11 Hot Sauces with Super-Saucy Names

Food Lists

Flickr/Natalia Wilson

When it comes to naming products, food manufacturers tend to avoid any terms that would offend or disgust potential customers. Blue cheese, for example, would likely not sell as well if it were called “Chunks o’ Blue Mold.”

Snob appeal also makes a difference. While younger wine manufacturers seem to be more whimsical with their names—Folie a Deux’s Menage a Trois and Vampire Vineyards’ Dracula come to mind—stalwarts still opt for canyons, creeks and châteaus.

But the hot sauce industry, particularly the smaller specialty vendors, is the exception. Not only does it revel in whimsy, but manufacturers seem to be in a race to see who can be the most offensive and/or disgusting. “Ass” is probably the most common word in their repertoire, followed by “sphincter” and “rectum.” The word “bitch” is also very popular, with a number of variations. Then, there are masturbatory and STD references, as well as levels of pain.

Not exactly appetizing, but they seem to do well, and there are many specialty hot sauce sellers online, including hotsauce.com, hotsauceworld.com, and mohotta.com.

Joo Min, also known as “The Pepper Lady,” owns a hot sauce shop called Light My Fire. Located in the historic Farmers Market at the Grove in Los Angeles, Light My Fire is a tiny space filled wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling with bottles. Min also sells the sauces online at hotteashop.com.

When asked about the industry’s predilection for salty names, she replied, “I believe the hot sauce industry caters to a far more risqué clientele. Forget mainstream, conservative uptight thinking. Hot sauce enthusiasts seem to be a little more open to the type of marketing found commonly in the industry. Raunchy, rowdy, often obscene and many times extremely juvenile humor is what sells.”

And she expects this won’t change. In fact, it will likely get raunchier. “Basically, the labels get more outrageous because that’s what sells. Most of the truly risqué labels are sold primarily in specialty shops like ours and not in mainstream grocery stores. Therefore, there is more freedom and flexibility to sell products that might be considered ‘inappropriate’ by some.”

Below, we compile a list, by no means exhaustive, of interestingly-named hot sauces. The more distasteful names don’t necessarily translate to hotter sauces. Depending on which distributor you hit, they either have a scale from one to 10 (with 10 on par with pepper spray) or one to four. For simplicity, the heat scale below goes from one to four.

1. Flaming Coon Ass
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Heat scale: 3 flames
This sauce has a raccoon on the label, and the assurance that this name is really all about Cajun flavors and critters. It’s described as “burn once, then twice, and maybe thrice, and you’ll be flaming too.”

2. Larry’s Hot Pussy Juice
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Heat scale: 3 flames
Like Flaming Coon Sauce, this sauce helpfully included a cat on the label, lest there be misunderstandings. There’s also a reference to manliness. It’s described as “sweet and smoky sauce, goes well with everything.” They recommend it for fish.

3. Choke Your Chicken Wing
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Heat scale: 2 flames
Hot sauce and self-gratification don’t tend to go together well, which may be why this is a fairly mild sauce. It’s described as “Sure it’s a little salty, but it’s not hard to swallow.”

4. Enjoy Cock
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Heat scale: 3 flames
Yes, the joke here is a twist on the Coke label and slogan.

5. See Dick Burn
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Heat scale: 3 flames
A twist on the reading primer, plus some double entendre. It recommends you “Give this to your favorite Dick and watch him burn!”

6. Sphincter Shrinker XXX
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Heat scale: 3 flames
The three x’s are either an indication of spiciness or a nod to porn. Probably both. It’s described as “blends exotic tastes of the East. Decidedly Indian in style.”

7. Wet Fart XX Hot with Pooh
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Heat: 3 flames
The gross-out factor of this sauce is a selling point. It’s described as “Get that warm, mushy, disgusting feeling in your pants, like when you let out just a little bit of gas.”

8. Rectum Ripper
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Heat: 3 flames
This works on many levels of grossness. It’s described as “everything you do after using Rectum Ripper will be half ass.”

9. McCain’s Torture Sauce
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Heat: 2 flames
Veterans may either find this hilarious or incredibly offensive. It’s described as “excruciating hot sauce for a real man!”

10. Ass Reaper
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Heat: 4 flames
Considering how high this sauce is on the heat meter, the bottle obviously deserves its death head. It’s described as “a frightening addition to any hot sauce collection.”

11. Biker Bitch Hot n’ Wild
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Heat: 3 flames
One of many in the Bitch line. It’s described as being for “the ones that don’t take chit from anyone.”

A.K. Whitney is freelance journalist in Southern California. She spent more than a decade as a food editor and columnist for the Los Angeles News Group. You can follow her on Twitter @AKWhitney.

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