Louisiana hot sauce doesn’t haven’t to be made in Louisiana to be Louisiana-style hot sauce. It does have to be made with cooked and ground chilis (often cayenne peppers, red jalapeno peppers, or tabasco peppers), vinegar, and salt. And then it needs to ferment. That’s it.
So, when we set out to find the best Louisiana hot sauce, we were looking for the characteristic bright, tangy, vinegar flavor, some decent heat (but nothing too scorching), and an underlying savoriness. We tasted the sauces right off a spoon. It was a hot one (though nothing compared to our ghost pepper hot sauce taste test).
You might be surprised to learn that there’s more to Louisiana hot sauce than Louisiana Brand, Crystal, and Tabasco. I was. After culling the hot sauce forums and our local grocery stores we sourced 16 different Louisiana hot sauces from seven different Louisiana hot sauce brands. And there were some definite upsets. Notably, the classic Crystal Louisiana hot sauce did not make the list. I stand by our decision. There’s a better Crystal out there.
Here’s our ranking of the best Louisiana hot sauce for your jambalaya, your eggs, your Bloody Marys, and beyond.
- Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce Garlic Lovers
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We tried a few flavored Louisiana hot sauces, but this was the only one that retained that bright and vinegary Louisiana hot sauce backbone while layering flavors on top. It has a rich, garlicky quality—definitely not fresh garlic or even roasted garlic, it’s powdered garlic. But it’s still pretty good. It’s some of the best Louisiana hot sauce to use as the base for wing sauce or to drizzle on popcorn chicken.
Credit: Merc / Louisiana Hot Sauce
- Tabasco Brand Green Pepper Sauce
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Yep, the best Tabasco sauce out of all the Tabasco sauces we tried is the green Tabasco sauce. You get that right level of vinegary tang along with a touch of green grassiness. It’s on the milder end of the Louisiana hot sauce heat spectrum (though it still has a kick), and it’s thicker than the classic red Tabasco sauce. This is my pick for the best Louisiana hot sauce to use on eggs or breakfast tacos.
Credit: Merc / Target
- Trappey’s Louisiana Style Red Devil Cayenne Pepper Sauce
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One of the oldest hot sauce companies in the U.S. (according to them), Trappey’s came up a lot in the hot sauce forums I perused—specifically Trappey’s Red Devil sauce. And it deserves to be talked about. First of all, the label is really fun. The devil on the packaging looks like some dude you would have met in a ‘90s swing club. He looks like the inspiration for Vince Vaughn’s character in Swingers. He’s going to tell you that you are money, baby. But the sauce is good, too. While most Louisiana-style hot sauce is thin, this one is creamy and buttery. It’s still tangy, as it should be, but it’s layered with tomato flavors. I would definitely use this to instantly turn mac and cheese into Cajun mac and cheese.
Credit: Merc / Amazon
- Crystal Louisiana Hot Sauce Extra Hot
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We always had a bottle of Crystal hot sauce in our pantry (my family does not refrigerate hot sauces, I understand some people get angry about this, get over it). It would come out whenever we made fried chicken or polenta-crusted trout. So, I really thought I would be ranking the classic Crystal sauce number one. But it pales in flavor when compared to the Crystal Extra Hot. It’s so much brighter and zingier than the classic. Yes, it’s definitely hotter—it made me sweat—but that extra heat brings extra flavor. Trust me, this is the better Louisiana-style hot sauce Crystal makes.
Credit: Merc / Crystal Hot Sauce
- Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce Original
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It’s a boring number one best Louisiana hot sauce but you really can’t do better than the original Louisiana Brand hot sauce when it comes to that classic flavor. It’s super vinegary and tangy, and that flavor really lasts. It’s spicy, and the heat lingers, but it’s not overwhelming. That vinegar-forward flavor makes this the best Louisiana hot sauce to use on anything fried—chicken, fish, okra, oysters, tofu, whatever. It would honestly be embarrassing if this wasn’t the best of all Louisiana hot sauce brands. Thankfully, they pulled it off.
Credit: Merc / Walmart
Best Garlic Hot Sauce
Best Green Hot Sauce
Best Creamy
Best Seriously Spicy
Best of the Best
Other Louisiana hot sauces we tried: Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce, Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce Smoked Chipotle, Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce Cajun Heat, Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce Tangy Taco, Louisiana Brand Hot Sauce Southwest Japaneo, Tabasco Brand Chipotle Pepper Sauce, Gator Hammock Gator Sauce, Red Rooster Louisiana Hot Sauce, Trappey’s Bull Louisiana Hot Sauce, Signature Select Louisiana Hot Sauce, Crystal Louisiana Hot Sauce
Thoughts? Questions? Complete disagreement? Leave a comment!