Get Out Of Your Food Rut And Learn Which Kinds Of Hot Sauces Pair Best With Food

spicy chili peppers

Shutterstock / Karina29


If you’re like me then you probably have fewer than a handful of hot sauces in the house. I’ve got the staples (Tabasco, Sriracha) as well as ‘Don’t Be A Chicken Shit’ Hot Sauce, Louisiana Hot Sauce, Valentina’s from Mexico, and Salsa Lizano from Costa Rica (doesn’t really count as a hot sauce though, IMHO). I like to keep a small variety on hand, but I also feel like I could be doing A LOT better when it comes to stocking hot sauces in my house. By the way, if you’re looking for some hot sauce inspiration you can check out this article by my colleague Brandon on the ‘12 Best Hot Sauces to Buy on Amazon‘.

Unfortunately, I don’t really know where to begin when it comes to pairing new hot sauces with food. I’m sure I could Google this and I’d find years and years of articles written by diehard hot sauce aficionados about which hot sauces are best to pair with smoked ribs or halibut, but I’m lazy, and I also don’t know and trust the hypothetical people who’ve written those articles. Thankfully for me, the team behind Hot Ones just released this video explaining which hot sauces to pair with various foods:

First things first, when you’re pairing a hot sauce with a food you need to really think about what flavors are in the meal as well as the flavors within the hot sauce. This requires getting to know hot sauces pretty well, or you can just look up the flavor profiles of various hot sauces and choose one that way. You’ll want to take texture into account as well as heat level.

Something you don’t want to happen is dumping a chunky hot sauce onto a very fine dish. The juxtaposition there won’t be fun for anyone. The expert here also says it’s very important to keep the temperature consistent. You don’t want to hot -> cold -> hot -> cold fluctuations because that can ruin the flavor profile of your hot sauces. I don’t want to give away this entire video, so I’ll stop here and let you all watch the latest from Hot Ones.