Choosing hot sauce shouldn't require a chemistry degree. Whether you're looking for something mild enough for everyday meals, smoky heat for BBQ, habanero heat for wings, or Ghost Jolokia when you've decided good judgment is overrated, this guide will help you choose the right sauce.
Explore peppers, heat levels, food pairings, gift ideas, and answers to common hot sauce questions.
Start here
If you only read two of these, read these two.
- Choosing How to Choose Hot Sauce: From Mild to Extreme Pick the flavor first, then set the heat. A short decision process, plus a table matching every heat level to what it tastes like and what it goes with.
- Heat levels Jalapeño vs Habanero vs Ghost Pepper: Hot Sauce Heat Guide Which peppers are actually hotter, in plain order — and why a finished bottle's heat is not the same thing as its pepper's Scoville rating.
Match a sauce to your food
What is on the plate matters more than how hot you can go.
- Pairing Best Hot Sauce for Wings: Choosing the Right Heat Fried, grilled or smoked — the cook decides which sauce works. Garlic, jalapeño, habanero, chipotle and ghost pepper on wings.
- Pairing Best Hot Sauce for Tacos: Jalapeño vs Habanero vs Chipotle The filling decides the sauce. Carnitas, carne asada, fish, barbacoa and al pastor, each matched to a pepper.
- Pairing Best Hot Sauce for Pizza: Which Pepper Works Best? Pizza already has a sauce on it. What to add to pepperoni, cheese, sausage, meat lovers and BBQ chicken — and why garlic wins most often.
- Extreme heat Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce: How Hot Is It? What Ghost Jolokia heat actually means, why a finished sauce is milder than the pepper, how it compares to habanero, and what to eat it with.
Buying and gifting
For when the bottle is not for you.
- Gifts Best Hot Sauce Gift Sets: How to Choose One for a Spice Lover Range beats intensity. What separates a set worth giving from a novelty box, and which of our three sets suits which person.
- About us Florida Hot Sauce: Discover Bad Decision Hot Sauce Where the company is based, where the sauces are produced, the Puerto Rican pique tradition behind them, and where to find us in person.
Want the short version? Find Your Heat asks five questions and matches you to one of the five sauces in about thirty seconds. Or go straight to all five sauces and the bundles.
More short reads on peppers, ingredients and technique are in the Journal.