16 Rare Hot Sauces To Add To Your Spicy Bucket List

With the vast quantity of hot sauces available in stores and online today, the average Joe looking to spice up their hot sauce collection faces a dizzying paradox of choice. You've got the old standbys, of course — your Tabasco, your Frank's, your Cholula. You've got the local or regional hot sauce from purveyors in your area, typically found at farmer's markets, gift shops, and local supermarkets. You've got celebrity-endorsed hot sauces peddled by stars like "Hot Ones'" Sean Evans and beloved Food Network icon Alton Brown.

But what if you're looking for something truly unique? Something none of your capsaicin-crazed comrades will have lurking in the back of their collections? You've come to the right place. There are thousands of rare bottles out there just waiting to be discovered, from limited edition runs to small-batch, hard-to-track-down, and unusual must-try hot sauces. From bottles mild enough to be tolerated by the "black pepper is too spicy" crowd to sauces so hot you may regret ingesting them; from basic ingredients to wacky-yet-extraordinary flavors, here are 16 rare hot sauces sure to rock your world.

The Bomb Noms' Dragons Blood Isle may as well be added to the dictionary definition of "cult-favorite hot sauce." Released just once per year and limited to one bottle per customer by some online purveyors, the medium-spicy concoction can be difficult to obtain and costs a fair penny, retailing for $19.99 on Simply Texas Gourmet Foods — a far cry from the many bottles selling for $5 or less at the grocery store. Still, diehard Dragons Blood Isle fans don't blink at the cost and are happy to shell out whenever it's in stock.

This exceptional sauce expertly balances the sweetness of citrus, pineapple juice, brown sugar, and dragonfruit with the savory flavors of garlic and onion, all while adding smoky heat via hatch chile powder and smoked Scotch bonnets. Anyone who appreciates a tropical note in their chile sauce will be bowled over by this exceptional combo. While Dragons Blood Isle has a kick, it'll be easily handled by a seasoned hot sauce aficionado. Dab some Dragons Blood Isle onto wings, drizzle it on pizza, or mix it into the yolks for deviled eggs and feel the magic.

While many (perhaps most) hot pepper sauces use vinegar as a base, alternate bases are cropping up more and more, especially from small-batch producers with the luxury to experiment and sell on a smaller scale. Maine-based Inner Beauty has been churning out mustard-based Caribbean-style hot sauces since the 90s, and while it's tough to track down a bottle nowadays, it's well worth the effort — per Inner Beauty's Facebook page, new batches appear to come out a few times a year.

Vinegar, vegetable oil, and Caribbean spices flesh out the mustard base. The mixture is built up with sugar, honey, molasses, papaya, pineapple, and orange juices; while fresh Scotch bonnet peppers contribute their signature heat. With its Caribbean influence, Inner Beauty is a fantastic pairing with any island-centric meal — think jerk chicken, mofongo, or grilled fish — but honestly, its sweet heat can be used to jazz up just about anything you'd normally eat with chile sauce.

Infusing elusive umami flavor into hot sauce can be tough, but fear not: Umami Dragon from The Capsaicin Cartel is here to save the day. This hot sauce was dreamed up and developed as a way to ramp up the heat in soy sauce and incorporates many elements commonly found in East Asian cuisine. Umami Dragon is forged with sweet soy sauce, maple syrup, oyster sauce, rice wine vinegar, hoisin, shallots, ginger, garlic, and a medley of peppers ranging from mild to superhot (we see you, pink scorpion).

This pepper sauce has a thicker consistency than traditional vinegar-based sauces due to the inclusion of maple syrup and hoisin, so if you love an artful drizzle over your sushi rolls, ramen, or dumplings, Umami Dragon is the bottle to reach for. It manages to balance a combination of ingredients that could be overkill on the sweet side with enough heat and umami to work extremely well — so well that it brought home gold in the "hot" category at the 2023 YOW! Awards.

Grizzled bartenders, cheap drinks, and sometimes seedy clientele ... love them or hate them, dive bars are an American institution. If you fall into the center of the Venn diagram of people who love both dive bars and hot sauce, you should know that Miller High Life made a dive bar hot sauce intended to capture the taste of, well, dive bars. The unusual product springs from a collab between Miller's parent company Molson Coors and chef and vegan hot sauce entrepreneur Sam Davis-Allonce, founder of Hot 'N Spicy hot sauce company.

Dive Bar Hot Sauce has a vinegar base, but incorporates some unique ingredients — a strategy for which Davis-Allonce has gained much-deserved praise. Chipotle peppers (a.k.a. smoked ripe jalapeños) give Dive Bar the signature smoky element one tends to find in well-loved dives, while real Miller High Life checks the cheap beer box, and carrots and carrot juice add a pleasant earthy sweetness. The result is a mildly spicy, lightly sweet, and pleasantly smoky sauce that pairs well with wings, pizza, burgers, and many other dive bar classics.

Ghost peppers and Carolina reapers tend to hog the spotlight when the world's hottest peppers are debated, but scorpion peppers are up there too — and at 2,009,231 Scoville Heat Units (SHU) the Trinidad Moruga scorpion pepper certainly deserves a seat on the debate stage. Those masochists who scour the earth looking for the absolute spiciest of hot sauces should be familiar with Char Man, a small-batch producer that incorporates the Moruga scorpion pepper into its Fiyaberry bottle.

Fiyaberry only contains three main ingredients, an anomaly in a world where ingredients often take up half a product's label: Strawberry preserves, scorpion peppers, and red wine vinegar. Because this pepper's heat factor is eye-watering and nose-tinglingly high, it's tough to gain a sense of other flavors in most hot sauces that include Moruga scorpion peppers. However, red wine vinegar adds an acerbic element and strawberry preserves lend a bright, juicy sweetness, at least until the fires of hell take over. Fiyaberry is excellent for adding a major kick to sweet and savory dishes alike — try it on vanilla ice cream and thank us (or come for us) later.

While many hot sauce brands choose to deck out their labels with impressive art featuring the likes of the Grim Reaper, fire and brimstone, and coffins, Mr. Naga's Hot Pepper Pickle takes a different approach. The unassuming wrapper adorning jars of Mr. Naga's features red and green chile peppers, the product's name, and a simple warning: "Very hot." Very hot might be an understatement. This hot sauce is forged with the Naga Morich pepper, a pepper native to Bangladesh and related to the ghost pepper. At 1-1.5 million SHU, the Naga Morich is undeniably "very hot."

70% of Mr. Naga's is made up of the Naga Morich pepper, although it's fleshed out and (just barely) diluted with salt, vegetable oil, and spices. The pepper is the undisputed star character here, but those who aren't completely overwhelmed by the heat may pick out a hint of fruit, very light sweetness, and a slight tang. Use Mr. Naga to set things like pho, fried eggs, and Korean BBQ on fire.

It seems just about everything comes in a pickle flavor nowadays. Food manufacturing companies have led the charge in selling everything from pickle popcorn to pickle-battered hot dogs (looking at you, Trader Joe's), so the creation of a pickle-flavored hot sauce was bound to happen eventually. There's a decent variety of pickle hot sauces on the market nowadays, but Grillo's and Newks limited edition hot sauce absolutely nails the combination.

In an inspired collab, bespoke sauce producer Newks and beloved pickle vendor Grillo's cooked up a sauce brimming with flavor. Newks's Grillo's Pickles hot sauce is made with Grillo's pickles and brine, jalapeño and habanero peppers, cucumber, dill, onion, and garlic. This fresh, bright sauce is far from the spiciest on this list, but offers a milder option with brilliant signature dill pickle flavor for those craving something a little more approachable. Use Newks's Grillo's Pickles sauce to upgrade hot dogs, a Cuban sandwich, or a pile of BBQ pulled pork.

Homer Hot manufactures small batches of bespoke hot sauces slow-cooked to perfection with the finest ingredients. The company's offerings are simple to understand: Rather than producing a slew of differently flavored sauces with varying heat levels, Homer Hot produces only four types of pepper sauce. Each variety is gluten-free, plant-based, and contains the same ingredients (vinegar, apple, pineapple, onion, peppers, garlic, brown sugar, and Caribbean seasoning) — the only difference is the type of peppers used.

Homer Hot's mildest sauce is the Habanero Snap, an excellent sauce for those who want a little kick with a lot of flavor — the fruits shine through without taking away from the heat. Ghost Snap, made with ghost peppers, is a step up from the habanero, and the Reaper Snap takes things even further; but those ready to breathe fire are going to want to go for the Extreme Snap, which contains a mixture of ghost and reaper peppers for mind-blowing heat. If you're in a household of mixed spice tolerance levels, grab yourself a mix-and-match bundle.

Cult favorite black truffle-infused hot sauce maker Truff has been burning up the hot sauce world since its debut in 2017. What started as a small business has ballooned into fast-food partnerships, celebrity endorsements, and an alliance with Lucasfilm. That's right — the production company that brought Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Darth Vader to life has partnered with Truff to unveil a limited edition bottle of hot sauce appropriately dubbed "Star Wars" Dark Side hot sauce.

Currently selling for $39.99 (the price includes a collectible gift box), Truff's Dark Side pepper sauce channels a pleasant intergalactic heat through both ghost chile powder and red chile peppers along with the brand's signature black truffle and black truffle oil, of course. The heat level isn't out-of-this-solar-system — there's enough truffle and garlic to keep things manageable while still transporting you to a galaxy far, far, away. Overall, this is a solid hot sauce and the collector-ready packaging is enough to warrant the price tag. Come to the dark side. We have hot sauce.

Mad Dog 357 is a fairly well-known hot sauce company whose founder, David Ashley, has decades of saucemaking experience under his belt — so by now, he's nailed the whole handcrafted, small-batch hot sauce thing. Mad Dog has cranked out some memorable and award-winning sauces over the years, but Mad Dog 357's Collector's Edition may be the brand's magnum opus. With a disclaimer on its order page, Mad Dog 357's Collector's Edition is a flamin' hot sauce and the first to incorporate 6,000,000 SHU pepper extract.

In addition to the blazing hot pepper extract, the Collector's Edition contains fresh habanero and cayenne peppers along with a few other standard hot sauce ingredients (vinegar, garlic, cane juice, spices, and xanthan gum). It's scorching and slightly smoky, with a slight briny flavor under the heat thanks to the distilled vinegar. As a bonus, it comes equipped with a silver bullet attached to the bottle via a keychain, which unscrews and turns into a measuring spoon for easy dabbing on the go.

The city of Pueblo, Colorado is the birthplace of the aptly named Pueblo chile, a rare chile variety that grows exclusively in Colorado. Pueblos are sweet chiles with thick skins and a heat level similar to that of jalapeños. Family-owned, Pueblo-based sauce manufacturer PexPeppers incorporates these bad boys into their Pueblo Reserve hot sauce.

PexPeppers classifies Pueblo Reserve as a "red chile condiment" instead of a hot sauce, but the base of the sauce bears many similarities to classic hot sauce (sun-ripened Pueblo chiles, vinegar, sugar, and seasonings). It's the remaining ingredients that shake things up: Orange juice concentrate, tamarind pulp, and raisins. These peculiar additions give the sauce a thicker texture, but on the flip side, they give Pueblo Reserve a mind-blowing flavor you won't find anywhere else. Deep, citric sweetness shines through a mild heat, and this chile sauce's texture makes it a no-brainer for upgrading fries (it's viscous enough to use as a dipping sauce), burgers, falafel wraps, and more.

It's not every day one comes across a hot sauce sold by a nonprofit, but BackwoodsEnergy.org, an online marketplace backed by the Mississippi Foundation for Renewable Energy (MFRE), is doing just that. The MFRE aims to promote eco-friendly living, and the Backwoods website allows it to sell sustainably produced items with all profits benefiting the organization. BackwoodsEnergy.org sells everything from seeds to fishing lures to e-books on home brewing, and the organization's hot sauces have earned a fair share of praise.

Using the brand name Maria Avvacato's, BackwoodsEnergy.org currently sells four types of hot sauce, all made with 100% natural ingredients and — most notably — a one-of-a-kind parsnip base. Current offerings include Apocalypse Scorpion sauce as well as habanero, pequin, and jalapeño hot sauces. Heat levels run the gamut from mild to spicy depending on which bottle you choose, but the parsnip base adds a pleasant earthy layer to each variety. If nothing else, it's worth trying out a bottle or two of Maria Avvacato's to support a good cause.

BookTok fanatics, look out: In partnership with popular chile sauce producer Melinda's, Walmart is selling a BookTok-inspired hot sauce set. The limited edition collection's (dubbed Spicy Books) marketing is aimed at readers who love spice in both food and literature, but with five bottles featuring varying flavors and heat factors, there's something in the Spicy Books stockpile for everyone.

Spicy Books are ranked with one to five chile peppers according to spice level. First comes the mango habanero sauce; mild, fruity, and sweet. Next is jalapeño sauce, a green condiment with a pleasantly nuanced freshness and tang. Chipotle peppers' signature smokiness shines through in the chipotle sauce, but at three chile peppers, the heat is definitely perceptible. In the second-spiciest bottle, red Savina peppers conjure up habanero-like flavors and a medium-hot heat. Lastly, the Naga Jokia sauce features mind-melting ghost peppers with just a hint of citrus and brine before the flames take over. The limited edition Spicy Books Collection absolutely deserves a spot on your TBR (to be researched) list.

"Top Chef" contestants are known for bringing the heat, and in 2023, the show itself brought that heat to the masses. "Top Chef" collaborated on a hot sauce with HEATONIST, the well-known hot sauce company that aids the First We Feast team in selecting the various sauces used on "Hot Ones." The pepper sauces in the Top Chef/HEATONIST collection are limited edition but are still being sold on the brand's website.

None of the three bottles in the collection are extremely spicy — HEATONIST ranks all three sauces at 2/10 for heat. The herbs hot sauce is a bright green bottle made with jalapeños and fresh herbs like cilantro, parsley, and rosemary: Vibrant and jam-packed with botanical flavor. The peppercorn hot sauce features habaneros and roasted bell peppers along with lemon pepper and the distinctive addition of Szechuan peppercorns — it's a medium-heat sauce with loads of peppery goodness and a slight floral taste. Finally, in garlic hot sauce, garlic is (unsurprisingly) the star of the show, accompanied by jalapeño and citrus. Notably, it's made with apple cider vinegar, which adds a dash of acerbic brightness.

Small-batch hot sauce producer Bohica Pepper Hut was born from its proprietor's passion for superhot peppers. What started off as a gardening experiment has blossomed into an impressive small business peddling pepper seeds, pods, and hot sauces around the nation. Bohica Pepper Hut currently sells three types of hot sauce, but if you only have the opportunity to choose one, it's gotta be Hawaiian Lava.

The vibrant orange-yellow sauce is made with yellow bell peppers and apple cider vinegar, but tropical ingredients like pineapple, mango, and orange juice take it to the next level. Light brown sugar and spices add a pleasant saccharinity, and there's an ever-so-slight nip from yellow mustard. With mild heat, Hawaiian Lava offers an excellent way to marinate fish, pork, or chicken; or use it to top off fried eggs, burritos, or a poke bowl.

Most hot sauce vendors, even small-batch sellers, offer at least a few different varieties of chile sauce to choose from. Not Wendell's. The only hot sauce you'll find from this Canada-based purveyor is the original Wendell's Hot Hot Organic Pepper Sauce. Handcrafted with organic ingredients and made with a family recipe passed down through three generations, Wendell's is a deliciously balanced pepper sauce steeped in both family tradition and rich flavor.

Wendell's ingredient list is as uncomplicated as its one-bottle business model: White vinegar, hot Caribbean peppers, garlic, and spices. Because Wendell's exact recipe is strictly classified, there's no telling exactly which Caribbean peppers are included in the mix. However, many peppers native to this region have notes of fruit, citrus, and tang, all of which shine through despite the considerable heat in this bottle. This smooth, delicate sauce is an excellent addition to plain buttered toast, potato salad, or even a charcuterie board.