
Delish editors handpick every product we feature. We may earn commission from the links on this page.
When it comes to condiments, hot sauce is one of the most versatile. Breakfast tacos? Check. Chicken wings? Check. You could make a case for hot sauce improving virtually any food on earth. And that even includes dessert—try a drizzle of chili crisp over some ice cream and thank us later.
Just like there are nearly limitless applications of hot sauce, there's a wide variety of styles. Every type of pepper offers a unique flavor profile. Some are smoky, some are sweet, and they all have varying levels of heat. Brands make their own blends and add other spices and seasonings until their recipes are just right.
With so many possible versions of hot sauce, no two brands are created equal. Some bottles are best enjoyed under very specific circumstances, while others are workhorses you can always keep on hand.
But still, some brands are better than others. Team Delish is full of hot sauce lovers—we keep many bottles in our test kitchen at all times. And when those store-bought bottles don't cut it, we make our own.
So we decided to round up every bottle we could think of and rank them from worst to best. While we focused on widely available brands, we also tried some deep cuts to determine which ones belong in your home hot sauce lineup. Check out our rankings below and let us know what you think.
Expertise: TikTok Trends, Drinks, Pop Culture
Education: B.A. in Journalism and B.S. in Communications from NYU, Culinary Arts degree from The Institute of Culinary Education
About Me: As an associate editor at Delish, Gabby works on everything from features to recipes to content on our social media channels. Before joining the team, she wrote for StarChefs Rising Stars Magazine, Mashed, and Food52. When she’s not developing cocktail recipes, she’s making cocktail-inspired dishes like Dirty Martini Pasta and Aperol Spritz Trifle. Her features cover online trends like the Millennial Shopping Cart, rank everything from hard seltzers to frozen French fries, and answer some of your most pressing food safety questions. You can also find her posting content on Delish’s TikTok, including her three-part series about cooking like influencer Nara Smith that garnered over 3M combined views. She loves eating spicy food, collecting cookbooks, and adding a mountain of Parmesan to any dish she can.


5 Things You Should Never Buy During Amazon Prime Day

Things Designers Never Do When Designing a Kitchen

Cook Like Grandma: The Best Vintage Cookbooks
Don't Miss These Costco Summer Products