How To Clean Hot Sauce Stains

Hot sauces, whether of the gourmet or grocery store variety, come in heat levels ranging from barely there to more pain than flavor (like these world's hottest sauces) and in colors covering the stoplight spectrum. One thing the red, yellow, and green sauces have in common is that they're all pretty tough to wash out of fabric. If you have a hot sauce stain on your shirt, the first step is to scrape off any excess that's yet to penetrate the fabric. This can be done with a spoon or knife — in other words, no special tools needed, although you should avoid using a serrated steak knife or hacksaw that might snag the fabric.

The next step involves flushing the back of the stain with cool water, since the less sauce remains in the fabric, the better. Once that's done, apply diluted white vinegar (distilled, not wine), liquid laundry detergent, or dish soap to the stain. If you're using either kind of soap, allow it to sit for 10 to 15 minutes to give it a chance to do its stain-busting thing. Once you've got the stain as light as it's going to get, wash the garment as usual, perhaps with a spritz of stain remover. Do not put it in the dryer though, unless you're 100% sure the stain is gone because heat sets stains. If you still see hot sauce when the shirt comes out of the washing machine, rinse and repeat the stain-removing steps.

Okay, so the whole flush with water-run through the washing machine sequence isn't going to cut it if you managed to pour hot sauce on a beige carpet and need to fix the problem ASAP before the landlord freaks out. (Why must rental units come with light-colored carpeting, anyway? It's like they're setting us up to fail.) The first thing you do here is use a towel to soak up as much as possible — either a dark-colored one or a ratty old one you don't mind getting stained, since if you use a good towel, you'll have to go through all of the above steps to de-stain it, as well.

Once you've removed as much hot sauce as possible, mix a tablespoon of distilled vinegar with a cup of water, then add a good squirt of liquid dish soap (about a teaspoon). You can either put this stuff in a spray bottle or dab it onto the stain with a sponge, but however you apply it, blot it with a clean towel starting in the center of the stain and working outward toward the edges. Follow up by blotting again with clean water, then repeat these steps as necessary until the stain fades. Once it does, let the carpet dry (training a fan on the wet area can help) then vacuum it and put down some dark throw rugs. Either that, or switch to eating in the kitchen.