> $12 dollars per bottle is crazy

Hot sauce is pretty easy to make if you're inclined to go that route. You only need a scale and a blender, and some basic kitchen skills. You get to explore a lot and control for flavour / heat with adding stuff to the mix. Plenty of good content on yt you can get inspiration from.

It's also something you can make into a hobby. You can go as low effort as buying fresh peppers from a market when in season, or start growing yourself. Growing can be anywhere from extremely low maintenance (i.e. just water them from time to time and leave them on a window sill) or get into advanced stuff like pruning, soil ph, cross pollination and all that stuff. Some peppers are prolific growers, and you get fresh peppers, pepper paste, chili flakes and sauce from a potentially low effort hobby. And they make some nice gifts as well.

Planted a few Jalapeno seeds in the soil in mom's greenhouse once and harvested buckets of chilies, more than I knew what to do with. Super rewarding.

>leave them on a window sill

Ooooh anybody have a rec for the most idiot-proof hot thing to try to grow?

Counter-argument: we're talking about saving a handful of bucks for something that lasts months. Do it if you find it fun - I tried it and didn't like the work nor spice under my fingernails, at all.

My preferences in cooking are like software: high level is fun (cooking dishes), low level is annoying (growing or producing ingredients).

I also like making cocktails. A brief try with homemade coffee licqueurs was disappointing - knowing a couple of good brands, I can buy and enjoy them, no hassle. Closest to preparing ingredients I do is occasionally doing batches of "super juice", where you squeeze a bunch of limes and add some conservatives and enhancers (and water), that increase the yield, flavor and shelf life by a lot. Then it's really practical to just use the juice like a normal ingredient, versus having the cytrus available having to squeeze them and having more stuff to clean.

I've tried getting started with this but my first attempt a habanero/mango sauce was _horrible_, must've used a slop recipe or something. Do you have a good base to recommend?