Chilli Sauce Showdown:

Hello all, Phil here, welcome to our first face-off. Chilli sauces are a bit of an obsession in our household. The fridge currently holds 10 (so you can expect another show-down in the near future). I love some spice on my eggs in the morning and honestly cannot get over the pleasure I feel drinking hot, black coffee over a tingly tongue.

Basically we’ll give each of these 5 a go, on a tortilla chip this time, and hand our impressions over to you. I think we’re going to start with Cholula hot sauce, readily available in a number of super-markets as far as I can see. A perennial favourite with us and I feel it will set a good benchmark for the others.

Cholula Hot Sauce, Mexico:
Contains both Arbol and Piquin chillies. Can’t remember where we picked this particular bottle up but as I said I’d be surprised if you had any trouble finding it. A great whole tongue heat that stays well within the comfort zone. Something almost cumin-like about the flavour. Reasonably dry and tomatoey, it packs a lot of flavour in. Some tart vinegary undertones are also apparent. I really love this one all over scrambled eggs and its mild enough to slather on a burrito. Onward!

Pickapeppa Sauce, Jamaica:
They don’t let on what is in here, just ‘peppers and spices’. The label tells how the sauce is aged in oak barrels for a minimum of one year. Ooh, get them. Very fruity, a lot of HP sauce about it. Deep and rich with lots of sweet, roasted tomato flavour. Vinegary finish with a heat that starts small but grows slowly upon the next taste. A really odd flavour all round. Not dissimilar to A1 steak sauce from the US but with a bit more heat. Not sure if the fire comes from a fresh chilli here at all. It may well be added via a ‘spice’ later on.

NOH Hawaiian Hot Sauce: An ambiguous ‘chilli pepper’ ingredient on the list. Picked this bottle up a little store on Maui whilst we were visiting Annie’s family over New Year. This is the first bottle to have a plastic cap inside to reduce the flow. Intimidating. Very sweet and positively Asian influenced. (“Very Hawaiian” says Annie). Not much heat to this at all but the flavour is lovely. A mix of sweet and sour with some dry woodiness. So little heat-wise it is a bit of a disappointment, just a tickle after a while. We think this would make a really great marinade, maybe we’ll give it a go sometime soon.

Castillo Salsa Habanero, Mexico: Unsurprisingly the main ingredient here is Habanero. Pretty stark ingredient list: Habanero, salt, spices, vinegar (and a couple of weird things chemically things). IT IS KOSHER! What more could you want? This too is equipped with a regulator cap. The flavour gets you first, fresh and exciting. Loads of amazing chilli flavour, not much else but who needs it? The heat is direct, striking the tongue wherever contact is made. It lingers too, it is almost unpleasantly warm to begin with, bringing a light mist to the eyes, but the after burn is very satisfying.

Manda African Chilli Sauce, UK: Scotch Bonnet and Habanero here, promises to be a wild ride. Grabbed this bottle recently at the Real Food Festival at Earls Court. Chilli seeds are visible in the sauce itself. Big, gaping aperture and delicious fresh pepper aromas tempt a healthy portion. DO NOT DO IT. The flavours are very light and fruity but dang does the heat catch you. Slowly building it dries out the mouth all the way back to the throat. A hint of sweat. Very warm on the tongue, tingly and intense. A prickly needle-point heat. Annie was quite overwhelmed by the spice in the African sauce so much so that the flavour was almost unapparent to her poor little tongue.

Overall I’d put Cholula and the Salsa Habanera top as having had the best heat/flavour balance. I think the African sauce may have edged it with a tad less heat to it. Enjoyed the Asian flavours in the Hawaiian sauce too but as a hot sauce it really lacked any kind of heat whatsoever. That leaves us with Pickapepper, a boring sauce with many of the characteristics of many sauces on the market. Lea and Perrin's and HP pretty much sum Pickapepper up better than I could explain.

I guess it all comes down to what you want to use them for. Marinade, seasoning or something completely different, each has its own strengths, except Pickapepper, that just rips off everyone elses.