Hot sauce is one of those things that itās exceptionally hard to live without, especially if you love a hit of chilli. Spice lovers will throw hot sauce on nearly anything, from meat to vegetables. But how do you store a large quantity of the stuff?
Can You Freeze Hot Sauce?
Yes, you can freeze hot sauce for up to 12 months. Transfer the hot sauce into an airtight container and leave a little headspace. As hot sauce is typically water-based, it will expand when frozen. Seal the container and freeze.
Do Does Hot Sauce freeze well? Yes
Can you refreeze Hot Sauce? Yes
How to Freeze Hot Sauce
If you’ve got hot sauce in a sealed freezer-safe container, then you can go ahead and pop this directly into the freezer. If, however, you have already opened it or are wary of your container exploding, then here is how to freeze hot sauce:
- Decant Sauce: Place the sauce into a container thatās only a little larger than the volume of the sauce youāre storing. You need to allow an inch or so of additional headspace above the water line. This is because water expands.
- Seal: When the hot sauce is within the container, squeeze out as much excess air as possible before sealing tightly.
- Freeze: When the container is entirely sealed and ready to go, place it into the freezer, where it will store very well for about twelve months. We recommend checking back on the sauce in about two hours to see if it has expanded and burst out of the container.
3 Tips for Freezing Hot Sauce
Now you know how to freeze it, we’ve got our 3 top tips which we strongly recommend following when freezing hot sauce to have the best results:
Allow a Little Headroom
When freezing liquids like hot sauce, you must consider that theyāre water-based. When they freeze, theyāre likely to expand. If there is no headroom in the bottle or container youāre using, then youāre likely to end up with a certain amount of sauce leaking out of the container or bursting to a small degree.
Does It Really Need to Be Frozen?
You may not need to freeze your hot sauce – If youāre considering freezing hot sauce, ask whether itās got a vinegar base. Many hot sauces, such as Tabasco, have a vinegar base and are therefore too acidic for bacteria to grow in them. This means that they can be kept at room temperature or in the fridge.Ā
Remove Excess Air
Removing excess air from the container youāre keeping your hot sauce in is vital. This is because aromatic compounds that make hot sauce tasty and spicy are oil-soluble. The oil-soluble compounds will evaporate in any available air, leading to a smelly freezer and a flavourless hot sauce.
How Long Can You Freeze Hot Sauce?
You can freeze hot sauce for anything up to a year in your home freezer. Beyond that point, the oil-soluble flavor and aroma chemicals within the hot sauce will likely have lost quite a lot of their punch. Therefore, the hot sauce will be a little less tasty.
Hot sauce has a very long shelf life at room temperature and in the fridge. It will keep for around 6 months at room temperature or around 12 months when kept in the fridge.
How Do You Defrost Hot Sauce?
The best way to defrost hot sauce is to transfer the entire container to your fridge, allowing it to come to fridge temperature overnight, at which point it will be ready to use.
We suggest allowing the hot sauce to thaw while standing in a bowl so that any condensation can be collected, preventing a mess in your fridge.
Can You Refreeze Hot Sauce?
Yes, you can refreeze hot sauce as often as you like.
Because the sauce is liquid all the way through, and the texture of the sauce is largely irrelevant to the final enjoyment, refreezing it doesnāt hold any sway over the final product. Instead, freezer burn and other water crystallization have no effect.
Does Hot Sauce Freeze Well?
Yes, hot sauce does freeze well. The reason for this is that very little, if anything, is lost during the process of freezing and thawing hot sauce.
Both the texture and flavor are uncompromised during the process, provided it takes place over less than twelve months. Therefore, we would conclude that hot sauce certainly freezes well.
Related FAQs
If youāve still got questions about freezing hot sauce or hot sauce in general, then these may help:
Although it will keep in the fridge or cupboard for months, you can freeze sriracha too. Portion it out into the slots of an ice cube tray, then freeze into sriracha cubes. 
If you freeze hot sauce in a good-quality container with little air and a tight-fitting lid then hot sauce will freeze well and nothing will happen to it.
