What to use instead of hot sauce
It depends entirely on what it's doing in the dish. Here's the job, what else does it, and what to skip.
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Vinegary heat that also acidifies the dish (buffalo sauce, remoulade, bloody mary)
A Louisiana-style sauce is aged pepper mash, salt and vinegar, so it is doing two jobs at once: capsaicin plus around 2 to 3 percent acetic acid. That acid is what thins mayonnaise and cuts butter.
Cayenne, vinegar and saltRan out
1/2 tsp cayenne + 3 tbsp distilled vinegar + 1/4 tsp salt per 1/4 cup hot sauce
Cleaner and sharper. No fermented depth, so a buffalo sauce tastes hollow until it has sat an hour.
SrirachaRan out
use 3/4 as much and drop 1 tsp of any sugar in the recipe
Sweeter, thicker and garlic-forward. It clings to wings better and it will not thin a mayonnaise the same way.
Sambal oelek plus vinegarRan out
1 tbsp sambal + 1 tbsp vinegar per 2 tbsp hot sauce
Coarse, with visible seed and skin. Brighter raw chilli flavour and none of the aged funk.
Piri piri sauceRan out
1:1
Brings lemon and garlic along with the heat. Good in a marinade, strange in a bloody mary.
What doesn't work: Tabasco one for one where the recipe means a Louisiana-style sauce. Tabasco runs roughly five times the heat and it is much thinner, so the wing sauce comes out punishing and slides off the wings instead of coating them.
Heat added at the table without watering down the plate
At the finish, capsaicin and aroma need to land on the surface of the food while it is already plated. Any extra liquid soaks in and dulls whatever crust is there.
Chilli crispRan out
1 tsp per 1 tsp hot sauce
Adds oil, crunch and a lot of fried aromatics. Everything it touches goes glossy.
Gochujang loosened with waterRan out
1 tsp gochujang + 1/2 tsp water per 1 tsp hot sauce
Sweet, fermented and much thicker. It sits in a stripe instead of spreading across the plate.
HarissaRan out
1/2 tsp per 1 tsp hot sauce
Caraway and coriander come with it, so the dish turns North African whether you meant that or not.
Gochugaru or Aleppo flakesRan out
1/4 tsp per 1 tsp hot sauce
Dry heat with no acid at all. Nothing gets wet, but you lose the vinegar lift that was cutting the fat.
What doesn't work: Chilli powder from the spice rack. Supermarket chilli powder is a blend built around cumin, oregano and garlic with very little actual capsaicin, so you get a dusty taco flavour and almost no heat.