Hot Hot Sauces

What "hot" means on our scale

Hot covers 30,000 to 350,000 Scoville units, the stretch from a cayenne to a full-strength habanero. This is where heat stops being a seasoning and becomes the point of the bottle: it arrives fast, builds for a while and takes a minute or two to let go.

What's in the bottle

Habanero is in about half of these sauces and ghost pepper in a quarter, with Carolina reaper and scorpion appearing in smaller amounts. A superhot used sparingly lands here rather than in extra hot. Milder peppers still show up, usually as the base a hotter one is blended into.

There's still flavor in here

Two thirds of these bottles list garlic and more than half onion, with lime in four in ten and tomato and carrot close behind. The good ones use that acidity and sweetness deliberately: it gives you something to taste in the second before the heat arrives.

How to use it

Wings first (they come up on more of these labels than any other food), then tacos, eggs, chicken, pizza, soup and chili. Use it a few dashes at a time, and add it at the end rather than the beginning, so you can tell how far you've gone.

Where to go next

If this is where you're comfortable, the habanero and ghost pepper collections are full of bottles at this level. If it's starting to feel manageable, extra hot is the superhot band above 350,000 units. If it's a little much, medium covers 2,500 to 30,000.