When it comes to hot sauce, spice fans will be outspoken about which one is truly best.
In order to find which hot sauce is worthy of being a staple in your pantry, I tried five popular hot sauce brands — Sriracha, Louisiana, Franks RedHot, Texas Pete, and Cholula.
Heres a breakdown of each hot sauces flavor notes as well as which dishes theyd make the perfect addition to, ranked in order of mildest to hottest on the Scoville scale.
Hot Sauce | Scoville Heat Units (SHU) |
---|---|
Tabasco Chipotle | 2,000 |
Crystal | 800 |
Texas Pete | 750 |
Frank’s Red Hot | 450 |
The label on the bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce stated that “one drop does it.”
However, the hot sauce only ranks at 450 Scoville heat units, making it one of the milder hot sauces on the market.
Louisiana Hot Sauce cost $2.89 for 12 fluid ounces at Stop and Shop.
The Texas Pete hot sauce had a slight sweetness to it.
It wasnt too watery or too thick but was slightly on the thinner side. It definitely tasted slightly more spicy than the last two, and the spice lingered on my tongue after I tried it, which the Franks RedHot and Louisiana did not.
This is a great run-of-the-mill hot sauce — nothing more and nothing less than what youre looking for in a hot sauce. The texture and spice level was perfect, but I would have preferred the flavor to be a little stronger.
Frank’s RedHot sauce provided a good balance between spice and flavor.
It was spicy, but not too much to handle.
Franks RedHot has a slight buttery flavor that makes it a perfect addition to Buffalo chicken dishes. It was on the thicker side, but not as thick as Sriracha.
FAQ
Is Texas Pete or Tabasco hotter?
How many Scoville units is Frank’s Red Hot?
Is Texas hot sauce hotter than Louisiana Pete?
Frank’s Red Hot is made with cayenne peppers and has 450 SHU. The sauce was the secret ingredient in the original Buffalo wings recipe, created in Buffalo, New York, in 1964, according to Frank’s.