I deliberately held off on creating this post, both because I was thinking more of a year end thing and also because I thought there might be another sauce review I could squeeze in there. As I'm suffering from a mild (what I'm guessing is) flu this weekend, additional sauces are out. I still have a few bottles left to polish off or toss. I hate wasting food; I hate wasting anything. Wastefulness is anathema to me, so a sauce has to be really bad for me to do that.
The few I have left drifting down to the last remnants of the bottles, the Orange Krush, the Chipotle Slam, the Texas Pete -- none of those are quite bad enough I'm willing to toss them. In the case of the Chipotle Slam, since my wife has undertaken a new diet and I don't know when or if I will be having fish tacos again. The sauce works marvelously with seafood and less well with everything else and really doesn't have much of a heat charge, rendering it very low on the usefulness scale. The Texas Pete she likes, so I'm not worried about that getting used up, though I'm very tired of it now and the Orange Krush...I keep finding things I would rather have...I imagine that and the Chipotle Slam will get pitched on New Year's Eve, if either is not eaten by then. Perhaps I will make up a bold new tradition for my annual celebration of turning calendar pages.
I like to make lists and one of my favorite lists is a list of goals. Hot sauce is no different. When I started this blog in September, after deciding to get back in the hot sauce game, I wanted to find a standby Mexican sauce. That was my more immediate need. That has been done with the El Yucateco Green. While it doesn't fit every situation, it is the best thing going so far and the value per price point is unmatched as far as I'm concerned. Perhaps now is a good time to look over the list of sauces:
Everyday sauce: Trappey's Red Devil (this is also a mainstay, despite it having little to no heat)
Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)
Mexican-style sauce: El Yucateco Green
Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce
Louisiana-style sauce: Trappey's Red Devil
Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver
Looking at this, we can see that heat is not a primary consideration. The Red Devil has precious little, the Chili Garlic a bit more and the El Yucateco has some but is mostly a low level. The only two that pack a punch are the CaJohn's offerings and never of them are really in the upper reaches, at that. They both will get hot, to be sure, but quite a bit of them must needs be used. The main thing here is taste, which is why I've decided to abandon purchasing any sauces that contain extract in them. Towards the end of the Stronger Than Death, it took on much greater overtones of extract. I did some accidental oversaucing on a burger and it has broken me completely as it made me borderline ill and the nauseating metallic taste is something I will not again suffer through. There is little reason; the commonality is that all of the sauces TASTE great and add to the flavor of the food, heightening the enjoyment of the experience. If a sauce diminishes that experience, it is time for it to go.
Back to the sauces, I would like to have another everyday sauce that packs more spice than the Red Devil. Even now, I will still choose it over other sauces, just because it is such a good-tasting sauce. I am also still searching, albeit much more slowly, for a Mexican-style sauce. I would like something like the BICH, which is so good that I will end the search or the Red Devil, again, on the Louisiana-style front. I'm pretty happy with the Happy Beaver on the sweet-hot tip, so no real looking there, either. I also would like to add another Asian-style sauce. Chili-Garlic will always be good and traditional and tasty, but like the Everyday Sauce problem, I'd like to rock a little heat.
Some of my other goals this year were to try to assess some of the various chilis. I don't typically enjoy eating raw pods, so that is a pretty rare event for me and I haven't sought out Morugas or 7-Pots or Red Savinas. I have made my way into using sauces that have all of them (except the 7-Pot) as a featured pepper. My outline was to work my way up. I believe I've pretty much surpassed the level of any of the habanero sauces and am now sort of hovering at the ghost chili. It's a pretty different world up there, in that rarefied air and I don't see myself getting past the ghost chili anytime soon. It still amuses me that the rotten abortion of a "ghost" sauce at Red Robin is what got me back...I guess I sort of owe them for reminding me of one of the more pleasurable experiences of life and restarting me back on this tasty journey. Still...that sauce is weak as shit and they do the Bhuts a terrible disservice using that description. I've gone past 50K, nothing world shattering and for 2013, will try to swing 100K, if I can find a sauce that will do it, that does not contain extract and also does not involve onions, given my intolerance to those...a very difficult proposition, I imagine, but we'll see what happens.
As to this year and (finally) the main subject of this list, I really only had three main contenders. Trappey's Red Devil I would disqualify because it does not pack any heat. So, we had these: El Yucateco Green, CaJohn's BICH and CaJohn's Happy Beaver. A brief discussion and then my pick...
El Yucateco Green came on strong and nearly saved habanero sauces for me. I had a few that weren't bad, but were not really worth getting again, unless I was in a pinch. This sauce changed all that and filled a void. It is also a very good tasting sauce, to boot and easily the best value of any sauce appearing in this blog this year. It is a little light on heat, however.
CaJohn's BICH was one that received a lot of deserved press for fantastic flavor and decent heat. I liked it so much, I've not only ordered more, but have given it away as gifts 3X. I found the runniness of the sauce made it somewhat difficult to use, but it really shone magnificently on the grill. Another friend of mine used it with an injector and was well-pleased, but the lesson here is that it needs both heat and some amount of cooking to really bring the flavor to the fore, which cuts down on flexibility. I have not personally tried the injection yet, but this is my current grilling sauce.
CaJohn's Happy Beaver is the most recent entry here. It possesses a similar, yet distinctive taste to the BICH, but without the runniness. It also works as well hot or cold and is far more flexible. I liked this one so much I immediately bought three more bottles. I keep one at work and one at home and this is one I like to have on-hand in the fridge. It is my current sweet-hot sauce. I've also given this away as a gift, though not nearly as much as the BICH.
Any of these would be deserving of the title and even as I write this, I still have trouble choosing. I've decided to leave it up to the overall rating from the reviews:
My pick this year, based on the numerical value is: CaJohn's Happy Beaver sauce, coming in at a 9 and nudging past both of the other two sauces, which were an 8, respectively. I don't rate manufacturers like that, but if I did, CaJohn's would be a runaway this year. Congratulations, for what it's worth and great job making some damn fine sauces!
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