Taste Test: Hot Sauce
We tasted 5 popular brands of hot sauce and rated them based on flavor, spiciness, cost and nutrition. Find out how your favorite sauce fared.
With so much talk about hot sauce, we had to taste test all the popular varieties for ourselves. We got our mouths fired up for this spicy taste test. Find out who topped our list.
It’s All About Sodium
Hot sauce is the new ketchup. Dab a little on sandwiches, pizza, pasta dishes, chili, grilled meats, eggs – almost any dish. If you check out the label, you’ll notice that there's not much nutrition information per serving — no calories, fat, saturated fat, carbs, or protein (or at least so little that it can be listed as zero by food labeling guideline). What it does have is sodium — and some brands have more than others.
How We Taste Tested
For this taste test, we rated hot sauce based on taste, spiciness, ingredients and nutritional information — specifically sodium. We chose the original flavor for each brand and rated them on a 5-point scale (5 being the highest). Since hot sauce is typically eaten with food, we tasted each on a tortilla chip.
Although many folks shouted out Sriracha on Facebook and Twitter, we chose to stick to traditional varieties for this taste test.
Rating: 5.0
Nutrition Info (per teaspoon): 0 calories; 110 milligrams sodium
Our Take: Imported from Mexico, this is the only brand that has 1 tablespoon listed as the serving size (others have 1 teaspoon). The pepper flavor is pretty mild, especially compared to some of the other brands; that might be because the first ingredient listed is water (then arbol and piquin peppers).
Rating: 4.0
Nutrition Info (per teaspoon): 0 calories; 35 milligrams sodium
Our Take: Many of us grew up using this teeny red bottle and boy it’s still as hot as we remember. This baby has only 3 ingredients: distilled vinegar, red pepper, and salt. It has a lower sodium content than Cholula, which can be a plus if you're watching your sodium intake.
Rating: 4.0
Nutrition Info (per teaspoon): 0 calories; 190 milligrams sodium
Our Take: We love the innocent (yet filthy-mouthed) elderly woman on the Frank's Red Hot Sauce commercials (check out their website if you haven’t seen them). The ingredients in this one are pretty simple — cayenne peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt and garlic powder. The flavor is just right — not too spicy but not mild either and it’s the cheapest of the bunch. The sodium, however, is one of the highest of all brands we tested.
Rating: 4.0
Nutrition Info (per teaspoon): 0 calories; 100 milligrams sodium
Our Take: Whoa, Nelly! This hot sauce has a nice kick which you feel a second after it hits your mouth. Sodium is smack in the middle of all the samples we tested and ingredients do include a few additives like xanthan gum and benzoate of soda (to preserve freshness and flavor).
Rating: 3.5
Nutrition Info (per teaspoon): 0 calories; 240 milligrams sodium
Our Take: This “hot” sauce was actually on the sweeter side and the sauce itself had a thicker consistency. Ingredient list is simple: peppers, vinegar and salt but the sodium is much higher than all other brand we tested.
TELL US: What’s your favorite hot sauce?
