Frank's and Louisiana hot sauce taste like salty water with some pepper and vinegar thrown in to me. I have some Frank's I haven't used in months after someone told me it was a great hot sauce. You can make that stuff at home : water, cayenne, garlic, vinegar, looooots of salt. Or at least that's what it tastes like to me.
Dude...I didn't know Sriracha came in different flavors! Have you had any of these, and are they any good?
Still no votes for Spicy Bean Paste, Sambol or Harissa. When I wrote Spicy Bean Paste I didn't mean bean dip but the paste made out of fermented soybeans and chillis in Chinese cooking. For those who don't know what Sambol here is a link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambol And Harissa http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harissa
Isn't "sambol" a type of pepper sauce? There seems to be all kinds of it - I eat the Sambal Olek stuff. I think it's made by the same people that make the Sriracha.
I like Herdez Salsa Verde. Also, it's really good if you mix tomato sauce with chipotle peppers and warm it up. Got that idea from Rachel Ray's cookbook. Cheap Jalapeno Sauce from the gas station is good too.
Of your choices, Sriracha... but I really love the nearly mild sensation that is Louisiana Hot Sauce!
ALL OF THEM I seriously can't pick a favorite. I like to go into Spec's or some other store with a wide selection of funky hot sauces I've never heard of and grab a few to try. For any of you that like to go overboard, give Dave's Insanity Sauce a try. But, be careful. It's like a regular hot sauce, but with pure capsicum added to make it like 10 times hotter than normal. Fun stuff.
Interestingly enough, this thread reminded me of some FANTASTIC hot sauce a co-worker used to bring into work years ago. Thanks to facebook, I sent her a message asking what the name of it was. Habenero and garlic greatness. If she responds, I'll post it here.
Dave's is great stuff. But yeah, it's pretty hot. His Insanity Sauce isn't his hottest stuff, either (well, not the original version anyway - he's got several versions of the Insanity Sauce). I like it because it's one of the few really hot hot sauces that still tastes pretty decent. If you really want to try something hot made by Dave that doesn't cost a fortune, buy some of his Ghost Pepper sauce. I haven't tried it, but if he made it with Bhut Jolokia and enough of them, it'll blow your ass apart and make his Insanity sauce taste like candy. lol. Dave's Insanity Sauce was the first "ultra hot" hot sauce I've used and have since learned it's nowhere near the heat of some of the most popular ones among chileheads. The Mad Dog 357 I posted in this thread, for example, is hotter. There are some I've bought that just taste nasty, though (Chet's Gone Mad sauce or Endorphin Rush hot sauce, for example).
DoD, I'll have to try Mad Dog 357. Thanks for the tip. I remember watching a show about a world hot sauce championship, or something like that, and Dave's new Insanity Sauce was disallowed because it was too hot (and made that way artificially). The judges couldn't taste anything after they tried his. He created a whole new category, but now there's a lot more like it.
I haven't found an ultrahot hot sauce that I really like to use as a real sauce to be honest. Even the Mad Dog 357 I add drops at a time to things I cook or to soup. There's stuff I've tried that are way hotter than Mad Dog 357 like Satan's Blood, Chet's Gone Mad (nasty), Mad Dog's Revenge (didn't taste great from what I recall), etc. To be honest, if you want decent taste, you can't go wrong with Dave's Insanity stuff... it's probably among the better tasting of the stuff I've tried. But when you get to some of the hotter stuff, you're just dealing with heat more than taste, so I just use them as food additives rather than sauce. To prepare you for what you're getting into here's the heat level of some of the sauces and peppers I've mentioned. Check this out before you buy : http://www.chilliworld.com/FactFile/Scoville_Scale.asp
For real hot sauce fans, here's a blog I read sometimes. I swear this guy has a stomach made out of concrete and iron. Some of the stuff he eats and in the quantity would probably kill me : http://www.hotsauceblog.com/
One of my co-workers had a bottle of Dave's Insanity Sauce, and brought it one day when we cooked gumbo. I put a couple of drops in a bowl, and it was almost too hot to eat. That stuff is insane. For those who haven't seen it, it's almost black, and I'd bet that it's made of pure habanero seeds.
you left out Cholula.. in the poll.. it's pretty much a prototypical "hot sauce".. i personally can't give the nod or lead in preference to one.. for me.. i enjoy Sriracha.. Cholula.. Tabasco.. on equal levels.. all depending on the food/snack.. after that.. i like Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Wing sauce.. for obviously.. wings..
