There are a lot of great hot sauces on shelves around the country. You can get hot sauce almost anywhere — grocers, mini-marts, gas stations, and even gift shops. There are entire shows and culinary empires built around the chili pepper-based condiment. There’s so much hot sauce out there (and a lot of it is dirt cheap) that you have to wonder whether it’s ever worth making at home.
We wondered that too. So let’s all find out together.
For this exercise, I dug through very famous hot sauce recipes online — pulled from food blogs, TikTok, and Google. There were just … so many. Why is that, exactly? For one, there are so many different chili peppers that you can kind of go down an all-day rabbit hole there alone. Then you have fresh sauce, fermented sauces, vinegar-based, non-vinegar-based, sugar or no sugar, and so on until your head starts to spin.
Hopefully, the five recipes I picked will save you from a few hot sauce rabbit holes and some head-spinning. These recipes are all straightforward but I’m going to stop short of calling them all easy. Making your own hot sauce requires some prep and protection. Always wear gloves, folks. You can thank me later for that little tip.
After I made these sauces, I taste-tested them and then ranked them based on how deep, hot, and tasty they were. I used a plain Pringle as the blank canvas to test each sauce, in case you’re wondering. It was nice and neutral. Okay, let’s get into the thick of it and make some hot sauce!
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5. Copycat Frank’s RedHot Hot Sauce
Frank’s RedHot is one of the most popular hot sauces on the shelf these days (and the base for any decent buffalo wing sauce). That makes this a great place to start, as it’s familiar enough to be a control but also good enough to shine as an at-home recipe.
Ingredients:
- 18 fresh cayenne peppers (de-stemmed and de-seeded) or 1 oz. of dry arbol chilis
- 1.5 cups white vinegar
- 2 tsp. minced garlic
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. garlic powder
Sourcing fresh cayenne pepper is a pain in the ass. So if you’re not growing some in your backyard, feel free to replace them with dry arbol chilis, which you can get at any Mexican supermarket. Pre-soak them for about an hour in boiling water to reactivate them and you’re good to go.
What You’ll Need:
- Small pot
- Food processor (blender or immersion mixer)
- Jar or bottle (for storage)
- Cutting board
- Kitchen knife
- Gloves
- Fine mesh sieve
Method:
- Slice the stems off the chili peppers and slice in half length-wise. Use the tip of the knife to remove most of the seeds (you don’t have to remove them all).
- Add all the ingredients to a small pot and bring to a rolling simmer for 20 to 25 minutes. Add a 50/50 mix of vinegar and water as needed if the vinegar boils off.
- After 15 minutes of simmering, pour the contents of the pot into a food processor and process until the puree is thick and smooth.
- Run the pureed sauce through a sieve and return to the hot pot to gently simmer for another 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Cool completely and funnel into a jar or bottle (store in fridge).
Bottom Line:
This tastes like mild and very average hot sauce. There’s a touch of heat but nothing overly interesting about it. Given the effort to make this and the fact that a bottle of Frank’s RedHot costs about $3, I doubt I’ll do this ever again.
4. Fresh Jalapeño Hot Sauce
Let’s go green! The beauty here is that green jalapeño chili peppers tend not to be as hot, allowing for a much milder sauce. This recipe from Food & Wine hits that mild yet flavorful mark perfectly. The best part? This is a no-cook recipe — making it very fast/easy to execute at home. (And yes, a hot sauce can be raw or uncooked)
Ingredients:
- 6 oz. jalapeño chiles (de-stemmed and mostly de-seeded)
- 4 cilantro sprigs (roughly chopped)
- 2 green onions (roughly chopped)
- 2 garlic cloves (crushed)
- 0.5 cups distilled white vinegar
- 2 tbsp. white sugar
- 1 tbsp. fresh lime juice
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
All of these ingredients should be easy to find at any average grocery store.
What You’ll Need:
- Food processor or blender
- Cutting board
- Kitchen knife
- Gloves
- Hand juicer
Method:
- Add all the ingredients to the blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
- Pour into a jar and store in the fridge.
Bottom Line:
This is very tasty. The only reason it’s lower on the list is that it feels less like a traditional hot sauce and more like a dip or side sauce. A salsa. It’s spicy, full of great acidic notes, and overall very fresh. This might be my overall favorite if I was looking for the “brightest” hot sauce.
3. Easy TikTok Hot Sauce Recipe
There are about a trillion hot sauce recipes on TikTok. You can find anything and everything. So let’s go “easy” and recreate a hot sauce recipe that’s not going to break the bank, cause us to travel to another country for ingredients, or take forever to execute.
Ingredients:
- 5 oz. Cayenne peppers (de-stemmed) or 1 oz. dried arbol chili peppers (pre-soaked in warm water for an hour)
- 1 habanero pepper (de-stemmed)
- 1.25 cups water
- 0.75 cup white vinegar
- 1 tsp. kosher salt
- 1 garlic clove
- 0.5 tsp. garlic powder
- 0.5 tsp. onion powder
Again, it might be hard to find fresh cayenne peppers out there. If you strike out, hit up a Mexican supermarket for a bag of dried arbols. It’s not exactly the same but it does get the job done.
What You’ll Need:
- Saucepan or skillet
- Food processor (blender or immersion mixer)
- Fine mesh sieve
- Bowl
- Jar or bottle (for storage)
- Cutting board
- Kitchen knife
- Gloves
Method:
- Cut the stems from all the chili peppers. De-seed a few for a less intense heat. Or not.
- Add all the ingredients to a saucepan and simmer for 20 minutes.
- Pour the ingredients into a food processor and puree until smooth. Add more water and/or vinegar if you want a thinner sauce.
- Run the sauce through a fine mesh sieve into a waiting bowl. Add salt and sugar to taste and store in a bottle or jar in the fridge.
Bottom Line:
This is a pretty good hot sauce. It didn’t feel average and actually tasted deeper than any $3 bottle from the grocery store.
Was it worth the effort? Maybe.
There are a lot of really good hot sauces on the shelf for $7-$10 that don’t take slicing peppers and infusing your house with chili pepper spice smell for an hour. Still, this is a good hot sauce. I’d dress my wings with it.
3. Roy Choi’s LocoL Korean Hot Sauce
Chefs Roy Choi and Daniel Patterson know their way around hot sauce. Their LocoL Korean-infused tomato-based hot sauce is their go-to for dipping, basting, and dressing all things you’d ever want to spice up.
Ingredients:
- 1 28-oz. can of whole peeled tomatoes (drained and crushed by hand)
- 1/2 fennel bulb (cored and diced)
- 2 cloves of garlic
- 1/8 cup vegetable oil
- 1/8 cup white wine vinegar
- 1/8 cup gochujang
- Salt
This is another grocery list that should be pretty easy to fill at any grocery store. Even my very rural Krogers in Kentucky had gochujang on the shelf.
What You’ll Need:
- Saucepan
- Food processor (blender or immersion mixer)
- Jar or bottle (for storage)
- Cutting board
- Kitchen knife
Method:
- Heat the oil over medium heat and add the fennel and garlic with a big pinch of salt. Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring as needed, until the veg is very tender.
- Add the vinegar and tomatoes and bring to a rolling simmer. Let simmer until water has evaporated (about 10 minutes).
- Once cooked down, pour the mix into a food processor, add the gochujang, and blend until super smooth. Season with salt and store in a jar in the fridge.
Bottom Line:
This is just delicious. The onion adds a meaty texture and flavor to the tomato base that almost gets creamy. The gochujang adds a great layer of depth and a whisper of fermented funk that helps amp up the flavors.
I can’t wait to try this on everything! I’m cooking chicken in it, dipping tortilla chips in it, dropping some in my next bowl of ramen, everything!
1. Rick Bayless’ Habanero Hot Sauce
Say what you will about Rick Bayless, the man knows his way around a chili pepper. So there’s no better way to start your homemade hot sauce journey than by mastering one of his hot sauces.
Ingredients:
- 12 orange/yellow habanero chili pepper (de-stemmed)
- 6 cloves of garlic (do not peel)
- 0.5 cup carrots (diced)
- 0.5 cup white onion (diced)
- 1 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup water
- 2 tsp. salt
- 0.25 tsp. granulated sugar
This is another grocery list that’s filled at any decent grocery store. It’s also worth noting that for this recipe, I did de-seed about half of the habanero chilis. I wanted a “hot” but not “insane hot” hot sauce.
What You’ll Need:
- Skillet
- Small pot or saucepan
- Food processor (blender or immersion mixer)
- Jar or bottle (for storage)
- Cutting board
- Kitchen knife
- Gloves
Method:
- Heat a skillet on medium-high heat, add the garlic (still in the peel), and roast for a good 10 minutes. The peel might turn a dark color or even black, but that’s fine. Once the garlic is soft to the touch, remove from heat and set aside.
- Cut the stems from the habanero and I like to de-seed at least half of them (this will determine how hot your sauce ends up being).
- Put a small pot on medium heat and add the habaneros, carrots, onion, water, and vinegar, and bring to a slow simmer.
- After 10 minutes of simmering the carrot should be very tender. Pour all the pot into a food processor and puree until very smooth. Add the salt and sugar and taste. Add more if needed.
- Let cool in jars and store in the fridge.
Bottom Line:
This is exactly what you want in a homemade hot sauce. It’s thick and spicy with a killer kick that’s accented by sweetness, umami, meatiness, and brightness. It has everything while offering a serious kick. Plus it tastes clearly like the chili it was made from, adding to the depth of the flavor profile.
Final Thoughts on the Hot Sauce Recipes
So is making your own hot sauce worth it? I really don’t know. The Frank’s RedHot Copycat recipe, absolutely not. The effort is far too much on that one. That also kind of goes for the TikTok recipe. I like that sauce, but the effort is a lot for something you can grab off the shelf almost everywhere.
I do think the fresh green hot sauce was worth it, especially if you’re already cooking out in the backyard. I also really think the LocoL hot sauce and Rick Bayless’ hot sauce are worth the effort to make. Those are just great sauces that are also unique and give you something new and fresh. They also taste freaking good.