We hadn’t heard about Sakari Farms until stumbling upon it at a store. But this Indigenous-owned farm in Tumalo (near Bend) makes a sleeper-hit hot sauce. The flavor is more unusual than its run-of-the-mill name implies: surprisingly smoky from wood-smoked jalapeño, moderately spicy, and full of tang from roasted tomatillos. Our testers unanimously liked it.

This hot sauce was met with quiet chip-crunching and satisfied mmms from our testers, who appreciated its hot-but-not-too-hot zing. What makes it unique, along with the turmeric, is the addition of orange and lemon juice for a fruit-forward tang. “It has an unusual flavor, but it’s pretty agreeable,” said another tester.

This classic Portland hot sauce, started in 2004, is so common that it’s become a standard Portland condiment at many restaurants. The secret to its success is its balance of sweet and hot, with a complex flavoring of tomatoes, habanero peppers, white wine vinegar and mustard. Its texture is thick and ideal for accurate placement on food, alongside a bright orange-red color, and an assertive spice that doesn’t compete with food.

Visually, this one stands out from the rest with its salsa-like, spoonable texture; a sambal, after all, is more of a chile paste than a hot sauce. It’s easy to see why this Singaporean-style sambal won a Good Food Award in 2022; it’s got a complex flavor that balances lots of garlic with a punch of white vinegar and surprisingly fruity chiles. “I would put it on a cheese plate, on rice, on meat,” said one tester. Another commented, “I’d get in trouble with this one.”

Pickles are always a divisive ingredient. This pickle-juice-meets-hot-sauce collab was no different. Some of our testers are big fans of the Grillo’s Pickles brand, but found the pickle notes a bit too strong. “It just tastes like pickle juice,” said one tester. Another offered, “I really like it. It would be good on fries.”

Based on the ingredients—habanero, peach, lavender—we were skeptical this sauce could find balance. While we liked the creeping heat and juicy peach flavor, for most of us, it went too far with in-your-face lavender. In the end, it tastes more like a spicy, floral jam than a hot sauce. It’s completely overpowering on a chip, but we started thinking of other possible applications: maybe on a breakfast biscuit with butter? Or a cheese plate? Brie, manchego? We steer you toward other Hot Mama Salsa products, like their salsas and excellent smoked coffee chili oil.

We had high hopes for this hot sauce, made in collaboration with St. Johns-based hatch chile roasters Los Roast. But the sauce is disappointingly bland, neither salty nor spicy enough, without detectable hatch chile flavor.

The bright-red color of this one made us immediately suspicious, and those suspicions were soon confirmed: it is watery, barely spicy, and very sweet, thanks to the addition of honey. Our testers drew comparisons to other condiments—ketchup, shrimp cocktail sauce—and agreed that calling this a “hot sauce” is dubious. And even in applications where it would work, testers were frustrated by its thinness and the inability to control where it lands on food. “Being able to place hot sauce intentionally is very important,” said a tester.