revdrkevind posted:

All the bases a hot food aficianado needs to cover:

-Louisiana hot sauce. Any variety will do as this is more of a class of hot sauces. It's basically just cayenne pepper in vinegar. It's the ketchup of the hot sauce world, and sometimes it's the right tool for the job. Great to slather on burritos, chili, actual Cajun food.

-Tobasco. Hotter than Louisiana and with a distinct, smoky flavor that not everyone appreciates. Best on pizza and eggs.

-One or more Mexican hot sauces. Often with thicker salsa/gravy consistency. Great on Mexican-type things, and usually anything. There are many internet wars between Tapatio, Cholula, and Valentino's. Most people tend to agree Tapatio has a sweet flavor that alters food profiles so it's for specific applications. Cholula is a generic great with chips salsa. Valentino's comes in great vats and some fat rear end in a top hat at work probably keeps a gallon jug of it in the fridge so he/she can have bad farts. Not that Valentino's is bad, but a lot of bad people prefer it. Just sayin'.

-Frank's Red Hot. The original wing sauce, and still the best for wings'n'things. I also loving love it on pierogies.

-Something manga habanero. There's a zillion of these, you can pick up a hot sauce sampler pack from Wal Mart and it will probably have one of these and it will still be good. Great on your goddamn finger. I don't pick these up often because they're addictive as all hell.

-Chili paste. Sriracha is just the most popular brand here. Any Chinese or Thai (or Mediterranean, or...) chili paste will do. It's basically whole red peppers in suspension, usually with some garlic and other spices to round things out. Once you have any of these, you're a step close to preparing dozens of cuisines from Mexican to Chinese to Thai to Turkish to goddamn just cook with this stuff already. They tend to look like this example also made by the Sriracha company:



On heat hounds:

gently caress heat hounds. People obsess over "the hottest hot sauce" way too goddamn much. So many of these assholes will say they had raw capsaicin crystals and didn't feel anything so they have to wash their face in ghost peppers or spray bear mace directly onto their rear end in a top hat to get their dick hard. The level of idiocy is palpable. Nobody cares. Hot food is a case where all that matters is using the right tool for the job. Sometimes that's a dash of cayenne pepper, sometimes it's pan-blackened thai chiles, sometimes it's Tobasco.

edit: Honorable mention to Tobasco's assorted flavors, Chipotle flavor isn't very hot but it's goddamn good. Only left out because of the insane white woman craze from a few years ago when they wanted "CHI-POLE-TAY" on goddamn everything... "so long as it's not spicy, it's not spicy is it?"