We are starting this post to talk about our favorite hot sauces! As spice-addicted chileheads, we love both homemade hot sauce recipes and commercial hot sauces – and we have a whole fridge shelf full of them and the selection is ever-changing. What are your favorite hot sauces?
Best Hot Sauces: Our Top Picks for Heat and Flavor
Marie Sharp's is one of the best hot sauce companies out there, we haven't met one of their hot sauces that we didn't like. Based in Belize, Marie Sharp began experimenting with recipes on her family farm in the early 1980s, making deliciously unique hot sauce blends of carrot, garlic, citrus, smoked habanero peppers, and even cactus! Our favorites are their classic Hot Habanero Hot Sauce, which has so much flavor with habaneros, carrots and garlic, these bottles never last long! It's very hot, but addictive, and easy to consume in large quantities. We also recently tried their Nopal green Habanero pepper sauce, which has amazing flavor – and it's unusual that it's make from Nopals (prickly pear cactus) and Habanero, a perfect combination! We are growing some native prickly pear cactus in our landscape, we may just have to try to make a batch of hot sauce using the tangy pads and homegrown Habaneros. Habaneros are definitely one of our favorite hot peppers for hot sauce, their fruity-hot unique flavor is out of this world! Pairs nicely with the nopals.
Green Belly Foods hot sauces are very, very good! We absolutely love their Green Belly hot sauce with Cilantro, Habaneros, Garlic, Organic Apple Cider Vinegar, Olive Oil and Salt – these flavors combine for an excellent spicy green sauce with the perfect amount of heat and flavor that will leave you craving more. It is superb on eggs, potatoes, tacos, burritos, you name it! Their Red Belly hot sauce is also delicious. Their green sauce is so good it's inspiring us to try making some cilantro-based hot sauces someday, as cilantro gives it such a green earthy flavor that is addicting. We also love these guys as they are also a Colorado-company!
Another Colorado company, Sendy Sauce, shown next to Green Belly above, also makes a nice rich almost-bbq like sauce called "Full Send" that has nice heat and great flavor. Great with potatoes or on burritos and tacos. Doesn't last long.
We enjoyed this Ouray, Colorado Hot Sauce that raises money for the Ouray Volunteer Fire Department. We tried their Red Habanero Hot Sauce and it's delicious and hot. Just wish they were not in plastic bottles.
Cooper's Small Batch Hot Sauces are also delicious! Their unique Leche Diablesa is the only "white hot sauce" we've tried and it is SOOO GOOD! Handmade in Denver, Colorado, this white hot sauce blends coconut milk with zesty lime juice and a medium-level kick of jalapeño and Thai chili peppers. Unusual and so tasty, this one makes you crave more. They also have several other hot sauces that are equally delicious and are always coming out with something new.
PexPeppers Hot Sauces is another great Colorado company that puts out some great hot sauces. Their "I'm so Chile" Roasted Pueblo Chile Sauce is the bomb! Shouldn't have bought it by the gallon, it's good on everything. Pueblo Red Hot Sauce is also very good. They also release lots of new hot sauce flavors seasonally, so we're always excited to taste the next batch.
Looking for a heat punch? Bertie's Scorpion Pepper Sauce is wickedly hot, it only takes a couple drops to spice up whatever you're putting it on. Of course, it's hard to stop with just a drop or two and we usually end up crying (in happiness) after breaking out this bottle as we can't keep adding more! It's VERY HOT and tasty, too. Trinidad Scorpions are VERY hot and they make great hot sauces.
We found this Traeger brand Carolina Reaper hot sauce at our local Ace Hardware Store. Wasn't expecting much but ended up loving it! A little goes a long way, and it also has great flavor. The larger bottle was nice too, as it lasted longer! Carolina Reapers make great hot sauce, we grow them every year and use them for homemade hot sauces and salsa, they have great fruity flavor and pack a ton of heat.
And who can resist the classic Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce? This vinegary, mouth-watering sauce is a staple in our fridge, it's good for everything from bean burritos to frittatas. A classic!
We didn't want to stop at just our favorite hot sauces, there are a lot of great companies out there creating seasonings too – including Hellfire Farm, who makes some killer seasonings like the delicious Habanero All Purpose Seasoning which is great on everything, and Colorado-based Flatiron Pepper Company's excellent variety of hot pepper flake flavors including our favorite Four Pepper Blend – all of which have become a staple in our spice cabinet.
Stay tuned, we'll add more of our best hot sauce picks coming soon!
Love hot sauce?
Grow and make your own! Check out our "Best Peppers for Hot Sauces" post:
Check out some of our favorite Hot Sauce Recipes and make your own!
Here's a great book to inspire you to make your own fermented hot sauces, which are super tasty and even have some probiotics in them so you could say they are uber-healthy. ;)
We have this Fermented Hot Sauce Cookbook on our shelf, (we originally found it at the local library and then purchased a copy). We use a handmade fermentation crock to make some killer hot sauces with some of the recipes in this book and our own recipes.
