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Chris Whitehair
If there were a trinity of hot sauce, it would be chili peppers, vinegar, and salt (but if you need to watch your salt intake, check out my other blog on the Best Low Sodium Hot Sauce). This trinity is not to be confused with Irazu Unholy Trinity Hot Sauce, which is comprised of Ghost (Naga Jolokia), Trinidad Scorpion, and Carolina Reaper peppers. Vinegar in hot sauce is the second most crucial part of that trinity.
In this blog, we’ll cover:
-A brief history & science of vinegar.
-Why do we need vinegar in hot sauce?
-The 6 best types of vinegar for a hot sauce.
-What do you do if you hate vinegar in hot sauce?
By the end, you’ll have an impressive understanding of all things vinegar. And you’ll know enough about it to up your sauce-making game with more diverse and complex flavors.
Let’s dive in!
The best place to start is with the name, which comes from vyn egre. “Vyn” means wine, and “egre” means sour. And just about everything you need to know about vinegar is summed up in that name — sour wine.
You see, vinegar is just fermented alcohol. It’s second-generation booze. And if you want to get more technical, we can say that it is,
Water (90-95%) + Acetic Acid (5-10%) = Vinegar
And this acetic acid is what you get when you let a little organism called aceto bacteria get drunk off your liquor. It can be any liquor, too, not just wine. Your aceto bacteria could feed off cider, grain alcohol, grape must, coconut, and more.
The basic formula is:
-Add a grain or sugar (potato, rice, grape, apple) to water
-Let yeast turn the sugars into ethyl alcohol
-Put some aceto bacteria in the mix to feed off the alcohol
-Collect the acetic acid they produce as waste
-Dilute it with some water
And voila, there’s your vinegar! You can make it from just about any sugar that’s been turned into alcohol (which gives you all of the different vinegar flavors that we’ll talk about in a moment).
This is all interesting, but it does beg the question…
Well, for two reasons:
1 – To preserve it.
2 – To drive its flavor.
Acetic acid kills microbes that cause foods to spoil and allows them to last longer. This is why bottles of Cholula® sit out on the tables of Mexican restaurants for what seems like years on end (but remember, we’re not talking refrigeration; that’s a whole other topic you can read about here).
The FDA classifies vinegar as an “acidified food,” which means that it’s heavily regulated. According to FDA guidelines, an acidified food must maintain a pH of 4.6 or below. Vinegar is one of the only ways to achieve this, hence why it’s so common.
But vinegar also drives the flavor of most hot sauces. It adds that unmistakable sour, tangy, and lip-smacking quality. For many, that flavor is indispensable.
If you are wondering how much vinegar to use to preserve hot sauce, the standard recommendation is 20-30% (by weight).
Different vinegars also add unique flavors to a sauce. If you know how to use them, vinegar in hot sauce can bring incredible depth to it. This leads us to…
There are as many kinds of vinegar as sugars to ferment, which means there are many different types! Potatoes, rice, corn, and fruit work for making vinegar.
But not all vinegars are equal when it comes to hot sauces. Some have established themselves as the quintessential hot sauce vinegar.
So, without further ado (and in no particular order), here are your Top 6 Hot Sauce Vinegars.
All hail the king of vinegar! White vinegar in hot sauce is by far the most commonly used vinegar—in fact, it is the most common in all of cooking.
It’s made from a grain alcohol similar to vodka, so it has the most neutral taste out of any vinegar. This makes it perfect as a foundation for other ingredients.
You can think of it as a blank slate, allowing other flavors to shine. Despite its neutral taste, white vinegar is still strong, sharp, and forward.
Countless sauces use white vinegar as a base, but Fresco Sauce Chipotle & Habanero Hot Sauce is one of my favorites.
This excellent sauce was featured on the hit YouTube show Hot Ones Season 12.
Example hot sauce containing
White Vinegar:
Ingredients: Habanero Peppers, Chipotle Chili Powder, Carrots, Distilled White Vinegar, Olive Oil, Garlic, Salt, Organic Sugar, Black Pepper, Water.
Since this vinegar is derived from apple cider, it has a sweeter, fruitier taste. It also has an incredibly distinctive flavor (as anyone who’s tried Bragg Organic Apple Cider Vinegar straight-up can attest) and is softer than white vinegar.
Apple cider vinegar pairs best with a sweeter hot sauce, such as one containing fruit like mango or pineapple.
For example, one of my favorite hot sauces that uses apple cider vinegar is Earthquake Spice’s Space Dust. This sauce pairs an apple cider vinegar base with habaneros and pineapple for an out-of-this-world taste!
Example hot sauce containing
Apple Cider Vinegar:
Ingredients: Pineapple, Habaneros, Sweetness Carrots, Apple Cider Vinegar, Cumin, Cinnamon, Brown Sugar, Red Onion, Xanthan Gum
This vinegar is made from white wine and has a sweeter, more mellow taste. It’s tart but doesn’t have the same bite as white vinegar. It’s perfectly in the middle—not too sour, not too sweet.
Because it has a lower acidity, you’ll see it often blended with another vinegar. However, a great example of a sauce without another vinegar mixed in is Bravado Spice Co.’s Pineapple & Habanero.
Bravado Spice Co. Pineapple & Habanero Hot Sauce
$8.99Out of stock
Example hot sauce containing
White Wine Vinegar:
Ingredients: Pineapple, Habanero, Yellow Bell Pepper, White Wine Vinegar, Garlic, Sea Salt.
Rice Wine Vinegar in hot sauce has a very delicate flavor. It is probably the mildest vinegar, sweet and not overwhelming.
If you see “Rice Vinegar” on the label, don’t be confused; rice wine vinegar is the same as rice vinegar.
Pairing rice wine vinegar with another type, such as apple cider or white, is best.
Quite a few hot sauces incorporate rice wine vinegar. One of my favorites is High River Sauces Foo Foo Mama Choo Hot Sauce, which is made with the hottest pepper on earth, the Carolina Reaper.
Example hot sauce containing
Rice Wine Vinegar:
Ingredients: Roasted Red Peppers (roasted peppers, water, salt, citric acid), Fire Roasted Tomatoes (vine ripened tomatoes, tomato juice, salt, citric acid), Rice Wine Vinegar, Reaper Peppers, Onions, Brown Sugar, Garlic, Soy Sauce, Ginger Root, Salt, White Pepper, Secret Herbs & Spices.
Red wine vinegar is less common in hot sauce than other vinegar, but it still works great for some hot sauces. Many people love its distinct, slightly fruity flavor.
It mixes great with other vinegar, too.
One of my favorite hot sauces that uses Red Wine Vinegar is from Fresco Sauce, a California-based company.
Example hot sauce containing
Red Wine Vinegar:
Ingredients: Water, Red Bell Peppers, Red Wine Vinegar, Mangos, Garlic, Arbol Chiles, Salt, Black Pepper.
Balsamic vinegar in hot sauce? This is the wildcard of hot sauce vinegar, and it’s not used that often. If you can find it, it’s a fantastic addition.
Authentic balsamic vinegar is an art form made from grape must. It has to be made with a particular grape from Modena and aged in progressively smaller barrels for 15-25 years. Our Flower City Flavor Company Dark Traditional Balsamic Vinegar is one of the best available.
But even some (semi-) knock-off Balsamic vinegar can go great in hot sauce. Because their flavor is so robust and distinct, it’s usually best to dilute it with another vinegar, like apple cider.
You must dig a little to find a hot sauce with Balsamic vinegar. The one that stands out is Angry Goat Pepper Co.’s Chocolate Habanero, Balsamic, and Black Garlic Hot Sauce.
Example hot sauce containing
Balsamic Vinegar:
Ingredients: Chocolate Habanero Pepper Mash (peppers, vinegar), Balsamic Vinegar, Apple Cider Vinegar, Smoked Vermont Maple Syrup, Water, Black Garlic Powder, Granulated Garlic, Sea Salt.
You’ll often hear people complain about the taste of vinegar in hot sauce.
This is especially true of more prominent brands like Tabasco®, sometimes lovingly called “vinegar bombs.”
Vinegary hot sauce can be too forward and overpowering. There seems to be something cheap about its quality (which is true), so people write off all hot sauces with vinegar.
Well, a few things.
First, it’s worth pointing out that most people (even if they say otherwise) like vinegar in their hot sauce—that sour bite makes all the difference. They just hate it when the vinegar is too aggressive and tastes cheap.
So the first thing you can do is stop buying cheap hot sauce and get something nice from Flower City Flavor Company (shameless plug alert)! I guarantee you’ll change your mind.
If that doesn’t work, I’ve got a couple more solutions for you.
#1 Mask It
If vinegar is an issue, you can mask the flavor with other ingredients. Look for hot sauces with added fruits, juices, or honey, which can help cancel some acidity and hide the sharp flavor.
#2 Avoid It
Pay attention to the order of ingredients in any hot sauce. The rule of thumb is the further down the list you find something, the less of it there is.
So look for hot sauces that list vinegar as the second, third, or even fourth ingredient, where the flavor will be less forward.
#3 Replace It
If you want to replace the vinegar in your hot sauce, you have a few options. Remember that vinegar’s purpose (besides driving the flavor) is to act as a preservative.
You can replace it with citric acid from lemons and limes. You’ll probably have trouble finding a brand that does this (I’ve only seen two—Tabanero and Rising Hy), so you might have to make your own if you want to use lemon or lime juice. Replace any vinegar in the recipe with an equal amount of juice.
You could also use alcohol itself as a preservative. This is rare, but a brand is doing it — Swamp Dragon out of Louisiana.
Finally, if you make it yourself, you can try fermenting your peppers. It’s a safe, straightforward process that pulls out acid directly from the peppers. But this makes vinegar from the peppers themselves so that it might defeat the point.
#4 Get Rid of It
Technically, you can make your hot sauce without vinegar. However, you must eat it immediately or refrigerate it for a few days.
That’s all she wrote! My vinegar diatribe ends. I hope you learned something, and I hope you try out some of these great sauces! Now remember, regardless of whether a hot sauce has vinegar in it, the most important thing to consider is its flavor.
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19 comments
Kenneth Thorpe
Chris,
Great information. Thanks for sharing you’re knowledge.
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Thanks for reading and your words Kenneth! I’ve had a lot of great minds help me over the years, and I try to do what I can to pay it forward. I’m still always learning, it never ends!
Pete
Hi Chris – 20%-25% by volume or by weight?
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Hi Pete,
20% – 25% by weight. I’ve received this question before, so I am going to update the blog to make this clearer. Thanks for reading and reaching out!
Mary Gallimore
I have major issues with salt, almost like an allergy. Can you make hot sauce without the salt, or with minimal salt?
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Hi Mary,
Absolutely! I did another blog that looked at Low Sodium Hot Sauce options that also includes some that are 100% salt free!
https://flowercityflavor.com/best-low-sodium-hot-sauce/
My favorites on the list include High River Sauces Cheeba Gold and PepperNutz Pineapple.
RH
is the % of vinegar by weight? or be volume?
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Great question RH. I’m referring to weight in this blog in terms of % of vinegar to use when making a hot sauce.
Ramsie
Good day Chris, I am making piquante sauce and preserving it with 20% of white vinegar but after a week or so white patches of mold emanate on top. Should I add more vinegar?
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Hi Ramsie, have you measured the pH level? You’ll want to aim for 3.4. That would be my first step of curbing spoiled sauce. I would also make sure you are refrigerating any home made sauces too to curb bacteria growth, trust me when i say you don’t want botulism!
Alex
What will happen is the only liquid I use to make jalapeño hot sauce is vinegar and no water?
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Hey Alex,
Nothing will “happen” other than having a water-less jalapeño hot sauce. If your question was more in regards to how the sauce will taste, there are lot of different factors that would go into that. What type of vinegar are you using? What are the other ingredients (if any)? How long are you cooking it for?
Water is a very common ingredient in hot sauce, I would say it probably is the 4th most common behind peppers, vinegar, and salt. There’s a lot of ways water can manipulate a sauce, both positively and negatively. Water can thin out a sauce and therefore dilute its flavor. More important to consider is the quality of water. I wouldn’t use just use normal tap water from the sink, definitely use a filtered water. Water can also reduce the heat of the hot sauce by lessening the volume of peppers in a mix.
Water can be cooked off and therefore still be apart of the recipe process but not end up having to be on a final label. I would suggest taking a look at some of your favorite hot sauce’s labels and see if they have water listed as an ingredient. If a sauce does and it’s the type of sauce you’d like to mimic, use it as a reference as you are making up your own batch.
Alexander Antonio
Thank you so much for the explanation. This helps a lot.
Jey T
this is awesome information. Thanks for posting this!!
Chris WhitehairAuthor
I’m glad you found it of use Jey T, happy hot sauce making!
Ed
So how can the hot sauces sit out on a table at a restraunt, for so long?
Is it the vinegar?
DO I have to refrigerate it?
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Hey Ed,
I try to answer the hot sauce refrigeration question in this separate blog:
https://flowercityflavor.com/does-hot-sauce-need-to-be-refrigerated/
Paul Johnson
Thanks for the info! My vinegar question is…if I want to make my own hot sauce, how much vinegar do I need to use to preserve it? Or citrus juice if I want to try that? I’m actually thinking of using pickle juice.
Chris WhitehairAuthor
Hey Paul,
20%-25% of the hot sauce should be vinegar to preserve it. The same amount of citrus/pickle juice should do it too, though there will be variances depending on other ingredients you’ll be using.
The pH level is going to be key here so I recommend getting a pH tester, you’ll want your finished hot sauce to be at 3.4.
ALWAYS refrigerate and I’d love to see how it turns out!