Ghost Of The Samurai Hot Sauce Review

Wicked Cactus Ghost Of The Samurai Hot Sauce

This is one of the few remaining of the buy I did because of the Ultimate Hot Sauce showdown devised by Scott Roberts. With it, I noticed an emerging pattern that seems to frequently show up with with Wicked Cactus, which I can describe by them taking a sauce already in existence and, in this case, stepping on it first, and then re-bottling it. I have less of an issue with this than some of the other, since I like Teriyaki and keep some Yoshida's on hand, but part of me feels like this is a huge cheat. I step on BBQ sauce all the time and I suppose it wouldn't take much to go get some ghost chili powder and mix it into the Yoshida's.

This is a fairly fierce sauce and given that it is predominantly a teriyaki sauce (although the consistency is closer to soy sauce), its applications are inherently limited. Try and think of the last time you had a bad teriyaki sauce and I imagine you'll have difficulty. It's a fairly safe sauce choice, but think of how many times you use it. I do fully plan on this being something I try on the grill, once I get more fuel and if I run out of BICH, but despite it being overall a pretty decent-tasting sauce, I don't know that I would buy it again.

Bottom line: I can forgive them for taking existing items and blending them together when it's a good-tasting sauce -- and this one is definitely that...if nothing else, they seem to be using a high quality base -- but I don't think it demonstrates much skill or originality. I won't go so far as to say it's a cheat, but it gives me enough pause that I don't expect to be buying too many more sauces from Wicked Cactus...unless it's something I can't get elsewhere or is so well-done, like Wrath Of The Tiger (reviewed elsewhere in the blog) that it can overcome that.

Breakdown:

        Heat level: 7
        Flavor: 8
        Flexibility: 4
        Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6

Maggi Sweet Chili Sauce Review

Maggi Mild Sweet Chili Sauce

In my quest to find the mystery sweet hot chili sauce that had eluded me for so long, I picked up this bottle as soon as I saw it and congratulated myself for being a dunce. Of course! Maggi, a name synonymous (to me) with Asian cuisine, that brown bottle of a sauce called simply "Seasoning" with the yellow and red label in the cupboard or on the table of nearly every Asian home I ever visited or restaurant I frequented. This had to be it! Now, I bought this before I tried the Wicked Cactus Wrath Of The Tiger hot sauce (also reviewed elsewhere in this blog) and that one came pretty close to how I remembered that sauce and I enjoyed it a great deal, enough so that I will buy it again, but if this turned out to be the actual thing...

Short story shorter, no, it is not. This one is a lot chunkier and midway between the gloppy sauces like Thai Kitchen and the more runny versions, like the aforementioned Wrath Of The Tiger. The taste is excellent, exactly what a sweet chili/garlic sauce should be, not too sweet and not too heavy on the garlic side.  If it was just a bit runnier, the consistency would be nearly dead on the money. The heat level is probably a bit higher to non-chileheads, but for me, it was just enough to be there, nothing major, but a nice little sizzle to give it just a touch of bite. The labeling is mostly Chinese, Mandarin, if I'm reading it right, was probably imported and intended for one of those grocers or possibly a Thai or Vietnamese market.

Bottom line: In researching Maggi (still not sure how I could have forgotten them as a potential source -- at one time, I was eating their products daily), they have several other variations that appear to be a bit runnier, including a Thai chili sauce, so I may try to hunt those down. While this is not the one I had in mind, it is a wonderfully tasty sauce, albeit a bit on the thicker side for my liking.

Breakdown:

        Heat level: 1
        Flavor: 8
        Flexibility: 7
        Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Habanero Hot Sauce From Hell Review

Habanero Hot Sauce From Hell

Oddly enough, this is the first sauce I've had with carrot as ingredient. I've been very curious about trying one of the carrot sauces, but idly and this one was sort of by surprise. I got this during one of my initial "waves" of hot sauce buying (I typically buy around $75 at a time or whatever it takes for free shipping) during a Black Friday sale, if memory serves right and it sat there and sat there on my shelf, staring at me with its hokey packaging until I finally ran through almost of all of my most recent wave and I finally threw down and said to Hell with it and cracked it open.

I was, of course, immediately regretful I waited that long. What I found was a sauce that was delicious, complex and seemed a brilliant marriage of the best that Louisiana-style sauces and red habanero sauces have to offer. There was the comforting familiarity, like that of an old friend, like something I'd had and enjoyed a million times, the back end heat of the habaneros, the muted yet present blast of something like El Yucateco Red (reviewed in this blog elsewhere), though much hotter than that particular sauce and a new aspect, which I'm attributing to the carrots.

This is one of those sauces that takes a bit to get going, but it does a decent job of lighting one up, mainly because it's so good, it's difficult to stop eating. At times, though, the level of heat makes me wonder if there's not some (unlisted) extract in there. It doesn't have the sustained effect of an actual extract sauce, but it definitely has some good charge. It's not on the level of deliciousness of say, Pure Death (also reviewed elsewhere in this blog) or Red Devil, two of my most favorites sauces ever, but it is very, very good, across a pretty wide variety of foods. The packaging is actually a disservice to the sauce, which is definitely something you should by trying, if you haven't already.

Bottom line: This is a sauce orange in color, but don't let that or the stupid graphics of the label fool you. This one packs a pretty decent wallop and it's an excellent habanero sauce, skillfully blending the best of both straight habanero sauces, Louisiana-style sauces with the addition of carrots providing a unique twist.

Breakdown:

   Heat level: 3
   Flavor: 8
   Flexibility: 9
   Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

Creole Demon Hot Sauce Review

Wicked Cactus Creole Demon Hot Sauce

As I alluded to in the Headhunter's Paradise review, there is some discontinuity with the labeling of the actual sauces. In this case, it's a whopper in that the website mentions vinegar being in the sauce, which is absolutely necessary for a Louisiana-style sauce, this being the market this is going for, yet there is no vinegar listed on the bottle nor is it apparent in the taste of the sauce. That is one mainstay of sauces that is very hard to miss and it is simply not present.

So, we have a Louisiana-style sauce that is missing the perhaps the most dominant and critical ingredient of that kind of sauces. I suppose that can be forgiven if the sauce tastes good and unfortunately, this one does not, overall. It does taste fantastic in cream-style soups, such as chowders (probably the clam juice element is helping here) and I'm guessing it might not be bad in a Bloody Mary, but unless you're eating (or drinking) a lot of those, there is no reason to have this sauce. The taste is strong enough that it becomes a distraction and is not very pleasant tasting and so detracts from everything else otherwise.

There is a very mild sort of heat here, another reason where it works so well in that style of soup as it adds "just enough" heat. It is overall so minor, though that it nowhere near compensates enough for the taste and can easily get masked by the more stronger-flavored foods, which again renders it sort of pointless.

Bottom line: The perfect analogy here is that this is the Old Bay Seasoning of hot sauces, whereas it is very, very good at one particular thing and mediocre to, at times, outright disgusting outside of that context. Unlike Old Bay, though, this is a liquid sauce that easily and repeatedly separates and has a much lower shelf life, so it is more dubious to have this one on hand...which I will most likely not much longer...

Breakdown:

        Heat level: 1
        Flavor: 2
        Flexibility: 0
        Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 1