For a brief, fleeting moment, Eli made the world a better place and joined twitter. He then zinged Tom Brady.

Sadly the joy was not to last long as it became extremely apparent that 1: Eli very likely isn’t the one making tweets. His tweets read the same way a “Fun” corporate brand account’s tweets read. Which makes sense, because 2: His account was clearly made as part of an endorsement deal with Frank’s Red Hot. “Eli” spent the next day making extremely branded tweets about Peyton’s charity golf event.

Maybe it is actually Eli having fun behind the account, most of his humor is very dry and dripping in that classic Dad-sarcasm so it feels on-brand. At the same time, yikes to this. Sassy brand accounts are the worst and I’m glad people have finally gotten over Wendy’s. Wendy’s is a trash fast food joint and tweeting jokes at McDonalds doesn’t make their fries better.

At least Eli picked a good hot sauce to shill. Due to the Louisiana connection I’m really surprised Tobasco didn’t aim for that endorsement first, feels like a missed opportunity for them. Tobasco however, is ass. More like Tobassco. Hell, lets just rank some hot sauces right now and start a fight. I love hot sauce, I’m the type who puts hot sauce on everything, and I have opinions. Let’s only rank the basic super market sauces since there are about a bazillion local and artisan hot sauces out there worth trying. This is the junk you find in every store, and the more mild end of the spectrum because everybody can enjoy these sauces. Once you go Habanero level you are gonna lose all the weaklings out there.

OVERRATED TRASH TIER – I’m going to avoid them pretty much every time tier
-Tobasco. It is basically the only hot sauce in most restaurants outside of certain regions and I don’t know how it got that way because it just isn’t very good. It tastes like someone took a good vinegar sauce and mixed in a bit of battery acid. The green Tobasco isn’t that bad though, and some of the weirder flavors are okay. The main product is balls and if I have a choice of Tobasco or no hot sauce, I’m just going to skip the sauce. I will however concede that Tobasco improves bloody marys significantly. Probably because the bloody mary drowns out the sauce flavor and leaves just the heat.
-Sriracha. I’m glad the Sriracha craze is done with because it sucks and is surprisingly limited in use. The flavor doesn’t go with a lot of foods and as a “EGGS ARE A VEHICLE FOR HOT SAUCE” guy it just ruins my eggs. It overpowers everything you put it on, but not in the fun hot sauce way because it isn’t even that spicy. It’s like spicy ketchup. The only time I’ve found Sriracha enhanced my meal was when I dumped a bunch of it into a bowl of boring insta-ramen. Go to an asian market and find the asian equivalent, it’ll be 10x better.

BASICALLY JUST EXISTS TIER -If any of these hot sauces are available, I’ll consider them, but only if better options are missing and my food is very bland.
-Cholula. We have this hot sauce in the fridge at work, and I’ve used it many times to make my reheated leftovers less bland. But I couldn’t tell you anything about it. It’s like the hot sauce equivalent of FRIENDS. It just doesn’t matter.
-Tapatio. We also have a bottle of this sitting next to the bottle of Cholula in the same fridge. I have the same feelings about it. I think it has a worse texture too.
-Valentina. Honestly I’ve only had this one a couple of times and I don’t remember it standing out. Might need to try it again.

PRETTY GOOD TIER – yeah I’ll dump these on everything
-Lousiana Hot Sauce. It is basically a slightly worse version of the other two on this list, but that is good enough. I wont buy it because of the others, but if a place has it and not the other two, this is what I’m going for.
-Franks Red Hot. Yeah, it goes real good on basically everything and I’ll happily swamp my pizza and my eggs in this stuff.

GOD TIER
-Crystal. I could drink it straight out of the bottle and may have done that on a couple of occasions. I went to the store once and they were out and I literally yelped. I think I even put it on ice cream once and still liked it. If there is any hot sauce in the world that will always be in my house, it’s this stuff.

That’s the stuff even grandma could enjoy. As far as REAL BOY hot sauces go (sauces that actually have heat instead of a pleasant tingle), the world has far too many to rank and I have tried so few. Habanero sauces are usually my favorite simply because they give you lots of flavor plus decent heat, so you can still be pretty liberal with the coverage. Above that it starts to become a sweatfest more about the fire than the flavor, and you can’t use a lot of the sauces on anything because of how strong it is.

The problem with trying and buying hot sauces is that it is easy to get stuck with one that isn’t special and you can’t tell till you get home. It takes a rare sauce to get a second purchase in my house, but here are a couple recommendations from ya boi; these 3 are some of the few I will buy on repeat.
-Secret Aardvark. It’s pretty well known now, but it is a fantastic chunky habanero sauce. Goes great on eggs.
-Hot Mama Salsa. This might be tough to find outside Portland, but they always have a booth at my farmers market and their habanero sauce is my favorite that I’ve found
Hamajang Smoked Ghost Pepper sauce. Basically incredible. Can’t use too much, but it is so deliciously smokey and brings that good heat. I put it in mac n cheese once and basically had a religious experience.

If you read this blog post and your taste more or less seems to align with mine, please give me your hot sauce recommendations.