Danny Cash's Salvation Sauce Garlic-Serrano
Danny Cash, perhaps beyond hot sauce up-and-comer by now, was another name on my short list of maker of sauces to immediately try. That he's made a name for himself, in an increasingly crowded field, should be indication that he is a force to be reckoned with, but I didn't have opportunity to try his sauces until I did a bunch of buying around Christmastime.
I knew the backstory behind the Salvation Sauce and Cash's humble beginnings as sauce chef and his success story by making fantastic sauces and keeping a handle on himself is a great one in its own right. That he is giving back is more icing, but even though I'm not, by anyone's definition, religious one bit, I back people helping out other people who need it. I think the lines sometimes get confused, where people seem to mistake that whole "Lord helps those who help themselves" to mean that "Lord" helps those when they help themselves to whatever's in my pocketbook or what they can scrounge by holding cardboard at traffic lights, but I have great respect for anyone who can look past that and do what they can for all comers. That I personally am unable to do that doesn't mean I look past or slight those who can.
Enough of that, though, what about the sauce? For a sauce to display that proud and prominent cross on the front, it better be something that one doesn't taste and feel ripped off and in the taste department, this sauce delivers in spades. The ad copys calls it a the bite of lime & serrano and the back heat of habanero, but I would call it more along the lines of one of the very best tomatillo sauces, which this appears to be modeled on, minus the actual tomatillos. Take the Rubio's chain, as I digress momentarily. They have an excellent red sauce that, if I recall right, they call "Picante" and it has blackened bits of what I think is chipotle in it. It is fantastic on their entree's and I recommend it and those entree's highly. They also have a green sauce that I like a bit less and this sauce reminds of that a lot, meaning it is still an excellent sauce, but has a definite limit to applications.
While extremely tasty on lighter meats such as chicken, pork and fish, it is not a strong enough carrier to be used as a dipping sauce and fails woefully on pizza and anything else that does not meld well with sauces that carry this kind of astringency. It also has a confusing restrictor cap and the mini Bible, while kind of neat from the aspect of "wow, that's really small text and still somehow legible, kinda" is not practical and honestly, a bit useless. My major complaint, though I do enjoy this sauce quite a lot, is the heat level. Look, my wife struggles with heat in a major, major fashion. If she is able to tolerate a sauce, that means it's not particularly hot. If she enjoys it, such as she does this one, as immensely as she does, it definitely means there is little heat at all to it and this is the case here, also a trait echoing that of most tomatillo sauces.
Bottom line: Danny Cash, the positive stuff I've read about you and your sauces I find to be true. You have made here a fantastic sauce, albeit a bit limited in application and without any real heat, but still truly a marvelous taste experience. While this will not find itself a staple for me (but maybe for the wife), it does indicate to me that you belong in the league of hot sauce luminaries such as John Hard and Blair Lazar and unquestionably, you can hold your own. If this had any real heat to speak of, it would be an instant contender for Sauce Of The Year 2013. As it is, I find it a pleasant experience at $7.95/5 oz. bottle, but not a necessary one. I will definitely be hitting up other stuff in your line, though, because you are clearly a very, very real talent.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 0
Flavor: 9
Flexibility: 7
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8
Overall: 6
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