Our Top Favorites of 2011

We reviewed over 70 new hot sauces, bbq sauces, rubs and other products in 2011, and would like to share with you some of our absolute favorites from the past year. In no particular order, we present some of the best of the best in the world of spicy foods!

Read to the end to see our picks for Best New Product and Favorite Hot Sauce of the year!

Hot Sauces:

Our “flagship” category, and the reason for this website, it was hard to narrow the list down to just a handful of sauces, but you can NOT go wrong with any of these hot sauces!

Dat’s Nice Datil Pepper Sauce
Fat Cat Gourmet Foods Hot Sauces
Pique mi Madre Hot Sauce
Tears of the Sun
Lucky’s Hot Sauce Rudolph’s Red with Garlic
Tabanero Hot Sauce

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Wing Sauces:

We love us some hot wings, and who doesn’t? Fiery hot, bbq style, savory, dry-rubbed, they all make our mouths happy! Our Week of Wings series each year has some of our most popular posts. And we’ll be doing it again soon.

Texas Pete Fiery Sweet Wing Sauce
Tabasco Buffalo Style Hot Sauce
Flaming Joe’s Mild Caribbean Jerk Sauce
Sean’s booYah! Buffalo Wing Sauce
Our Week of Wings II began with a discussion from some big players in the fiery foods world

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Barbecue / BBQ Sauces:

Regular readers know we’re also big fans of the BBQ community, and this past year we had the pleasure to review some awesome BBQ sauces. It seems the “small craft” makers of barbecue sauce just keep getting better and better.

Draper’s BBQ Smokin’ Sauce and A.P. Rub (all purpose)
Doomer’s Q Maryland Style BBQ Sauces
CaJohns Select Grillin Smoky Bourbon BBQ Sauce
Hak’s BBQ Sauce Chipotle Bourbon

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Rubs:

Along with BBQ sauces, you have to have rubs, right? We have a huge backlog of rubs to test, as a plethora of rubs are available in all kinds of flavor profiles. This is just a small sampling of some of the best we tried this past year.

Big Ron’s Hint of Houston Rub
Pork Barrel BBQ All American Spice Rub
Hog’s Breath Blackening Seasoning
Pepperika 7 Pepper Hot Taco Seasoning

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Salsa:

This is one of the toughest categories to review, as most jarred salsas fall flat. There’s nothing like homemade salsa, but most of what we had just disappointed. With only one salsa to recommend, we obviously need to do more work in this category. Hopefully, we’ll bring you lots more salsa reviews in 2012.

Texas Tamale Company Casa Salsa

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Snacks / Other:

With no shortage of fiery and spicy snacks, we present a few of our favorites from 2011. As I compile this list, I realize there are quite a few we’ve left out, or didn’t get around to writing about. We welcome any suggestions for hot snacks that you are a fan of.

B-More Nutz Nutterz
Sport Peppers
How to make a Chicago Dog at Home
I’m especially proud of that post, and I love a good Chicago style dog!
Cincinnati Style Chili

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And now our two Top Favorite products reviewed on HotSauceDaily in 2011:

Favorite New Product:

Benito’s maple syrup is a high quality product that really brings on big Vermont maple flavor with heat. Perfect on pancakes and sausage or over a nice dish of good vanilla ice cream. This stuff is yummy!

Benito’s Chipotle Infused Vermont Maple Syrup

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Favorite Hot Sauce:

Made from 7 different peppers, this amazingly good sauce is great for everyday use, and is a must have on tacos for us. We always have a couple of bottles on hand, because it’s so delicious and useful, it goes fast!

Pepperika 7 Pepper Hot Sauce

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We hope you enjoyed this roundup of some really good sauces. Or maybe you’ve discovered one of these via this post. If so, please let us know in the comments below.

Thank you for reading HotSauceDaily in 2011. Have a Happy New Year!