Does Hot Sauce Go Bad?

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Like other food items, hot sauce is not something you want every day in your routine. You don’t crave hot sauce, but sometimes when you feel like cooking something delicious and spicy, you will need hot sauce as your spicy ingredient.

It adds flavor to your dish, or it can enhance the sizzling nature of any food. Some people may like it more with everything they eat, some may like it a little, and some don’t feel like using it and don’t love or hate it.

If it stayed too long in your refrigerator and the bottle is open for months, sometimes it might not go good for years, and you got to make sure that you have dumped it.

Table of Contents

How to Store Hot Sauce

Hot sauce can be made from various kinds of spices, and every seasoning that has been added to it has a slightly different taste. It depends upon the nature of the food that you are going to need hot sauce for. The producer might use tabasco or sriracha.

The best way to preserve food is to put them at a low temperature, away from humidity and sunlight. This way, they can be preserved for a much longer duration. It is important to know about their manufacturing date to check for their expiry date regularly.

Away from the heat in the airtight container

Put them away from the heat and high temperature, and light. Keeping hot sauce in the airtight container would prevent the hot sauce from spoilage for a longer duration. The box or bottle you are using to store hot sauce must be airtight to make less contact with the air.

Chilled Hot Sauce

The best way to preserve any seasoning or food is by putting them in the refrigerator. This way, their contents could stay stored and preserved for so long. However, some may not need to be held in the fridge.

Adding Vinegar

During their production, chili peppers and vinegar are added, which also acts as natural preserves increasing its shelf life. They prevent the growth and production of bacteria inside the sauce.

Avoid usage of oil

Oil can have a very bad effect on the manufacturing of sauce, and it can cause the outgrowth of the botulinum toxin, which can further spoil the sauce as a poisonous protein.

Cook the sauce as soon as possible

You can always cook the sauce in much quantity as you want before it starts getting spoiled and has a bitter taste making itself rotten to use.

Can You Freeze Hot Sauce?

Suppose you have much of a sauce that you have made at home exposed to open air and could easily get spoiled. Commercially made spices have more shelf life than homemade sauces because they have natural preservatives added into them, increasing their shelf life.

You can also store the sauce by freezing it to preserve it for much longer. Add less sugar to it as it can cause the growth of molds and bacteria in it.

They have a high content of salts in them, which makes them difficult to be frozen. Due to this reason, they have to be kept at as low as almost -20 Degree Fahrenheit.

How Long Does Hot Sauce Last

The commercially made sauce has more shelf life than homemade because of the preservatives added to them. The sauce can remain fresh for the best six months with its natural flavor.

A homemade sauce can last for as long as 6-9 months if bottled correctly. The unopened bottle of hot sauce can stay for almost 6-12 months if it is kept in a pantry, and if it is opened, it almost has an average life of probably six months. And it could stay fresh for more than 1-2 months in the refrigerator.

How to Tell If Hot Sauce is Bad

Despite many preservatives, everything has its expiry date, and it could go bad as soon as its contents have lived their shelf life. Their perishable ingredients could not last long forever.

Appearance: look out for the mold and discoloration of the hot sauce, an easy guess for you to tell if the sauce has gone bad.
Fuzzy mold: mold is the outgrowth on the sauces which are poisonous for the health, and you have to dump the sauce right away.
Smell: any pungent unfamiliar sour or rotten smell out of your sauce is the indication that it has gone bad.
Taste: if you are unfamiliar with any of the above guesses, you might want to check if the sauce has gone bad. If it seems off, unusual or bitter, you have to throw it right away.
Discoloration: If your sauce has gone discolored, it is the best indicator that it is no longer used.