Smokin' Ed's Pineapple Teriyaki (Mild) Hot Sauce Review

Smokin’ Ed’s Pineapple Teriyaki (Mild) 

Another addition to the Smokin’ Ed’s line and this time, we see another take on an Asian flavor style, namely that of teriyaki. I don’t know if there is a difference per se between Teriyaki and Pineapple Teriyaki, though the latter suggests more of a Japanese by way of Hawaii vibe, but this does not seem to be trying to be an actual teriyaki sauce, but more of perhaps a teriyaki-inspired hot sauce. Whereas most teriyaki sauces tend to be heavily soy sauce based and frequently much thicker and dense brown concoctions, this one is a pretty swift turning away from that aesthetic.

This is, instead, a rather lively and vibrant red, with perhaps some slight lean towards brown. The color matches the flavor profile here and the entire result strikes me more as playful, in a very good way. The first few times I had this, until I got enough room in the bottle to properly agitate, this came across as hyper-sweet, almost cloyingly so. I did not find that enjoyable, though my immediate thought was that this was much more towards a sweet ‘n’ sour sauce than teriyaki. 

Once it settled in, I was able to get a lot more of the balance, from the subtle soy sauce flavoring, which here is more of an accent, to the pineapple dancing around with what I believe are red Jalapenos, as is my understanding all of the Smokin’ Ed’s mild sauces use as their pod. I quite like overall where this is going, flavor-wise, but it definitely isn’t really a hot sauce. Heat is low enough that I didn’t find it registering most of the time. While teriyaki itself is good on meats generally, I don’t know that this would transition as well to red meats like steaks. Though the sweetness did taper down as I got further into it, there isn’t quite the umami hit that actual teriyaki sauce has to work with the red meats and the lightness and sweetness of the pineapple doesn’t strike me as a happy union there. 

It is excellent on chicken, of course, but also on Asian foods generally, such as ramen. In many ways, it reminds me almost as much of an Asian-style sweet hot, with perhaps an nod to teriyaki, than to the actual flavoring of teriyaki itself. It’s a pretty neat trick to pull off and while I don’t know what exactly what Ed was going for with this sauce, the end result is pretty wonderful. 

Bottom line: Think of this more as perhaps a sweet & sour sauce by way of teriyaki, just on the really high end of things, and you’ll about have it.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Mexico Lindo Salsa Picante Negra XXXtra Hot Sauce Review

Mexico Lindo Salsa Picante Negra XXXtra Hot 

Here we have another entry, of which there have been quite a few this year, into the Mexican-style category from a sauce company I’ve found overall to be pretty enjoyable and impressive. This time out, they’re answering the question of what if we made a sauce heavy on the umami side and indeed, with msg and what seems a lot like soy sauce, in the mix, there is no shortage of that aspect. That, along with a bit of a lean towards the astringent side, makes for a pretty curious and interesting taste adventure, as this is very much a Mexican style sauce.

I find this sauce fascinating, and overall, really like what they’re doing, as it is fairly unusual, yet still retains a lot of the “classic” characteristics that one might expect from a Mexican-style sauce. There are hints of the warmth and comforting richness that tends to be stock in trade for that style, yet it very clearly is wanting to make its own flavor path and be its own distinctive sauce. In this, it succeeds pretty wildly. It is also a tad thick and sludgy, which can lead to these nifty little umami pockets if it doesn’t spread out on the food, which are their own treat.

It’s a bit amazing to me how they’re able to wander as much as they do, yet retain the core identity and this is definitely one of my more happier finds this year, and is yet another I literally stumbled across on a grocery store shelf. With Chiltepin being the prime heat driver, this is not, despite the suggestion in the sauce’s name and on the label, particularly hot, but it is a fairly nice, low-key and satisfying smolder. I could do with more heat, but that doesn’t seem what they were really going for here. This is very much a Mexican-style sauce, so usage here is definitely better off with that style, or related, of foods and flavors. It would also do pretty well in ramen, I’d imagine, and is flavorful enough that one could definitely have a good time experimenting.

Bottom line: Another hitter from a sauce company that I will always check out to see what new entries they have to offer, an effort which, like it is here, tends to be rewarding.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Dawson's Sweet Pear Chili Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s Sweet Pear Chili

Don’t often run across pears too much in hot sauce, but I do love me some pears and I was pretty curious how the tap-dancing around what is a generally fairly delicate flavor would go...in a way, I’m saddened that it went the way I was expecting, but the resulting sauce definitely is a nice end result that has some very definite applications where it works well.

Like most of the other Dawsons’s, this is sauce is on the thicker sludgier side of things. Again, we have the olive oil, so there is a nice smoothness to it and the Vietnamese chilis, which I also don’t really see used a great deal, impart a pleasant heat without introducing much on the flavor. This is quite a good pairing there, those chilis with the fruit. Where it got a touch out of hand was the garlic, which tends to be a pretty strong flavor and here, it definitely asserted itself, despite being about in the middle of the ingredients. 

This, then, sort of ran roughshod over the pears and we have a fairly light somewhat non-descript fruity sweetness to the sauce. I admit I was hoping for a lot more presence from the pear and the resulting flavor, in conjunction with the garlic, moved this more into complex flavor applications, such as on a fried chicken sandwich, say, rather than just on some chicken tendies. 

I do like the sauce and find it pairs fairly nicely with mayo, where it adds a pretty fascinating dimension to things. I could also see this working extremely well as part of a salad dressing, so definitely there are some applications, but this is a sauce where I think you would need to experiment with it a bit, as it doesn’t seem to readily point at any food in particular. 

Bottom line: Another highly creative and inventive sauce from Dawsons’ and I absolutely applaud the use of infrequently used ingredients...for me this is a sauce more on the way than at its destination, but if the more experimental vibes are up your alley, this is well worth a look.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Zia Chile Traders Whiskey River Frontier Hot Sauce Review

Zia Chile Traders Whiskey River Frontier

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook and Instagram. 

This may be the most referential sauce I’ve ever come across. We will start with a lot of the non sauce elements first, so you can skip this paragraph and the next if you aren’t interested in this part. The first of these is the name itself. “Whiskey River” has been used as a song title, referring, presumably to drowning one’s sorrows in a particular alcohol, as the namesake of a bourbon marketed by the singer who recorded and popularized that song, as a location within a fictional literature series, as a cultural phrase wherein the river eventually leads to Bourbon Falls, as a condiment selection at the Red Robin restaurant chains, as the name itself of a regional restaurant chain owned by a former NASCAR driver, and here and there by various other bars and saloons. Meanwhile, the idea of a “Frontier” sauce is largely meaningless and refers more to theme, as in visual appearances, such as on this label, or the various foods associated with a given area, loosely referenced to what we would consider the “Wild, Wild West.” 

From there, we move to the packaging. I already touched on the label, and I suspect the word “Frontier” was added both to refer to the New Mexican heritage of the peppers in this sauce, and John Hard’s current home, as well as an attempt to differentiate it enough to avoid litigation by others already using the name “Whiskey River.” As to that packaging, it is in a flask and a certain other sauce, from John Hard when he was the saucier at CaJohn’s, rather famously formerly came in a flask and also prominently featured bourbon as one of the ingredients. That sauce being, of course, the Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero, reviewed elsewhere here.

Ok, now, as to this sauce, we definitely have a different lineup of peppers, being varieties of Hatch chiles, as well as Jalapenos. Definitely this drives the heat level down somewhat, but this sauce is clearly aiming to be more of a flavor showcase. It is thick and a tad sludgy, unlike the other sauce, and I think this is less an updating or re-imagining of that other sauce than a hot sauce on the way to being a barbeque sauce. I found the bourbon flavor to be a bit more prominent here, as well as the sauce being sweeter, but also working better as a “straight out the bottle” hot sauce than the other, which I used almost exclusively as a grill sauce. To be sure, this one is much better used as a grill sauce, where it can flash off some of that very forward bourbon and get a nice Maillard effect going, but I don’t mind this as an actual condiment, either. I particularly like that there is a lot more black pepper in the mix here. If I do have a major gripe, it is probably that I wish there was a lot more smokiness here. That was perhaps not what he was going for, but I felt the absence of that to be fairly prominent. 

As far as usage, I think this one is more broad. This will work just fine on grilled meats, pretty much meats in general. How much you like it will depend greatly on how much you can tolerate the bourbon coming to the fore in your sauces, but as long as it has something to counter that and the fairly forceful sweetness of this sauce, it could work on a pretty wide variety of applications. For me, I will stick to using it as a grill sauce, I think, as bourbon when carmelizing with sugars, imparts a pretty wonderful effect and this definitely is a sauce that benefits from both heat and whatever smokiness you can add to it. 

Bottom line: This one is a lot more accessible as a straightforward condiment, both in terms of flavor and in minimal heat. Think of it as bridging the gap between a hot sauce and bbq sauce and you’ve about got it. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot Hot Sauce Review

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot

I was not at all familiar with the Bulgarian Carrot pepper prior to coming across this sauce and bought it somewhat on a whim. The only previous sauce I’d ever from them, the Hatch Chile, was a tad on the underwhelming side, but I always get a little excited and my tail starts wagging and my ears prick up when I come across a new pod in a sauce that I haven’t had before, so I drove in full gainer...

...and was rewarded with a pretty fantastic sauce. For some reason, I thought this was a variety of a Habanero, which was borne out by the flavor, but looking into it further, Habanero is in the mix, but it is not a Habanero variant per se. Rather, it is a cross between a Habanero and a different Bulgarian pepper, with the idea being that the pod looks like a baby carrot. There are no actual carrots in this sauce, though the idea that there was initially drew me to it. 

This is not a sauce so much as a mash and is very pepper forward, with peppers being the first ingredient. There are a couple vinegars, rice and cider, which do a nice job of complementing each other and not transmitting any of the stinky foot aspect of the latter vinegar. There is also some sugar, some salt, and some of that good hardneck garlic and the flavor profile, top to bottom, is really quite brilliant.

It is very thick, very clumpy, and does not like to smooth out. There is a lot of rough sort of gritty bits to it as well, all of which sort of make this a bit of a challenge in terms of usage. As far as flavor, this went great with nearly everything, but as far as texture...for me, it works best in a sandwich setting, where you can spread it out or leave it in its own layer (I’d also love to try this as a pizza sauce, just this sauce by itself, to be clear), so things like burgers and chicken sandwiches and sub sandwiches respond very well with this, where it both meshes and retains a bit of its identity as it melds with proceedings. Even though Hot Winter calls this both very hot and their hottest available sauce, I found it rather mild all told and I don’t think it will give too many people much of a challenge.

Bottom line: An absolute ringer, just a dynamite gem of a product, but definitely one that I think is somewhat dependent on its setting.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

 

Ghost Wolf Pepper Co. Elder’s Revenge Hot Sauce Review

Ghost Wolf Pepper Co. Elder’s Revenge

I was going to start this review by saying that I don’t know what I did to the pupper Elder to make him want revenge, but whatever it was I’m sorry...but that opening seemed sort of frivolous. This company was started due to one of the hardest episodes for anyone to go through and the resulting theme is a rather somber and melancholy one. To wit, this sauce was created to memorialize the sauce maker’s doggo, who evidently suffered from an illness and the loss of a good, close friend, even one covered in furry, perhaps especially one of those, is never going to be an easy thing to take. There is some suggestion that perhaps down the road a fund to support the people going through this and the attendant vet bills and grief counseling and so on may come to be, as well as perhaps a memorializing of other people’s animal friends. The graphics and design seem particularly devoted, perhaps more approaching art than a mere product label. This is the flagship sauce from a company on a mission and it seems like a good one. I encourage interested parties to check their website for more info.  

On the other hand, to the “revenge” part specifically, this is unquestionably a superhot-forward sauce and it is immediately punchy. It is past a 3, but not quite all the way to a 4, so I guess consider it a very strong 3. This is unquestionably chilehead only territory and if you’re not a chilehead, you may as well plan to skip this party and go to another, as if you do come here, you’re probably going to have a pretty bad time...unless you want a bottle for the art and aren't planning on ever opening it. The artwork does feature, or at least strongly reference, one of my very most favorite forms of expression, that of European graveyard sculpture, so this may be the second bottle ever that I’ve kept after finishing the sauce...

We have here the might and fury of 7-Pot Primo mash and then piling on after that, both smoked Scorpion and Ghost pepper powders. This lends even more of the superhot bitter quality to things, which is also generally the first and most forward flavor. On the back end of that, we do have some smokiness, from the powders, along with the flavor of sage, and, depending on what you pair it with, a very nice, albeit somewhat subtle, berry flavor. 

To be frank, this sauce is somewhat difficult to pair, both because of its intensely blazing nature, but also because of those bitter notes and because it doesn’t seem to point itself in any particular direction. This is a sauce I’ve spent a lot of time testing, and will be testing further still, until I either find where it works best or until I run out. It does seem to do very nicely with chicken, particularly roast chicken, but leaning into the sage didn’t work as well as I’d hoped. I would try to lean into the berry, but I kind of wonder if Elderberry wasn’t included because of the namesake connection to the mascot of the sauce. Also, the berry is fairly slight in this one. It is far more just blazing superhot bitter than any single other flavor note. 

Bottom line: This is a very punchy sauce, right out of the gate, and is fairly unrelenting, so its use works best perhaps as accent. Given the blazing nature, definitely chilehead only. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

La Preferida Louisiana Style Hot Sauce Review

La Preferida Louisiana Style

For quite some time, every year, I’ve taken to haunting the Wal-Mart holiday section from Halloween on, looking at what might be coming for a given year’s hot sauce sampler collection. While most of them are very clearly aimed at being novelty sauces and not much more, in essence, buying labels and packaging, in some years, there have been some decent sauces. Many of them are covered in the Mini- Reviews section either way, whether they are or not.

For most of them, it’s just throw any old colored liquid that looks like a hot sauce into a bottle, shrink it, and call it a day, as they’re not trying to sell sauce or tap a new customer base, per se, but are interested in that one sale, in that “customer knows [x] person in relation to them who likes spicy food, so here’s an easy gift,” in short, perhaps pandering to laziness. For those that aren’t that good, they all have a sort of commonality to them, what I refer to as a flavor of “the cheap,” that more high quality sauces don’t have.

The taste here, while recognizably Cayenne-adjacent, is kind of like a less aggressive and worse-tasting version of Crystal. It almost has a staleness to the taste and a bit of a sourness to the vinegar, to a kind of weird point. It was still generally usable, but I started to wonder if it was a bad batch, as it was kind of hard for me to picture this end result being the actual intention. This is just not a very good product overall. While this type of sauce generally doesn’t pack a huge heat punch, this one has basically none. The “bite” is very much only from the astringent vinegar. It is also slightly salty. While the watery consistency is right, the color is much more pointed towards the orange spectrum of things.

Bottom line: While I’m pretty far from impressed with this sauce, it is also not the worst of this type that I’ve tried...though it is definitely near the bottom.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2

Redacted Wet Work Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Wet Work

I rather enjoyed the other sauce I had from Redacted and their sort of cloak and dagger skullduggery spycraft type motif and themes. Most of their sauces have onions and are thus not something of which I can partake, but this one happily does not...and I’m pleased that it doesn’t because it features Scotch Bonnet, one of my favorites, again paired with Habanero. While I would prefer it just be the Scotch Bonnet, the ultimate conclusion is what matters and here, it is quite tasty.

The sauce leans very heavily into the idea of a pepper forward sweet-hot, using guava and mango to give it a tropical fruity vibe, by way of a slight citrus underdone from the Key lime juice. I’m definitely very happy with what they did on the flavor side, as it goes a long way to advance the pepper flavor foremost, in that sort of sweet setting. The sort of gripe I have about this sauce is that it is overly loose for what I would like. A loose sauce is not the end of the world, but here, it intrudes a bit on flavor concentration and also limits a bit where one can easily use it, as it is quite runny...not quite watery, per se, but not especially distant, either.

I think with a lot of tweaking, such as reducing it further, maybe dumping the Key lime entirely, and go for some reduction, this would be a pretty fantastic more universal sauce, able to be used fairly ubiquitously. As it is, I find it pretty solid on fried foods, as long as there is enough breading there to absorb the liquid. I would not find this something I would consider using on pizza, for instance, as I don’t want my pizza to be wet, and having the sweet element is already going to kind of point the sauce in fairly specific directions. This one will take a bit of tinkering to find the right setting, but once you do, it is quite nice. Heat-wise, neither Scotch Bonnet nor Habaneros are particularly scorchers and this sauce is definitely more on the tame side.

Bottom line: A quite lovely tasting sauce that is somewhat marred by the consistency. I would still say it is well worth a go, particularly if you’re a fan of either Scotch Bonnets or Habaneros and like them in a fruity setting.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Volcanic Peppers Autumn Blaze Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Autumn Blaze

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JF6ePibS_CI 

I have had a veritable cornucopia of great sauces this year, with now this making four candidates for Sauce Of The Year. I suppose I should have buried the lede, so to speak, a bit more, I wanted it right up front how fantastic of a sauce this is. The Chipotle used in here is from red Jalapenos and I suspect, unless I badly miss my guess, they are smoked at the hot sauce facility. They possess a character of smokiness that I have never had from commercial Chipotle or sauces with Chipotle before and it is absolutely stunning. 

The rest of the crew, the honey and pumpkin, do a nice job of adding in some depth, but this sauce very wisely chooses those delicious smoked red Jalapenos to be the star of the show, with the other elements tempering the apple cider vinegar a bit. The vinegar does not read as apple cider in the flavor, happily. In many respects, this could very much be one of those sauces that people who don’t like hot sauce or who are just coming into it would enjoy very much. I’ve said before that if you make a sauce taste good enough, which is the overall aim, I imagine, of the so-called “everyday” sauces, flexibility will increase, even if the food doesn’t pair totally well. With this sauce, I have yet to find anything it doesn’t work well with and on. Sure, some things are better than others, but it is as close to universal as I’ve had...and much of that has to do with the spectacular flavor.

The color, the texture, and the smoothness are also pretty good and it’s one of the few sauces where I’m not immediately spinning over in my mind for ways it could be improved. It’s frankly near-perfect as-is and while if I were to tail it very specifically to me, I might add in some fire-roasted red Habaneros to drive the heat up a touch, as this is a fairly tame sauce, that is my only complaint and a very minor one at that. I like some heat to things, but not every sauce I have needs to be face-melting. 

Bottom line: I’ve had more than a few sauces I’ve liked from Volcanic, but this one is near magical. Everyone should get it, particularly if you’re like me and a foodie first and then a chilehead. This is the 4th Sauce Of The Year candidate for 2025.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

Paul’s Haba Haba Hot Sauce Review

Paul’s Haba Haba

This is a sauce that seems to have 3 main ingredients, the mango puree, the mustard, and the Habanero mash. There are some additional spices and other modifiers, but those are the mail elements. The overall vibe here is very reminiscent of some of the Caribbean sauces I’ve had, which have similarly incorporated mustards and I find the flavor here to be itself, basically the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

It isn’t like a hot sauce, but nor is it like a mustard. It is quite distinct and seems to want to have a foot in both worlds. This idea I find fine in concept, but in actual application...I think we all have food associations, flavor expectations, and tie certain foods in with certain additions, such as various condiments. For instance, brats will generally go with mustards, as they need something fairly strongly flavored to read, but no so much with hot sauces. Likewise, fried foods would not usually be something one would put a yellow mustard on. To be sure, you could, but that would be unusual.

With this sauce trying to rest between two fairly disparate words, the issue comes in with pairing it with stuff, as it functions like neither of those condiments particularly. I think it works better where you would use a mustard than where you would use a hot sauce, but it is at least functional in both settings. The problem comes in when the sauce is acceptable, but makes you wish you had something else instead, which this one does in nearly every setting I’ve tried it in. The flavor is not bad at all or even close to it, but it is very vigorously on its own terms, which isn’t always what is wanted. Heat-wise, since Habanero is the driver, the level is fairly moderate.

Bottom line: I suspect this would work a lot better with Caribbean foods, which I will be testing at some point. It comes in a healthy 9 fl. oz. bottle, so there is plenty of experimentation to be had...which will probably be needed.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4