Best Cholula Flavors, Ranked

While most hot sauces on the market are only concerned with delivering massive amounts of heat in a desperate race to devastate your digestive tract, Cholula has been focusing on delivering a range of hot sauces that offer extra flavor, as well as extra heat. 

While the original Cholula sauce is made from arbol and piquin peppers, the other Cholula flavors feature a mix of other peppers, along with various spices, juices, and ingredients that give them a wide range of flavors while still providing enough spice (around 1,000 to 2,000 scoville units) to really perk up any dish. And these various sauces are tasty enough to maintain Cholula’s reputation as one of the best Mexican pepper sauces on the market (and the runner up in our ranking of mild hot sauces).

But of all the different Cholula flavors on the market, which is the best Cholula flavor for your spice-related needs? Well, we went through and sampled them each, judging them by flavor and heat. Here are the top five best Cholula hot sauce flavors.

Top 5 Best Cholula Flavors

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Best Smoky Flavor

Cholula Chipotle

Walmart

This sauce changes the classic recipe by adding in a mix of different peppers, including chipotle and guajillo peppers, with plenty of smoke to give the whole thing a dark, mesquite-like flavor. This would be a great sauce for marinating red meat or barbecued pork. It’s actually one of the milder Cholula flavors, as it also features plenty of sugar and apple cider vinegar, which cuts the heat a bit. But it still has a kick.

Credit: Liv Averett / Walmart

Rating:

7/10

Sporks

Best Sweet & Spicy Flavor

Cholula Sweet Habanero

Amazon

As you might have guessed, this was the sweetest Cholula flavor I tried—but it was one of the spiciest Cholula flavors. There’s a healthy dose of pineapple juice to battle it out with the heat of the habanero peppers—but those peppers pack a huge punch. The mix of fruity sweetness and spice would make this the best Cholula flavor to an alcoholic drink like a spicy Margarita or Paloma. It might be just the thing to keep you from nodding off during a particularly boring Sunday brunch.

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best Hot & Tangy Flavor

Cholula Chili Lime

Amazon

If you’ve ever had Mexican snack foods, you know that lime is one of the country’s favorite flavors. And this sauce is limey. It has a great tangy flavor that really gives you a good hit of citrusy goodness.While you might expect this to be similar to the Sweet Habanero, as they both offer a more fruit-based mix with their peppers, this one features milder peppers (guajillo, arbol, and piquin) that deliver a lot less heat. It’s the type of flavor that would be perfect in a Bloody Mary or a seafood ceviche.

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best Classic Taste

Cholula Original

Amazon

While the debate continues to rage over whether Cholula or Tapatío is the best Mexican hot sauce on the market (personally, I’m on team Tapatío.), you can’t deny that Cholula is one of the classic staples of Southwestern cuisine. With its mix of arbol and piquin peppers, garlic, apple vinegar, and a unique blend of spices, there’s a reason so many of us carry a tiny bottle of the stuff, just in case we need to add a little extra spice to whatever we’re eating. (And by the way, am I the only one who thinks that the Cholula and Tapatío mascots should get together? They’d make an adorable couple.)

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

8/10

Sporks

Best of the Best

Cholula Green Pepper

Amazon

This might be a little controversial, but I actually prefer Cholula’s green pepper sauce to the original mix. I just find the mixture of poblano and jalapeño peppers a little more flavorful, especially with its mix of bell peppers, onion, and garlic. It’s a little brighter and sweeter too, while still giving a good amount of heat. All and all, I just find it a little tastier than the rest of the line. Pitted in a head-to-head battle, the Green Pepper came out on top as the best Cholula flavor of them all.

Credit: Liv Averett / Amazon

Rating:

9/10

Sporks

Other Cholula sauces we tried:

Cholula Chili Garlic, Cholula Extra Hot