The Secret To Creating Well Balanced Hot Sauces At Home

If you've watched "The Great British Bake Off," you'll know that one of the cardinal sins a baker can commit (beyond the dreaded soggy bottom Prue Leith looks to avoid) is having unbalanced flavors. If your lemon is lost to an intense dark chocolate or your spices overwhelm a more subtle component like butternut squash, you may be in for an earful from hosts Paul and Prue. And this is true for all cooking: striking a good balance among the five flavors — sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and umami — is key. Focusing on one flavor alone can result in a dish that is cloyingly sweet, puckeringly sour, or worse.

Let's say you're making a hot sauce. Noah Chaimberg, founder and CEO of Heatonist, a company that selects and sells the best of the best when it comes to hot sauce labels, spoke with Chowhound about balancing hot sauce seasonings. "A hot sauce that marries ingredients with at least two of the five flavors ... equally will be seen as more well-balanced versus a sauce that is mostly sweet or mostly smoky," he says.

So you don't need to try to pack every flavor into your sauce in order for it to be complex and interesting. But do consider which flavors you want to focus on, and go from there.

Heatonist founder Noah Chaimberg goes on to say that, "Adding a few ingredients that speak to each flavor component can result in a truly complex sauce, when done right." But which to choose? One option would be to take a note from some of the best hot sauces out there. What flavors have they incorporated that make them stand out? For example, the Queen Majesty Red Habanero & Black Coffee Hot Sauce marries the bitterness of black coffee with the spiciness of the habanero, creating a fan favorite.

Luckily, you may not have to think too hard about which two flavors to focus on with hot sauce. Peppers will naturally bring a spiciness, and vinegar — another key component of hot sauce — brings a sourness. So from here, you can consult our spicy guide to hot peppers to determine which peppers and vinegar you want to use, and which additional flavor elements you want to highlight. Tropical fruits — like mango or pineapple — are popular choices that add a nice sweetness. Umami can be found in ingredients like soy sauce, olives, or mushrooms.

"Smokiness" is another aspect of umami that many people appreciate in a hot sauce. Achieve this signature smokiness by smoking your peppers, adding a can of chili peppers in adobo sauce, or using a smoked salt in your recipe.