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Frank's RedHot substitute

Best substitute

Another Louisiana-style cayenne pepper sauce

Use the same amount as the frank's redhot you are replacing

Best for buffalo wings

Close match

Louisiana Hot Sauce, Crystal, Texas Pete, Cholula or any thin aged-cayenne sauce whose label lists peppers, vinegar and salt.

Other frank's redhot substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

Substitutes for Frank's RedHot with ratios

  1. 2Homemade cayenne and vinegar sauce

    Different taste

    Makes about ½ cup: 6 tablespoons white vinegar, 1.5 teaspoons cayenne, ½ teaspoon garlic powder, ¼ teaspoon salt, 1 tablespoon water, simmered 5 minutes

    The same four ingredients Frank's is made from, cooked briefly so they stop tasting raw.

    What changes
    Best for
    buffalo wings, wing sauce, dips, cooking when the shops are shut

    Genuinely close, and it takes five minutes. What changes: Frank's peppers are aged in barrels for months, which gives the sauce a mellow, slightly fermented roundness, and nothing you cook in five minutes will have that. So the homemade version tastes cleaner, sharper and more directly vinegary, and a little thinner. Two fixes: simmer it with a quarter teaspoon of sugar to round the edges, and let it sit an hour before using. Use it warm or cold. Keep it refrigerated and use within a couple of weeks rather than treating it as a shelf-stable bottled sauce.

  2. 3Tabasco, diluted

    Different taste

    ¼ cup Tabasco plus ¼ cup water, a pinch of salt and ¼ teaspoon garlic powder replaces ½ cup Frank's

    Tabasco cut with water and seasoned to bring the heat and salinity back into Frank's territory.

    What changes
    Best for
    buffalo wings when it is your only bottle, dips, soups, bloody marys

    The important thing here is that Tabasco is emphatically not a one-for-one swap, and this is the mistake that ruins more batches of wings than anything else. Tabasco is roughly five times hotter, and a wing sauce made cup for cup with it will be uncomfortable for most people to eat. What changes even after diluting: Tabasco is made from tabasco peppers aged in salt and has a sharper, more peppery, distinctly fermented tang, so the sauce tastes more acidic and less garlicky. Adding the garlic powder makes a surprising amount of difference.

  3. 4Sriracha

    Taste and texture differ

    Use the same amount in a dip, but not in wing sauce

    Thai-style chilli garlic sauce, thick and sweet, useful in some contexts and misleading in others.

    What changes
    Best for
    buffalo-style dips, mayonnaise-based sauces, marinades, stir-fries

    Works fine where the hot sauce is a flavour among many, and badly where it is the sauce. What changes: sriracha contains sugar and is much thicker, so wings tossed in a sriracha and butter mixture come out glazed and sweet, clinging to the surface rather than soaking in, and they taste like sweet chilli chicken rather than buffalo wings. It is also more garlicky and less sour. If you use it for wings anyway, add a tablespoon of white vinegar per quarter cup to bring the acidity back and expect a sweeter result.

  4. 5Gochujang thinned with vinegar

    Taste and texture differ

    Use 2 tablespoons gochujang plus 2 tablespoons white vinegar and 1 tablespoon water for every ¼ cup Frank's

    Korean fermented chilli paste loosened into a pourable sauce.

    What changes
    Best for
    Korean-style wings, glazes, dipping sauces, roasted cauliflower

    Not a substitute so much as a good alternative direction, and worth knowing if it is what you have. What changes: gochujang is deep, sweet, thick and heavily fermented, so the sauce comes out opaque, sticky and considerably more complex, with soy-like savouriness Frank's does not have. Wings made this way are excellent and are not buffalo wings. Because gochujang is salty and sweet already, do not add sugar, and taste before salting.

  5. 6Chilli garlic sauce or sambal oelek plus vinegar

    Taste and texture differ

    Use 2 tablespoons sambal plus 2 tablespoons white vinegar for every ¼ cup Frank's

    Coarse chilli paste loosened with vinegar into something pourable.

    What changes
    Best for
    dips, chilli and soups, marinades, eggs

    Serviceable in wet dishes, awkward in wing sauce. What changes: these pastes are chunky with visible seeds and chilli skins, so the sauce is gritty rather than smooth and will not coat wings evenly. Sambal is also brighter and more raw-tasting than an aged cayenne sauce, with no garlic powder background. Blend it smooth and strain it if you want to use it on wings, or keep it for a buffalo chicken dip where the texture disappears into the cream cheese.

What is Frank's RedHot?

Frank's RedHot is Frank's RedHot, often written Frank's Red Hot and sold as Frank's original cayenne pepper sauce, is a thin bright orange-red Louisiana-style hot sauce made from aged cayenne peppers, vinegar, water, salt and garlic powder, and it is far more tangy than it is hot.

Cooking tips

  • Buffalo sauce is roughly two parts hot sauce to one part melted butter, whisked together off the heat. That ratio is where most of the flavour decisions live, and it means your hot sauce is more than half the sauce by volume, which is exactly why a hotter or thicker substitute changes the result so dramatically. If your sauce splits and goes greasy, whisk in a tablespoon of cold hot sauce to bring it back together.
  • Frank's is mild on purpose, and that is the point rather than a shortcoming. It is well under a thousand Scoville units, while Tabasco sits around two and a half thousand, which is why you can pour a third of a cup of Frank's over a plate of wings and still taste the chicken. Any substitute that is significantly hotter has to be diluted, not just measured differently.
  • Do not reduce a vinegar-based hot sauce over high heat. Boiling it hard drives off water and concentrates the vinegar into something harsh and flat, and it also dulls the fresh cayenne aroma. If a recipe wants you to cook the sauce, keep it at a bare simmer for a few minutes at most, and add it near the end.
  • Thinness is a feature in fried food. Frank's soaks into breading and seasons it from the inside, while a thick sauce like sriracha or a barbecue-style sauce sits on the surface and slides off. If you are substituting something thick and want it to behave properly on fried chicken, thin it with a tablespoon of vinegar and a tablespoon of water per quarter cup.
  • Taste for salt at the end, not the start. Hot sauces vary a lot in salinity, and a substitution can leave a dip or a sauce noticeably under- or over-salted even when the heat is right. This is the most common reason a swap tastes almost right but slightly hollow.

Frequently asked questions

Is Frank's RedHot the same as buffalo sauce?

No, but it is the main ingredient. Buffalo sauce is Frank's, or another Louisiana-style cayenne sauce, whisked with melted butter in roughly a two-to-one ratio, sometimes with a little garlic powder, Worcestershire or vinegar. Frank's also sells a pre-mixed Buffalo Wings Sauce, which is closer to a finished sauce and is milder and thicker than the original cayenne sauce. If a recipe asks for Frank's and you have the wings sauce, use it but skip most of the butter.

Can I use Tabasco instead of Frank's, one for one?

No, and this is the single most useful thing on this page. Tabasco is roughly five times hotter and much sharper, so a batch of wings made cup for cup with Tabasco will be painfully hot for most people and will taste sour rather than savoury. Use a quarter of the volume and make up the difference with water, a pinch of salt and a quarter teaspoon of garlic powder, and you will land close to Frank's.

Can I just leave it out?

In a chilli, a soup or a marinade, yes, and you will only lose a little heat and tang. In buffalo wings or buffalo chicken dip you cannot, because the hot sauce is the majority of the sauce by volume and supplies the acid and salt as well as the heat. Without it you would have wings tossed in butter. If you have nothing spicy at all, the honest move is to make the vinegar and cayenne version from the spice rack rather than to skip it.

How hot is Frank's RedHot?

Mild by hot sauce standards, well under a thousand Scoville heat units, which puts it below a typical jalapeno. It is made from cayenne peppers, which are considerably hotter than that on their own, but the sauce is largely vinegar and water. That mildness is why it works as a base sauce rather than a few-drops condiment, and it is the reason substituting a hotter sauce at the same volume causes so much trouble.

What is the difference between Frank's original and Frank's Buffalo Wings Sauce?

The original cayenne pepper sauce is the thin, tangy base sauce. The Buffalo Wings Sauce has butter or a butter-type flavouring and thickeners already blended in, so it is milder, thicker and ready to toss straight onto wings. If a recipe calls for the original and you use the wings sauce, cut the butter in the recipe by about two thirds and expect a slightly sweeter, less sharp result. Going the other way, add butter.

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