The Big Brand Behind Taco Bell's Famous Hot Sauces

The world's spiciest hot sauces have nothing on the zesty, smooth, and spicy flavor profile of Taco Bell's hot sauces. Available at the grocery store, these characterful condiments are essential for dolling up quesadillas and tacos, but you could just as easily use them to elevate a basic cheese sammie or a bowl of hot fries. Better yet, there are four varieties to choose from, depending on your spice tolerance. The big brand behind these famous hot sauces is Kraft Heinz, the iconic company behind several global names like Jell-O, Philadephia, Rao's, and Lunchables.

Taco Bell teamed up with Kraft Heinz back in 2014 to roll out the line of hot sauces. Adam Grablick, the restaurant's brand manager at the time, told Brand Eating that the recipes "... match the [chain's] formulas as best we can. Some products are the exact same formula, some are slightly different." 

A blend of tomato puree, chili pepper, dried onion, and spices, Taco Bell's hot sauce also contains yeast extract, which lends it a savory note. Heinz makes the other varieties of the restaurant's hot sauces too, including the mild sauce, fire sauce, and diablo sauce. For those who prefer a fresher-flavored option, there's the verde salsa sauce, which is prepared with green chilies, tomatillos, and lime juice.

While Heinz is most definitely the brand behind Taco Bell's bottled sauces, it doesn't make the hot sauce packets that are available at the restaurant. All four flavors of these packets are featured in our list of 12 of the spiciest fast food sauces, highlighting their quality and customer appeal (if you're wondering what makes Taco Bell's fire sauce so spicy in particular, it's the double whammy of jalapeños and chili powder). The packet sauces don't taste exactly the same as the bottled options because the ingredients are slightly different. For instance, the packet fire sauce has fewer components than the bottled version, which has more preservatives and stabilizers – but both options include jalapeño peppers, chili powder, and vinegar to lend them their distinct flavor and kick.

Earlier this year, Taco Bell teased fans with a potentially new hot sauce item at the keynote-style Live Mas event: an entirely edible sauce packet, called the fire queso sauce packet. This experimental product had a crispy exterior that looked like a Pop-Tart, which could be bitten into or split open to reveal the hot cheesy sauce inside. There are several social media clips of guests biting through the corner of the edible sauce packet and pouring the liquid filling over tacos and more. Some of the other new products included in the line up were the firecracker burrito made with a red flour tortilla shell and the Mountain Dew Baja Midnight pie.