the one I currently use, expired 11/16/2017 and it is delicious. Me either, I prefer flavor and aging it delivers.
That's actually a little milder form of wasabi. Then there was the Wasabi movie with Jean Reno. Trailer
Fresh grated wasabi root is kind of a rare commodity. Most of the grocery store wasabi sauces will be blended with horseradish with green food coloring and "wasabi flavoring", if they actually contain any real wasabi at all. And of course the powdered stuff isn't as good as fresh, even if it's made from 100% wasabi. Kor
Friend of mine is very into hot sauces and has a whole shelf in his garage dedicated to it. I've probably never seen so much hot sauce in one place.
Not that I would eat them, but there's a display at our local science centre with examples of how you can cook different types of insects. You'll have to let me know if you're ever in my area. Edit: Oops, my bad. Posted twice. Sorry guys.
I actually hate wasabi and horseradish - their heat is in the nose, I like it in the mouth (don't quote out of context!) XD