Discover the most scorching hot sauces on the market with this thrilling guide. The article dives into the world of extreme heat, featuring hot sauces that challenge even the most daring spice lovers. It reviews a selection of the hottest sauces available, discussing their flavor profiles, the types of chili peppers used, such as the notorious Carolina Reaper, and their Scoville heat ratings. Ideal for those who relish a fiery culinary adventure, this guide helps you navigate the intense realm of ultra-hot condiments.
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- The Scoville Scale
- What is the Hottest Hot Sauce?
- CaJohn’s Magma Hot Sauce
- Blair’s Ultra Death Sauce
- Pepper Palace’s Scorpion Stinger
- Da Bomb’s The Final Answer
- Heartbreaking Dawn’s Reapercussion
- CaJohn’s Hydra 7-Pot Primo
- Hot Ones’ The Last Dab XXX
- PuckerButt Pepper Company’s Reaper Squeezin’s
- Pepper Palace’s LD50
- Pepper Palace’s The Hottest Sauce in the Universe: The Second Dimension
- Mad Dog’s 44 Magnum
- Mad Dog’s 357 Pepper Extract
- iBurn’s Meet Your Maker Death Sauce
- CaJohn’s Get Bitten Black Mamba Six
- Pepper Palace’s The End
- The Source Hot Sauce
- Mad Dog’s 357 No. 9 Plutonium
- Wiltshire Chili Farm’s Regret
- Heat Up With The Hottest Hot Sauce In The World
The Scoville Scale
Let’s be honest, though, you’re because you already love a good hot sauce, and you want to put your tastebuds to the test.
The heat of a chilli, and therefore a hot sauce, is rated on the Scoville Scale and you use Scoville Heat Units (SHUs). The higher the SHUs, the hotter the chilli is. The measurement is scientific. Chilli peppers are analyzed to see what concentration of capsaicin they hold, which is the substance that gives the pepper its heat.
To make a hot sauce really hot, the creators use peppers that are rated with a high SHU and sometimes even combine chilis to get more taste and more heat.
What is the Hottest Hot Sauce?
Now for the list you’ve been waiting for – the world’s hottest hot sauce.
CaJohn’s Magma Hot Sauce
We’ll start the list at 1 million SHUs and work our way up. Warning: 1 million SHUs is very hot! With Cajohn’s Magma Hot Sauce, the name says it all – they’re comparing the sauce to molten rock bubbling up from the core of the earth.
When you look at the hot sauce, it may not look like too much. It’s a clear liquid, but lurking in the centre is a sphere of capsicum (the substance that makes chilis hot). This sphere sends out the heat that moves through the vinegar.
Blair’s Ultra Death Sauce
The name and the label will make it abundantly clear that this hot sauce means business and at 1.1 million SHUs, it can deliver. The bottle’s label is covered in flames and a skull, with the motto “FEEL ALIVE” emblazoned across the front.
The makers of this hot sauce have combined a variety of favourites, with habanero, cayenne and serrano chilis making the bulk of the mix. To kick the heat into overdrive, they then added Jolokia peppers to the mix.
Pepper Palace’s Scorpion Stinger
Pepper Palace kicks it up another notch with this bad boy coming in at 1.2 million SHUs. It’s made with – you guessed it – the Trinidad Scorpion Stinger chilli pepper. This hot is designed for the slow burn and then it hits you with that sting in the tail. It’ll build slowly, with layer upon layer of taste and fire.
Da Bomb’s The Final Answer
The bottle for this one looks like a medicine bottle with a comedic label – like it comes straight out of a cartoon. Be careful, you might find your head blowing off like they do in the cartoons with this sauce and it’s 1.5 million SHUs. The heat all comes from habaneros, with sweetness from apricot nectar mixed in.
Heartbreaking Dawn’s Reapercussion
Nothing like a little play on words to show you immediately what this hot sauce delivers – the repercussions might be a meeting with the grim reaper! The makers decided to use two of the hottest peppers in the world to create their sauce – 7-Pot Primo and Trinidadian Scorpion. This combination gives them a whopping 1.5 million SHUs.
This is the first on the list that comes with a warning to not taste this hot sauce directly. The label says you need to use it sparingly, adding it to your food as you cook.
CaJohn’s Hydra 7-Pot Primo
This is our third entry at 1.5 million SHUs and this one uses just the 7-Pot Primo pepper to get that fiery heat. It’s also the second entry on the list for CaJohn, who clearly wants to make it into the history books for the hottest hot sauce in the world.
Hot Ones’ The Last Dab XXX
You know that the Hot Ones hottest sauce had to be on this list! The Last Dab XXX comes in at 2 million SHUs and only the absolute bravest on the show make it to this chicken at the fiery end of the plate. If want to try it the way they do on the show (and that’s probably not advisable) then make sure you have a big jug of milk standing by.
PuckerButt Pepper Company’s Reaper Squeezin’s
The grim reaper makes his second appearance in our quest to find out what is the hottest hot sauce in the world. Reaper Squeezin’s gets its name from the fact that they use pretty much only Carolina Reaper Peppers to make the sauce. They also throw in a bit of vinegar, but it’s 92% chilli peppers. Thanks to this recipe, the sauce clocks in at 2.2 million SHUs.
Pepper Palace’s LD50
This is a company that likes to make hot sauces very hot. Their second offering for the list comes in at 3 million SHUs and is made using a combination of their favourite Scorpion Stinger, Carolina Reaper, Ghost and Habanero peppers. Oh, and the LD stands for “lethal dose” – in case you were wondering.
Pepper Palace’s The Hottest Sauce in the Universe: The Second Dimension
As we said, this company likes to make hot sauces and knows how to do it well. Their third addition to the list comes in at a whopping 3.5 million SHUs – although, to be fair, it isn’t the hottest hot sauce in the world or on this list or that they even make. It is, however, fun to buy because of the crazy label and the main ingredient in the sauce is the Ghost Pepper.
Mad Dog’s 44 Magnum
As the name suggests, this one packs a punch. This sauce clocks in at 4 million SHUs and drinking this straight could hurt almost as much as a bullet to the leg could – not that we’re recommending you try either, let alone both as a comparison because we’re definitely not recommending that. It’s just the kind of comparison that the name of the hot sauce conjures up.
Mad Dog’s 357 Pepper Extract
It seems like some companies just enjoy trying to outdo themselves in terms of bringing the heat. With this edition, Mad Dog clocks in at 5 million SHUs. At this point, we are over the halfway point in getting to the highest SHU rating for the list. Although we’re not sure it really matters because this is so hot, it could make steam come out of your ears.
iBurn’s Meet Your Maker Death Sauce
The name might seem like a bit of an exaggeration, but at 5 million SHUs, we’re getting close to something that might make you an ex-human if you tried to drink it neat. This hot sauce uses Ghost Peppers done three ways – extract, ground and fresh. It also comes in a very cool mini coffin with a fiery skull on the front and a little bottle hiding inside.
CaJohn’s Get Bitten Black Mamba Six
You guessed it – the six in the name stands for 6 million SHUs trapped inside the unassuming brown bottle. Of course, a closer look at the label reveals a picture of the snake curled up and ready to strike. It’s a pretty apt comparison here.
One drop of this level on the Scoville Scale is actually enough to briefly incapacitate you. If you try to taste this hot sauce directly, you could find yourself in a world of pain.
Pepper Palace’s The End
We did say that The Hottest Sauce in the Universe wasn’t the hottest that the company made. The End comes in at 6 million SHUs – meaning it could end you momentarily if you tried to taste it neat. Not that we’re encouraging trying this hot sauce neat, but the company does also sell a T-shirt that says “I survived The End” for those who genuinely did.
The Source Hot Sauce
You may be forgiven for not even realizing what this is when you see the packaging. It looks like it could be a book with a fancy cover that is all about Ancient Egypt. What it actually is, is one of the hottest hot sauces in the world with a Scoville Scale rating of 7.1 million SHUs. The Source even has a warning on the packaging to never consume this hot sauce directly and only ever add it in drops to your food while cooking.
Mad Dog’s 357 No. 9 Plutonium
This company seems to be consistently one-upping itself and it has answered the question of what is the hottest hot sauce with its 357 No. 9 Plutonium. It’s a bottle of sauce that packs in a record-breaking 9 million SHUs and is definitely not safe to consume directly. The sauce will physically burn you if you try to drink it – even just a drop on your tongue.
However, there are some who might argue that this sauce is not a proper hot sauce because it is made from capsaicin extracts as opposed to using chilli peppers. It is a straight extract, as is The Source, and there are no other ingredients to add flavour or variety to the sauces.
Wiltshire Chili Farm’s Regret
If you want to top the list with a sauce that uses multiple ingredients, then this may be the answer. Regret is made from an extract – Oleoresin at 12 million SHUs – but dilutes those down with other ingredients. The exact SHU rating for this sauce isn’t readily available, meaning we’re unsure of exactly where it hits on this list. However, it is likely to be high up!
Heat Up With The Hottest Hot Sauce In The World
For those who love the challenge of truly spicy food, this list is probably very appetizing! The key is to be careful and make sure you sample these hot hot sauces with care – you don’t want to end up with a trip to the emergency room.
Sources:
https://www.naturespath.com/en-us/blog/all-about-the-scoville-scale/
https://parade.com/1104523/stephanieosmanski/hottest-hot-sauces/
https://studyfinds.org/best-hot-sauce-2023/
https://firstwefeast.com/tag/hot-ones

Penny is a sought-after wedding and party planner, known primarily for her exquisite culinary knowledge, sharp palette and inventive pairings of wine and drink.
She has traveled the world hunting for the best food and drink to share with her clients on their special day.