Tabasco's Worst Hot Sauce Is Also Its Spiciest

Tabasco hot sauces are the go-to choice when you want serious heat. Brush them on your steaks, sneak some into your cod minestrone soup like Gordon Ramsay, or use them to give your whiskey sour a spicy boost — you can always expect the flavor of your dish to be elevated with just a few dashes. However, some of Tabasco's hot sauces miss the mark or, in this case, hit it a bit too zealously. We ranked every Tabasco hot sauce flavor, and you may be surprised to find which one ended up at the bottom: Scorpion Sauce.

For the many who enjoy it, the concept behind this sauce is straightforward. It delivers intense heat and, in turn, garners a lot of love. But according to our taste tester, it's the worst hot sauce in the Tabasco brand's lineup.

Tabasco hot sauces range from mild to fiery hot. In fact, the brand assesses the intensity of each hot sauce using its own heat level, and Scorpion Sauce receives a solid 5 out of 5. That makes it the spiciest of all the brand's hot sauces. When using a more universal scale that measures heat — the Scoville scale — this translates to 23,000 to 33,000 Scoville Heat Units, or SHUs. These units measure the amount of capsaicin present, which is the chili pepper component responsible for heat. To put it in perspective, original Tabasco sauce has an SHU score of 2,500 to 5,000, making Scorpion Sauce around 10 times hotter than the original.

There's no doubt about how effective Tabasco Scorpion Sauce is at delivering heat. Numerous reviews praise it for kicking things up a notch in the kitchen but, at some point, the intensity of this hot sauce exceeds what others can bear. Our taste tester along with others who have tried Tabasco Scorpion Sauce agree that the product is so fiery that it masks any other flavors. Ideally, you should be able to detect its sugary guava and pineapple notes, but it seems that so much effort was put into ensuring that this sauce is heated that it overwhelms your palate, leaving you unable to discern its complex flavors.

Even when diluted, some find the heat of this fire-in-a-bottle to still be too strong, leading us to wonder: What's the point of having a sauce so hot that it can't fulfill its purpose? Hot sauce ought to enhance a dish's aromas, yet this one may very well do the opposite by muting your taste buds. Some even liken this hot sauce to Tabasco's original offering, stating that it's merely an extremely hot version of the latter. Only, Tabasco Original Sauce is likely better since you can actually taste your food without feeling like the heat of the sun is on your tongue. If you're going to take things to the next level in the kitchen, go for our number 1 choice: Tabasco Red Pepper Sauce. Unlike the worst Tabasco hot sauce, you can appreciate its tangy flavors while savoring the fiery heat.