Iguana Cayenne Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Iguana Red Cayenne Pepper Sauce

This is one that I've had to take some time assessing, partially because I wasn't necessarily eating a lot of food that worked with it and partially because it is somewhat outside of what I was expecting and sometimes wanting from a Louisiana-style sauce. It's hard to find where it fits.

To wit, this is a very thick sauce. Why it comes with a dropper cap is entirely beyond me, as there is little reason for it. This stuff is gloppy, in fact, much more like something squirtable, such as mustard or ketchup or even BBQ sauce. This is almost certainly due to the presence of the corn starch, used as a thickener. The texture and consistency here is somewhat...let's charitably say, unfortunate, for this style of sauce.

Cayenne is one of my favorite peppers (there is a list of my favorite peppers in the SOTY list page, link at right) of all-time and while what they've done with it here is somewhat unique and slightly on the hotter side of other Cayenne sauces I've had before, it drifts too far from a Louisiana-style, which it is probably still overall closest to, into an arena that is hard to call. The taste has a touch of sweetness that really doesn't belong so much with that style of sauce and in addition to the thickness, which then takes a bit for the heat of the food to penetrate, it becomes somewhat jarring. It's not sweet enough to be used as a dipping sauce and doesn't function well enough as a Louisiana-style sauce, yet that is the application that its profile best fits. It does give you a fairly strong sense of the flavor of Cayenne in a non-fermented sense and because it is Cayenne, what heat that is there is slight.

Bottom line: This is a "lost" sauce, that seems to have a substantial identity problem. It is, more or less and for better or worse, it's own unique thing. It's neither a bad nor especially good-tasting sauce, with rather slight heat.

UPDATE 10/25/15:

Having inadvertently picked this up recently, I got another chance to try it out. While I still stand by the review, I find I like this somewhat better this time around than the first time. As such, I have modified the rating accordingly. 

UPDATE 11.03.24:

Having recently recorded the FOH video for this sauce (link at top when posted), nearly all of the original review and the 2015 update still stand, which says something for the consistency of the maker.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5