Hot Boi Chili Oil Mild Review

This Hot Boi Chili Oil Mild review is the first of three. Hot Boi Chili Oil is a Viet-owned brand out of San Jose, California, and they sent me their full lineup — Mild, The OG, and Fire — in 8 oz jars. The line is called Garlic Crunch, and the name is honest: there are huge chunks of garlic floating at the top of every jar.

The label says chili oil. About two-thirds of this jar is solids, though, so I’m evaluating it as a chili crisp. If you’re fuzzy on where that line sits, I broke it down in chili crisp vs. chili oil. I tasted the Mild first, and it ended up being my favorite of the three.

Quick Facts

On serving size: The label lists the serving by weight only — 11 grams, 70 calories, 20 servings per jar. No spoon measure. It also prints that serving as “.2 oz,” which doesn’t add up. Eleven grams is closer to 0.4 oz, and 20 servings at 11 grams lands right on the 227g jar. The grams are right; the ounce figure is a typo. Sodium is 90 mg per serving, which is low for this category — more on that in my chili crisp sodium breakdown.

Ingredient Quality

Here’s the full list, in order: canola oil, crushed chili, gochugaru, garlic, pink salt, unrefined sugar, shiitake mushroom. Seven ingredients. No MSG, no soybeans, no sesame, nothing I had to look up. If you want to know how I read a label like this, the short version is that everything on it is something you could buy at a grocery store.

Two chilies sit near the top: crushed chili and gochugaru, the Korean chili flake. That’s a less common pairing in a garlic jar, and you can taste it — more on that below. Sugar is in there, but it’s sixth, and the panel shows less than a gram per serving. Shiitake is dead last on the list, and I could still pick it out.

The label also calls this “5-spice infused oil,” but the ingredient list only says canola oil. Hot Boi’s website fills in the gap on its OG page: green cardamom, Saigon cinnamon, star anise, cloves, and bay leaf. None of that is on the jar’s panel. If you read labels for specific sensitivities, the jar alone won’t tell you they were there. The jar does carry plant-based, nut-free, and soy-free callouts.

Aroma

All three Hot Boi jars use the same base oil, and they smell roughly the same. Open the lid and you can smell the spices coming out of the oil — that’s the infusion from the label showing up, even though it didn’t make the ingredient panel. The Mild doesn’t smell any tamer than the hotter jars.

Appearance and Settlement

Settlement is real. About two-thirds of the jar is solids, which puts the oil layer around a third of the volume — the acceptable range on my scale, and the loosest of the three Hot Boi jars. The OG and Fire both settle higher.

The first thing you see is the garlic. Huge chunks of it float at the top, and looking down into the open jar, it’s basically all garlic. The oil underneath is a dark, deep, rich red.

Texture and Crunch

Stirred, there’s a lot going on: seeds, a couple of different chili flakes, and those big garlic chunks. Lots of different textures, and a lot of nice visuals. It mixes up really well.

The crunch is really good, and the garlic chunks are the biggest pieces in the jar. If you care about what the crispy bits are actually made of, this is about as clean as it gets: chili, garlic, and mushroom. No fried soybeans padding out the volume.

Flavor Complexity

Mixed forkful, here’s the timeline. Gochugaru first — a pleasant, rounded chili flavor up front. Then the garlic and shiitake come in together, with some heat riding along. The garlic is what lingers at the end.

Eaten by itself, the chili keeps coming through as you chew, which is lovely. A little garlic hangs on, and the shiitake adds umami. It’s not too salty, and it doesn’t read sweet, even with sugar on the label. Flavorful, balanced, crunchy.

The oil does its job right away. It delivers flavor immediately and doesn’t bring anything bad with it. That’s a whole jar: the oil and the bits taste like they were built together, instead of bits sitting in a neutral canola base waiting for you to find them.

Here’s the part that surprised me. The Mild and The OG have the exact same ingredient list, word for word. The OG is the hotter jar, so you’d assume it’s the Mild plus more. In my tasting it went the other way — the Mild had more flavor. On the OG, the heat is still building while you’re trying to taste everything else.

Heat

The jar shows one chili out of five. It tastes a little hotter than that. The heat shows up after the gochugaru and garlic, not before, so you get the flavor first and the spice second.

It’s real spice for a mild. Some brands’ mild jars have no heat at all. This one still has some, and it’s pleasant — you still get all the flavor. Interestingly, Hot Boi’s own website rates the Mild a 2 out of 5, which is closer to what I tasted than the jar’s single chili. I’d call it a 2 on my scale: noticeable, comfortable for almost anyone. If you want to know how I think about different types of heat, that’s where the scale comes from.

Hot Boi Mild vs. Mama Teav’s

“Garlic crunch” and all that visible garlic made me think of Mama Teav’s right away. It’s the obvious comparison — another Bay Area brand, another jar where garlic is the headline. I’ve reviewed both the Mama Teav’s original and the Mama Teav’s Mild.

Mama Teav’s tends to be just garlic. That’s the show, and I appreciate it for what it is. Head to head, I like Hot Boi a little better. It’s more rounded — the gochugaru and shiitake give it more to say than garlic alone — and that means it goes on more things.

Use Cases

The label pitches pho, shu mai, eggs, pizza, and burgers. On the OG, I’d add rice and noodles to that list, and since the Mild runs on the same base with less heat, the same list works here. The lower heat makes it the easier jar to put on things where you want the garlic to lead — eggs and rice are where I’d start.

Versatility and Packaging

The jars showed up well packed, and the labeling is clear and easy to read, with a “mix before enjoying” note right on the jar. It’s an 8 oz glass jar with a metal twist lid. At $15, that’s $1.88 an ounce, which puts it in small-batch pricing, not grocery-shelf pricing. If that number surprises you, here’s why chili crisp costs what it does.

You can buy it direct from hotboi.co, and the brand’s site has a store locator for retail. It isn’t on Amazon as of this review. Shipping is free on orders over $75, which is five jars.

Final Verdict: Hot Boi Chili Oil Mild Review

Hot Boi Mild is a GREAT jar. It’s flavorful, balanced, and crunchy, with gochugaru and shiitake doing more than you’d expect from a seven-ingredient list. It’s not top-tier excellent — the settlement is the loosest of the three Hot Boi jars — but it’s one step below that, and it could easily go in my rotation.

Of the three Hot Boi jars, this is the one I’d keep in the fridge. Get it at hotboi.co.