- 2 months ago
Today on Epicurious, we’ve asked hot sauce experts Ed Currie, Eric McCree, and Chitra Agrawal to give us their unfiltered, honest reviews of some prominent hot sauce brands found on supermarket shelves. Which sauce packs the most bang for your buck, and which should you avoid at all costs?
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00:00We've gathered three hot sauce experts
00:02to blind taste test every brand of hot sauce
00:04we could get our hands on
00:05to see which ones meet their standards.
00:14Crystal.
00:16It's not very thick.
00:18That's bright red.
00:19I can tell you right now it's a hot sauce
00:21that's made with salt mash,
00:22which means it has been fermented with salt
00:24in big, huge bins.
00:26I'm guessing it's like a Louisiana-style hot sauce.
00:29So when I'm tasting the hot sauce,
00:30the first thing that I look at is the balanced heat.
00:33What type of chili it's coming from?
00:36Is it fermented?
00:37Is it dried?
00:38Is it fresh?
00:39What I'm looking for is the flavor to come
00:41with a heat that follows,
00:44something that complements my food, not overwhelms it.
00:48You're not just tasting the heat,
00:50but you're tasting all these layers of flavors,
00:52savory, sour, even bitter sometimes.
00:55What is the texture?
00:56You want something that's gonna have consistency
00:58so that it kind of binds with your food
01:00and gives you a layered experience.
01:04The heat profile is very balanced.
01:06It's very light, I would say mild.
01:09Which is good for everyday people.
01:11It's definitely a fermented chili flavor that I'm tasting,
01:14but then the vinegar really hits you.
01:16Flavor profile is very balanced.
01:18The flavors are working together.
01:20There is a little bit of creaminess to it.
01:22It's gonna coat my food and then be an enhancer,
01:26not an overwhelm.
01:28Clearly a Louisiana-style hot sauce.
01:31Salt, cayenne, vinegar.
01:34That's a Louisiana hot sauce.
01:36Usually very acid-forward and loose.
01:40It's because it's intended to be on something that is very fatty.
01:43Crystals.
01:45Crystals?
01:46Crystals.
01:47Wow.
01:48It's a great everyday hot sauce for normal people.
01:51I'm not a normal person.
01:53A lot of the Louisiana-style hot sauces use cayenne pepper.
01:57Very easy to source.
01:58They're everywhere.
01:59They all have the same general heat.
02:02The peppers are fermented.
02:03That's really adding complexity to it.
02:05It is beloved.
02:07This is a fantastic sauce.
02:10Cholula Original.
02:13A little bit thicker.
02:15It's definitely nicely emulsified.
02:17Some black specks, which look like black pepper to me.
02:22It's very mild.
02:24What I don't like is the amount of salt in it.
02:27Some cumin, some chili powder.
02:29There's a dance going on in my mouth after the salt assault,
02:34which means that when it goes on food, it's gonna taste good.
02:37It has like this creamy type of texture.
02:40I would say this is a little bit more of a Mexican-style hot sauce.
02:45That means it's been enhanced with something that gives it more of a smoky aroma.
02:49Something that is a little bit thicker.
02:51Not as much vinegar.
02:52You're usually putting Mexican hot sauce on things that are not so fatty.
02:59They also have like your fresh tomato and onion, like a pico de gallo.
03:05So you don't really need that sharp acid to cut it.
03:08Cholula.
03:09That's right.
03:10Cholula.
03:11The hot sauce that I would grab for my burrito or nachos.
03:15Mexican-style hot sauces usually use a wide range of peppers.
03:20This hot sauce is using a chili de arbol and a pekin chili.
03:26The chili de arbol is subtle and the pekin is not so subtle.
03:30So mixing the two gives you a well-balanced heat.
03:33They also use apple cider vinegar.
03:35It enhances everything that you put in there.
03:38They add a little bit of sweetness.
03:40One of my favorite things about Cholula is the bottle top.
03:44No matter where you're sitting, if you see that piece of wood, you know they got Cholula.
03:48This is my go-to sauce.
03:54This sauce is much thinner.
03:56Absolutely no sauce sticks to the spoon.
03:59Whenever it's this texture, I feel like the chilies are fermented.
04:04You smell salt.
04:05This is a salt mashed pepper.
04:08I got hit with the vinegar first and then started to feel the chili.
04:13The heat does linger a little bit.
04:15It's building and my mouth is tingling.
04:18Heat kind of has a level of development.
04:22I feel it on my tongue and I feel it on my lips.
04:24It's like a balloon that keeps on inflating and deflating.
04:27It's kind of bland flavor-wise.
04:30It's not thick at all, very runny.
04:32Feels like it's vinegar and chilies and salt.
04:37What most of America is used to.
04:39I think it's Tabasco.
04:40It's Tabasco.
04:44It's Louisiana hot sauce.
04:46It's just not very flavored well.
04:49Their sauce is pretty damn simple.
04:51Distilled vinegar, peppers, and salt.
04:53The fermentation of these chili peppers really is adding to the complexity,
04:57even though you're looking at a label that has only three ingredients.
05:01The Tabasco pepper is a type of cayenne pepper.
05:04The oil stays in your mouth longer, which is why drinking water is not really going to help.
05:10The actual pepper oil is in your mouth.
05:13Tabasco has the iconic dash spout.
05:16It lets one drop at a time come out.
05:19It works with Tabasco because it is so liquidy.
05:23I love fermentation.
05:24I definitely give it props for that.
05:27It's solid.
05:29Frank's Red Hot.
05:32A little thicker.
05:33It has a little bit of cream to it where it like kind of sticks to the spoon.
05:38It smells very vinegar forward.
05:40There's some really good pepper solids in here.
05:43First thing you're getting is salt.
05:45I don't get as much heat here.
05:48It's like less than mild.
05:51The least pepper flavor, but the most balanced.
05:54I definitely feel the vinegar here, but it's not overpowering.
05:58The flavor is definitely more savory and salty.
06:03I love salty things, so I like this.
06:06Texture-wise, fantastic.
06:08Creamy, but not overly creamy.
06:10The type of sauce you mix with butter and you make a wing sauce out of.
06:14This is Frank's Hot Sauce.
06:16I feel like it's Frank's.
06:17Tastes just like Frank's.
06:19The iconic bottle of Frank's.
06:21Every place you go to have chicken wings,
06:23they're using Frank's in the back as the base of their sauce.
06:26Because of its savoriness, the saltiness definitely goes
06:30well with anything that's fatty, like meats.
06:34You don't really need to add any extra seasoning or salt
06:37into the sauce that you're coating the chicken with because this is ready to go.
06:42I am a fan of Frank's for hot wings.
06:45Good job, Frank.
06:48Tabasco, scorpion sauce.
06:50This sauce looks very red.
06:53Ketchup red.
06:54Very thin.
06:55A little bit of cream to it.
06:57Blended perfectly.
07:00This is definitely the hottest one so far.
07:02This hot sauce is taking me somewhere else.
07:05From the back of my throat on the top and it's moving forward,
07:08there's probably a super hot in there.
07:10Maybe a ghost or a scorpion.
07:12It has really no flavor.
07:15So it's just salt and pepper.
07:17But if you're looking for something just to make it spicy, this is the hot sauce.
07:22The texture is beautiful.
07:24It's like a Frank's texture, only a little bit, like it's already got butter in it,
07:28you know, so it's a little bit creamier and thicker.
07:31Someone that loves heat would love this sauce.
07:35It's the scorpion version of Tabasco.
07:38Scorpion pepper.
07:40That stuff is off the charts.
07:41Very high Scoville rating.
07:43They are not very sweet at all.
07:45They are very bitter pepper.
07:47There's guava, pineapple.
07:49They're trying to counteract some of that heat with some flavor.
07:53I don't think they did a very good job because I'm not really getting much of that.
07:56Your brain is basically telling your body like you're on fire.
07:58That's why I'm like sweating a little bit.
08:00In a lot of hot countries, you eat spicy food because your tongue is tasting this hot pepper
08:09and telling your body that you're on fire.
08:12And so you start to sweat and cool yourself down.
08:15I have respect for this hot sauce.
08:21Definitely a thicker sauce.
08:24The bat is chunky.
08:25That's more what I'm looking for in a hot sauce.
08:28The texture is going to make the sauce an accent to the food instead of disappearing into the food.
08:37It is an instant kick.
08:40The heat is very balanced in this hot sauce.
08:43I'm finally tasting the pepper over the salt.
08:47I'm getting more of a back burn, which lets me know that this
08:50has something that is more tropical to it.
08:55My guess is that it's habanero.
08:57Habanero peppers are what most people consider to be a hot pepper.
09:01Kind of like a fruity chili that has some floral notes to it.
09:06The color actually is what gives you the different flavors.
09:10This is a well-balanced sauce.
09:12Very pepper, like black pepper forward, which you can see specks of black pepper everywhere.
09:18The texture is chunky.
09:19I'm chewing on something.
09:21Is it secret aardvark sauce?
09:25Secret aardvark?
09:26Habanero hot sauce.
09:28It's a habanero sauce.
09:29Tomatoes are the number one ingredient.
09:32The sugar is probably coming from the tomato, and it says tomato juice as well.
09:37Carrots aren't used for the flavor in hot sauce.
09:40They're used as a thickener.
09:42This is a solid hot sauce.
09:44This is a beautiful sauce.
09:45I like it.
09:46I think it's more of a salsa.
09:49Hot Ones, the classic.
09:51This one's much darker.
09:53Like a brownish red.
09:55Possibly this could be a dried chili.
09:58Very unique hot sauce.
10:00It's not very hot to me.
10:03But there is like a spice.
10:05It's very flavorful, like a smoky chipotle pepper.
10:09I am tasting more vinegar than I am tasting chili.
10:14It's not as chunky as the other one, but it has a lot of pulp.
10:19It's a flavoring hot sauce.
10:21You're getting a nice smokiness to it.
10:24Hot Ones classic hot sauce.
10:26I might have been the guy who made it, so what I'm going to do is step back from judging
10:31this one.
10:32I would strain it personally for me so it's not so pulpy, but I'm a Louisiana hot sauce guy.
10:38Chilli de Arbol is not the spiciest chili.
10:42I like a hot sauce that really just has a lot of flavor with a little bit of heat.
10:47And that's what I think that they created for this.
10:50It was like a sweeter flavor, so that would explain the apple cider vinegar.
10:54It's very good hot sauce.
10:59This one is thicker.
11:02There's big chunks of pepper.
11:03I can see some of the seeds, I think, from the chili.
11:07Or it could be tomato.
11:08We never know.
11:09You can smell the heat.
11:12It's definitely going to be hot.
11:14This is definitely bringing some more heat to the table, which I like.
11:19The heat is well balanced.
11:21But there's also some complexity going on here.
11:23I'm getting some garlic, some onion.
11:26It has like a fresh chili vibe to it.
11:29Got a good amount of acid.
11:30The flavors are working well together here.
11:32There's different spices in it.
11:34The texture is beautiful.
11:36Thick.
11:37A little chunky.
11:37You're getting whole peppers.
11:39The appearance is beautiful.
11:41It's a good hot sauce.
11:43Melinda's Red Savina.
11:45So I've heard of the Red Savina pepper.
11:47It's related to habanero, but it's like a lot hotter.
11:50This is definitely a hotter chili.
11:53It's 675,000 Scoble units.
11:57The Red Savina pepper is so sweet.
12:00This one is actually more kind of on the savory tip because it's mixed with carrots and onion,
12:09lime juice, garlic.
12:11I think you're really tasting all of those things, which makes this not just hot, but very flavorful.
12:20It's very good.
12:22Tabasco green jalapeno sauce.
12:24The first one that is using a green chili.
12:28It has like a very fresh smell to it.
12:31Very viscous texture.
12:33Very smooth.
12:35Very vinegar forward.
12:37Not very spicy.
12:38Green chilies normally aren't spicy.
12:40They're really for like flavoring.
12:42I'm tasting more vinegar than I'm tasting heat here.
12:45Maybe an accent of a chili.
12:48So it has a pretty good flavor profile.
12:50The green peppers offset the saltiness from the salt mash.
12:55It's very good.
12:56It's the green Tabasco.
12:58And there we go.
12:59Okay.
13:00It's the Tabasco jalapeno.
13:02The first ingredient is distilled vinegar.
13:04It just says that this is a very, very like sour, tangy sauce.
13:09And then they go into the jalapeno pepper.
13:12Jalapeno peppers are kind of just like your workhorse pepper.
13:16On the Scoville scale, they're pretty low.
13:18When you pick them green, they still retain a lot of the sweetness.
13:22They're kind of like vegetal almost.
13:24It's kind of like getting into the bell pepper territory.
13:27It's about flavor with the jalapenos.
13:30It's not about heat.
13:31I think this green pepper jalapeno Tabasco is by far superior than the regular Tabasco.
13:41Truff.
13:43A much thicker sauce.
13:46I really like the deep reddy orange color.
13:50It's almost like a butter smell.
13:52Maybe a butter wine mixture.
13:54I want to say truffle.
13:57There's heat to it, but it's not the dominant element in this hot sauce.
14:02The flavor is really good.
14:04It is a delicious sauce.
14:05Almost like a fruity puree.
14:08Very luxurious.
14:09There is a newish hot sauce out there that is truffle hot sauce.
14:13Truff sauce.
14:14Yes, this is the hot sauce I was thinking of.
14:17Black truffle and black truffle essence.
14:20Oh, wow.
14:21The consistency is just luxury in a bottle.
14:24If I'm going to have black truffles, I want to have them at a very fine restaurant
14:28and I want to eat the straight truffle.
14:30This one is not for me.
14:36Looks like we're getting back to classic Louisiana hot sauce.
14:40It's definitely salt mash based again.
14:44Very, very mild heat.
14:45I'm just getting salt, vinegar, and a little bit of chili.
14:49Bland, very unbalanced.
14:51It's very heavy on the vinegar.
14:53It's very salty.
14:55It's got the same texture as the Franks, that same thick creamy texture.
14:59It kind of like is in the Franks red hot, but it's not as good.
15:05Berman's red hot.
15:06An Aldi brand.
15:08It looks like the Franks red hot bottle.
15:11Which leads me to believe this is a white label.
15:14Franks is probably making this and putting the Aldi label on it.
15:19If we're trying to make a Franks hot sauce, I think that they're lacking that salt.
15:25It's not as good, and it's not as hot.
15:29So it also has xanthan gum, usually a stabilizer.
15:34It sometimes is used as a thickener.
15:36These types of things are how you make a product cheaper,
15:40and it suffers in flavor.
15:45Louisiana.
15:47It's a little darker.
15:49Heavy on the vinegar.
15:50You can smell the peppers.
15:52The first thing I'm tasting is salt.
15:56I love salt, but this is really salty for me.
15:59But maybe on food, you know, it would be a different story,
16:02instead of just eating it like this.
16:04The spice level is very, very low again.
16:07It's missing the mark on heat.
16:08It's missing the mark on flavor.
16:10It's just a tangled mess.
16:12It's also more liquid in viscosity.
16:14You can tell they've pureed it and then strained it.
16:18It's Louisiana pepper sauce that someone has tried to bump up.
16:23Louisiana hot sauce.
16:25There we go.
16:26Louisiana hot sauce.
16:28This is another one of the old time ones.
16:30Much more readily available in the north.
16:33So this is what I kind of grew up having.
16:35Aged peppers, distilled vinegar, salt.
16:38It definitely is salty.
16:40Vinegar is really the vehicle that carries the heat and the pepper flavor.
16:46It adds brightness to the hot sauce.
16:49It's basically preserving the hot sauce as well.
16:52It allows pepper sauce to last pretty much forever.
16:56Definitely can have too much vinegar.
16:58You don't have to use that much to achieve the goal that you want to achieve.
17:01Maybe just don't eat it plain.
17:08A lot more seasonings it looks like.
17:11The color is beautiful.
17:13I hope it's pepper and not tomato.
17:16Looking like it's made with dried chilies.
17:20What makes me so happy is all the solids that are sticking to the side.
17:26The heat is moderate.
17:28Balanced well.
17:29It's not like really hot.
17:31It's exciting so that I'd be able to taste my food, but I'd always feel the heat.
17:36It works well with the vinegar and with the salt and the spices.
17:42I like this type of flavor.
17:43Smoky and sweet.
17:45The texture, it's very grainy.
17:47I can't remember the name.
17:48It starts with like a T.
17:50The Tapatio's or the Valencia's.
17:52That's Tapatio.
17:53Is that my little buddy?
17:56Tapatio.
17:57It's Mexican style.
17:58I think mainly just because of the flavor profile, the spices that are used.
18:03I love when a hot sauce says spices on it because they don't want you to know what their secret
18:08blend is.
18:08This is California.
18:10When you go there, everybody has Tapatio.
18:13Because I lived on the west coast.
18:14Ate it a ton with Mexican food on tacos and burritos.
18:18This is just a delicious sauce.
18:24This sauce has a beautiful color.
18:27Orangey, rusty, red.
18:29This is the thickest of the sauces we've had.
18:32It is emulsified in some way.
18:35Almost abnormally creamy.
18:36It smells just like a taco.
18:39That tells me it's a Mexican style sauce and I want tacos.
18:44Lowest heat level of all of them that we've had so far.
18:46Definitely one of those hot sauces that is more about flavor than it is about the heat.
18:51The flavor is really well balanced and the heat is really well balanced.
18:55It's not in any one focal point in my mouth.
18:58There is definitely a vinegar kick to it.
19:00It's a smooth texture.
19:02It's very luxurious.
19:03The creamy almost seems unnatural.
19:06Which I'm guessing there's xanthan gum in here.
19:09Visually, awesome.
19:10Flavor, awesome.
19:12I prefer it a lot hotter, but it's still awesome.
19:14It's a glow.
19:15I think it's Valentina.
19:17Valentina.
19:18I spent some time in Mexico and this was the hot sauce out of the trucks.
19:24I love that it's thicker.
19:26It's good for drizzling.
19:27No xanthan at all.
19:28They found a way to make it creamy without using xanthan gum, which I always think is a good thing.
19:33I think they're using enough spice or they're cooking it longer to draw out some of the liquid.
19:39Valentina sauce uses puya chilies, which are not crazy spicy, but they're very flavorful.
19:46They have notes of like cherry or berry and are a little bit earthy because they're dry too.
19:54Valentina is an amazing sauce for Mexican food, nachos, burritos, and tacos.
20:04Very brown.
20:06It almost looks like chocolate.
20:08Oh yes, this one is very smoky.
20:10Smells like chipotle.
20:13Heat is very balanced.
20:15It's not crazy spicy, but there's a nice smoky flavor to it.
20:19This is a really rich, delicious chipotle, if you like that rich smoky flavor.
20:24There's vinegar to it, but it's like a soft landing.
20:28That acid is right at the end, so that's layered very well.
20:31Is this like a Cholula chipotle?
20:33Oh.
20:34It's the Cholula chipotle.
20:37The chipotle is so definable because of the smokiness.
20:41People think it's a type of pepper.
20:42It is not.
20:43It is a pepper that has been smoked and dried.
20:47That adds this like nice kind of like earthy smoky flavor to it and almost reminiscent of like
20:54barbecue sauces and things like that as well.
20:57It plays well with the chili and the spices and the vinegar.
21:01The second item on this is sugar.
21:04Usually you would add sugar or salt to help keep it balanced.
21:09There is actually like smoke, so it's like a natural flavor.
21:14I would call this more like a specialty hot sauce.
21:16I really wish that the good people at Cholula would reach out to me for some reaper powder
21:23so we could give these new flavors just a little bit of a kick.
21:28Hui Feng Foods, Sriracha.
21:31It's pretty uniform.
21:33Baby food texture.
21:34Visually, this is what I want a sauce to be where it'll stand on its own and it won't disappear
21:40in the food.
21:41Very mild.
21:43The heat is balanced.
21:44It definitely tastes like vegetables and a little bit of sweetness.
21:47The flavor is really good.
21:49It's like a fruit puree that's got tomato or something in it and pepper.
21:53I don't feel like the vinegar or the heat is overpowering.
21:57That texture, it's very tomato pasty.
22:00Maybe there are like vegetables in it because
22:03There's something blended in there that's not blended all the way through.
22:07So it gives it a little body and thickness.
22:09It tastes like a different category.
22:12Sriracha.
22:13It doesn't taste like Sriracha at all.
22:15And I've actually been to the factory.
22:17This is really just peppers, grounds, and bottles.
22:21Sriracha is a condiment from the highlands in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia.
22:28It's not a name of a sauce.
22:30It's a name of a condiment.
22:32And every village has a different version of it.
22:35The owner of Hoifong Foods lives in California and was using peppers or jalapenos that were grown in California.
22:48There's no tomato in Sriracha, but there's sun ripened chilies.
22:53And that's where you're getting that kind of like tomato texture.
22:58It's definitely different from other hot sauces and this sweet kind of flavor to it.
23:02And then the garlic.
23:03It's not as vinegar focused.
23:06Their bottle is iconic.
23:08It's the only bottle that has this type of squeeze nozzle.
23:13Taco Bell.
23:16A little bit lighter in color.
23:18You can see all those spices in there.
23:21I see like whole onions.
23:24Heat-wise, one out of ten.
23:28I don't taste a lot of vinegar either.
23:30The spice level and the flavor is basically at the same level.
23:36This is an awesome taco sauce.
23:38The texture is fine.
23:40There's these weird chunks of something.
23:42Borders on a little gelatinous.
23:45I think it's going to be Taco Bell.
23:47Taco Bell.
23:49I think they just need to call it enchilada sauce.
23:51Natural flavor.
23:52Whenever I see natural flavor, I'm like, what is that?
23:55There's nothing natural about this sauce other than maybe there's a pepper in it
23:59and the tomato paste.
24:01They thickened it up with tomato puree, xanthan gum.
24:04There's yeast extract in there.
24:07There's datum.
24:08I probably wouldn't go out and buy this Taco Bell sauce.
24:16This one almost looks fake.
24:19It's too perfect of a color.
24:21It has a pretty thin viscosity.
24:24You can see a little pepper flakes in it.
24:28It has a little bit of heat.
24:30It has savory notes.
24:31It's balanced with heat and flavor, but the acid is pretty forward.
24:37It's heavy again on the vinegar.
24:39The pepper flavor is there.
24:41Classic hot sauce, Louisiana hot saucing.
24:43It could be fermented, like there's some funk to it.
24:46The texture is pleasant.
24:48Pretty thin.
24:49I wouldn't say that I like it.
24:51It's actually pretty good.
24:53Texas Pete.
24:55Texas Pete.
24:56Another probably popular hot sauce where someone's going to come after me.
25:02Someone sued them for false advertising because they're from North Carolina, not Texas.
25:07It's a middle of the road hot sauce.
25:09Classic flavor profile.
25:10Vinegar is the first ingredient.
25:12This makes sense.
25:14It's definitely a pretty sour sauce.
25:16There's a lot of other stuff in here.
25:17I would not really call it the best hot sauce.
25:24It's got a vibrant hue.
25:27Bright orange.
25:29A butternut squash color to me.
25:32It would be like a habanero or a scotch bonnet.
25:35It is a little thicker, but the texture, it's very pureed.
25:41Pleasant heat.
25:42This is like a fresh chili heat.
25:44The glow is beautiful.
25:46The flavor is beautiful.
25:47There's a lot of good balance going on with this sauce.
25:51You taste the vinegar.
25:53You taste the chili.
25:55And then you taste these other interesting elements
25:59that are all working very well together.
26:02It tastes like there's peppers and then a little bit of salt added to enhance the flavor,
26:07which is the way salt should be used.
26:09There's like a fruitiness to it, fresh floral flavor.
26:14The texture of the sauce has body to it.
26:17There's a sweetness as well.
26:19So I'm thinking that the body is coming from some type of fruit.
26:26It tastes like someone put some effort into making sure it tasted like this,
26:32instead of just mixing up a big batch.
26:35I would guess like our yellow habanero pepper.
26:38Is this yellow bird?
26:40Yellow bird.
26:42Habanero hot sauce.
26:44Simplicity is the key.
26:46They make very clean, beautiful products.
26:49Everything that is in here is something that you can find in your pantry.
26:54You're not having all of those xanthan gum or all those other processed chemicals in it.
27:00The thickness is coming from the vegetables.
27:02I am a fan of this sauce.
27:04They really kind of balanced a lot of interesting different flavors to come out with an interesting sauce.
27:11Trader Joe's Habanero.
27:14A dulled orange color, I'd say.
27:16Big huge pieces of pepper in it.
27:18There's definitely a good amount of seeds.
27:20This is a habanero sauce.
27:23It definitely smells on the nose like it is spicy.
27:29It's got some good heat.
27:31This is a little hotter than the yellow bird.
27:33I'm thinking this is habanero.
27:35The heat is well rounded.
27:37It is a balanced sauce.
27:38Fruity from the pepper.
27:40There's vinegar, but it's not like overpowering.
27:44The flavor that stands out the most is black pepper.
27:47It's a little thick.
27:48My guess is that there's something else blended in with the chilies that's giving it that body.
27:54For people that are heat seekers, this one would do the trick.
27:57It's a white label that's probably Earth Fair or Trader Joe's.
28:03Trader Joe's or something like that.
28:05Oh look, Trader Joe's Habanero sauce.
28:09It's hot.
28:10It still lingers.
28:11It's a delicious sauce.
28:13It's just the heat and the salt were going back and forth.
28:17This one is relying on xanthan gum to get to a texture that's kind of like thicker.
28:23Not my favorite hot sauce, but I see what they're trying to do.
28:26Overall, like I said, a good sauce.
28:28Now let's see which hot sauces our experts liked the most and the least.
28:32Out of all the hot sauces that I had today, I enjoyed Crystal Hot Sauce.
28:37It's a perfect, well-balanced sauce.
28:42It has the amount of heat you want, it has the amount of acidity, and it has flavor.
28:47The secret aardvark pavoneuro was amazing.
28:50It was really unique because it was blending habaneros with roasted tomatoes and fresh tomatoes,
28:58as well as carrot and onion.
29:01It was a big party going on, and I thought that would go well on anything.
29:06I really like the yellow bird habanero hot sauce.
29:09The heat was negligible, as far as I'm concerned.
29:12But for the general public, it's going to be an exciting sauce.
29:16The habanero pepper that was already fruity, the addition of tangerine juice and lime juice kind of
29:23like accentuated that, in addition to carrots and onions and spices that really rounded out the flavor.
29:29The Berman's hot sauce from Aldi's is probably one of the ones that I disliked the most.
29:37It had very little flavor profile.
29:41It felt like a rip off of Frank's Red Hot, but it wasn't as balanced.
29:47Definitely more on the salty vinegar side of things.
29:50One of the biggest surprises, I didn't recognize sriracha sauce.
29:54Kind of gave me a little bit of a curve ball.
29:56I've been to the factory, I've had it thousands of times.
30:01But when I was tasting it here, it tasted like a tomato sauce and there was absolutely no tomato in
30:06it.
30:06Like giving me like ketchup-y sauce vibes.
30:09It didn't really have any heat and it didn't really have any flavor.
30:13Hot sauce for me is about just keeping it simple.
30:16Finding the perfect balance of heat, flavor, acidity, salt.
30:22These are the very basic, very regular sauces that you can find in just about any grocery store.
30:30There's a whole world of hot sauces out there and other hot condiments
30:34that we have not even touched.
30:37There's just so many different flavors that are being infused.
30:41And there's so many different chili peppers that are coming to the limelight too.
30:47This world is as large as you want to make it.
30:50And we want you to have a culinary experience that is unforgettable.
30:54.
30:56Thank you for having me.