Husband and I love hot sauce and decided to have a taste testing evening. Some opinions are as follows:
Dirty dicks: very sweet hot sauce. Good flavor and mix of spices. Habanero is more on the end.
Gator: very pickly very peppery. Also good flavor with the cayenne and spices.
Mule sauce: very comparable to Tabasco but sweeter and overall better flavor. Would buy this over Tabasco at any time. Flavor is definitely a good mix of peppers. Nothing specific.
Firelli: sweet and tomatoee(though there's no tomato in it), comparable to Taco Bell fire sauce.
Marie sharps habanero: very flavorful. Definitely habanero. Kind of tasted like a buffalo sauce too.
Marie sharps nopal green habanero: very good classic green hot sauce. Will definitely get this again. Enjoyed it a lot.
Yellow bird habanero: sweet habanero heat. Very good. Enjoyed the thickness. Not necessarily remarkable but good flavor overall and would buy again.
Aardvark black bean sauce: not a hot sauce would be very good on ramen and in stir fries.
Aardvark habanero: very good. A little Smokey relatively similar to the mule sauce but different mix of spices on the tail end. It was a very good sauce.
Hot honey: regardless of the brand, always a classic
Tabasco scorpion sauce: Not a lot of flavor but a crap ton of heat.
Tabasco roasted pepper sauce: very Smoky and garlicky. Not a lot of heat.
Homemade smoked and pickled habanero hot sauce: definitely stronger than the rest of the sauces here. Good heat, good flavor, little sweet. It's a classic if I do say so myself.
Family reserve Tabasco, very similar to traditional Tabasco but has a lot better flavor overall and more depth
Cholula chili garlic: very good. Good pickly garlic flavor with a teeny tiny bit of heat.
Crystal: classic smother your entire burrito in it if you want to use it as enchilada sauce
Melinda's habanero extra hot: honestly not very hot. Decent flavor
Melinda's mango: definitely a mango habanero sauce. I would say very sweet more mango than habanero.
Melinda's garlic: very similar to Cholula chili garlic though. Less pickly and a little sweeter.
Melinda's xxxx reserve: still not very hot. A little sweet. Definitely pickly habanero.
Melinda ghost pepper: similar to Tabasco scorpion but has 10 times more flavor and not quite as much heat. Pretty tasty sauce.
Texas Pete: very similar to Crystal but way more garlicky. Very good flavor.
Cry baby Craig's: not shown because we ran out of it as always, definitely one of the hotter ones on the list by a little bit. Lots of good habanero flavor, garlicky and lots of vinegar. My favorite sauce by far.
Ranking the store-bought sauces::
Husbands top 5:
1. Cry babys
2. Dirty dicks
3. Sticker mule
4. Firelli
5. Aardvark black bean
My top 5:
1. Crybaby Craig's
2. Mule sauce
3. Marie sharps nopal green habanero
4. Melinda's original habanero garlic
5. Texas Pete
by JusAski
3 Comments
Can confirm, the drunken garlic aardvark is great in ramen and stirfry. My old coworker gave me his “recipe” for “Stoner Noodles”:
● Cook and drain ramen noodles (or udon or whatever you got).
● Sauce: drunken garlic, a bit of peanut butter, lime juice/black vinegar, sambal/sriracha, a bit of soy sauce.
● Toss and devour.
That Firelli sauce on pizza is heaven!
Very nice overview. I just finished off the last of my Crybaby Craig’s on Friday.