While Popeyes opened 20 years after the first fried chicken fast food restaurant, it brought a unique culinary style that still stands out today. The spice mixture that seasons its fried chicken and Cajun fries — our personal favorite — as well as many of Popeye’s beloved side dishes are an homage to its home state of Louisiana. It’s fitting, then, that the popular hot sauce brand you’ll find at Popeyes is Louisiana Hot sauce.
Popeye’s teamed up with Louisiana Hot sauce’s former producer, Bruce foods, back in 2003, and the hot sauce remains a staple packet alongside ketchup in all of Popeye’s national locations. The packet itself is labeled as Louisiana hot sauce, so there’s no mistaking it for Popeyes’ proprietary dipping sauce recipes, of which there are many. Louisiana hot sauce is a simple blend of salt, aged cayenne peppers, and vinegar fermented and ground into a well-balanced trifecta of spicy, tangy, and hot.
Around since the 1920s, Louisiana hot sauce hasn’t changed its original recipe, which was first marketed as “not too hot, not too mild,” according to the brand’s website. Milder than many of its big name competitors, like Tabasco and Frank’s red hot, Louisiana hot sauce is appealing to a broader range of spice-level tolerances. It’s a great option for adding a kick to the brand’s red beans and rice or any of the Popeyes chicken items, from chicken tenders to chicken sandwiches.
Louisiana hot sauce as a household condiment
Now that you know the brand behind Popeyes hot sauce packets, you can pick up your own bottle of Louisiana Hot Sauce on Amazon to pair with homemade meals as well. Louisiana hot sauce comes in the original flavor, but there’s also an expanded repertoire that includes eight different flavor. So if you want to bring more heat to the table, you can try the Louisiana Hotter Hot Sauce, which adds habanero peppers to the original recipe. It also offers a Cajun Heat hot sauce that supplements the original recipe with onion, garlic, and paprika, bringing more flavor without increasing the heat level.
If you’re making your own chicken dinner, you can add Cajun heat to the marinade to evoke a little taste of the New Orleans flavor that Popeyes captures so well. Mix Louisiana hot sauce into Ranch dressing or blue cheese dressing to make a classic cobb salad. You could also mix Louisiana hot sauce with mayonnaise for a spicy condiment to slather over a chicken sandwich. Swap chili paste for Louisiana Hotter Hot Sauce in the special sauce we use to garnish our fried chicken sandwich recipe with pickled vegetable slaw.
