15 best hot sauces that will spice up your cooking

Best: Overall

With its recognisable wooden top, this little bottle is loved worldwide. It’s warm and spicy without blowing your head off and follows a generations-old secret recipe. We love adding a generous glug to our weekend eggs, but it’s also essential for burritos and tacos. This hot sauce is already huge in the United States and we’re thrilled you can now buy it here in the UK.

Best: For wings

Based in Nottingham, this husband and wife-led brand has nailed the condiment market. This pack contains five of its most fiery hot sauces (3 x 225ml, 2 x 150ml). In order of heat, these include the habanero ketchup (with 22 peppers per bottle!), habanero hot sauce, our favourite buffalo hot sauce, the southeast Asian sriracha, and finally the medium-spiced chilli ketchup which is ideal for every day. Each offers something a little different, but you can’t go wrong eating with wings, chips and burgers.

Best: For heat and flavour

Naturally fermented and aged in barrels (a bit like wine, kimchi or sauerkraut is), Kold Sauce is raw and cold-pressed in small batches, giving it a vibrant freshness. It gets its heat from cayenne, habaneros and red Thai chillies but has a depth to it with nutmeg, smoked paprika and cardamon. Don’t be fooled by the name, there’s nothing cooling about it.

Best: Gift set

We tried to choose a favourite from the Eaten Alive hot sauce range, and then thought, why choose one when you can stock up with this discovery pack? It contains seven of the brand’s hot sauces (each 150ml), ranging from the relatively mild smoked sriracha to the fiery, extra-spicy scotch bonnet. There is also a super fresh lime and jalapeno flavour which we add to fish tacos, and the cacao and lime is excellent in a classic chilli con carne. They’re all raw fermented and have picked up a stack of Great Taste awards along the way.

Best: For a long shelf life

We adore hot sauce, but once opened most need refrigerating and consuming within three months. This collection is ideal, as the five slim 25ml tubes give you plenty of variety, without the huge volumes. The kitchen collection pack contains five completely different flavours – including “wicked wasabi”, “Chinese hot and sour”, “sriracha cha-cha”, the beetrooty “ever so English” and “forever phall” with plum, red pepper and mango.

Best: For noodles

Deliciously sweet and garlicky, this simple hot sauce is great on meaty kebabs and noodle dishes. It’s named after the Thai coastal city Si Racha, and as such, works really well with traditional Thai flavours, from seafood curries through to stir-fries. We love the precision-pour squeezy bottle which makes it easy to add an attractive final drizzle to dishes. You can also buy it in 455ml and 730ml tubs if you’re a big fan.

Best for: Eggs

It doesn’t get much more decadent than this. Truffle Hunter has created a slightly sour, tomato ketchup-type hot sauce and infused it with the brand’s deliciously earthy black truffles. This one is divine in a beef burger and for chip dunking, and we’ve also been known to add a little to fried eggs.

Best: For Indian food

Pico Sauces is a new brand, making Indian condiments, in India, with all-Indian ingredients. This is the brand’s classic hot sauce and uses the famous naga ghost pepper, or bhut jolokia chilli, from the North-East corner of India. It is the spiciest chilli in the country by a long way and we’re told they are used locally by farmers to ward off elephant herds, by hanging bunches on the fences of their fields. 

If your spice tolerance isn’t up to the challenge, we recommend “diluting” this sauce down with mayonnaise which is delicious in burgers. As well as dipping, this versatile sauce is also good as a yoghurt marinade – try it with pork shoulder for a spicy Sunday roast.

Best: For a Bloody Mary

Fortnum & Mason are purveyors of luxury food items, and this chilli and red pepper-based hot sauce is a decadent little shot to have on standby. The thin texture makes it ideal for adding a splash to oysters, instead of your traditional tabasco. It also contains fenugreek, coriander and cumin seeds, which makes it a particularly delicious addition to a Bloody Mary.

Best: Marinade

Produced in small batches Orriss & Son is a punchy collection of fermented chilli sauces, that can be used as a marinade for fish, meat or veg, in dressings, or splashed on neat at the end. The “Even Flow” is the brand’s original hot sauce, with fruity habanero, smoked tomato notes and a dash of apple juice. There’s also a sweeter piri-piri version and a fresh green jalapeno-based sauce if you’re looking for something tangier.

Best: For chicken

Produced in small batches in Zimbabwe, following a 125-year old recipe, these natural hot sauces contain wild lemons and locally grown chillies, and are left to ferment in the African sun for 100 days to let the flavours develop. This pack contains two 250ml bottles; the hot lemon chilli sauce, which has delicious ginger and mango notes, and the mild oak-smoked chilli sauce, which is ideal with chicken wings.

Buying a bottle supports the local African villagers who produce the sauces, as proceeds from every sale go back to supporting 150 local school children with education and conservation initiatives.  

Best: Medium hot sauce

Raja Bonnet sauce combines Indian flavours such as turmeric and coriander, with scotch bonnet chilli and mango for a fruity, medium-spiced favour injection. It’s from En Root’s, a south-London, Indian-inspired vegan street food concept who are now offering food delivery to the local area.

Best: Thai hot sauce

This range of spicy sauces was launched during last year’s lockdown and is inspired by founder Dominique Woolf’s Thai roots. This pack of three 150ml bottles contains the sweet, tangy tamarind ketchup, fruity jalapeno and lime, and the “Hot + Sour” which has a delicious sweet and spicy garlicky kick. Use them in everything from stir-fries to avocado on toast.

Best: For buffalo wings

Sold as “the original Buffalo wing sauce”, this is another popular American brand. If you’re into your chicken or cauliflower wings, a teaspoon of this is essential. Aged cayenne peppers add a decent thwack of heat, but we like the garlicky notes too.

Best: For pizza

Sauces can be loaded with all sorts of hidden sugars, but not at Dr. Will’s, which only ever contain natural ingredients. This sriracha contains red peppers, fermented chillis and garlic, but is sweetened with date paste. Try using as an alternative pizza base, as a marinade or simply with chips.