What Makes a Good Hot Sauce

Use fresh, spicy chiles and enough vinegar, and you’ll create a condiment that will set your mouth aflame in just the way you like. And there’s isn’t much you can do to screw that up, short of pouring whipping cream into the mix. The process is that simple.

How can I make my hot sauce better?

Adding sweetness can help, too. Try honey, agave nectar, or a bit of sugar or brown sugar, if those flavors fit the hot sauce. You’ll still get plenty of heat, but the sweetness helps to balance some of it. Dairy is another way to combat the heat.

How do you judge hot sauce?

The Scoville scale is a tool for measuring the spiciness or pungency of hot peppers. The scale measures the amount of capsaicin (the chemical compound that causes spicy heat) in a pepper and assigns it a number rating in Scoville Heat Units (SHUs).