Tennessee Sunshine Hot Sauce Review

TryMe Tennessee Sunshine Hot Pepper Sauce

UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SlpRhvff92Q

While for me, Tabasco probably was, like nearly everyone else, the first hot sauce I tried, though it might also have been something from El Paso (didn't grow up in a hotbed of spice growing up, truth be told, though I like to think I've more than made up for that deficiency), TryMe Tiger sauce was the first hot sauce I tried that I actually liked and it continued to be a staple for quite a few years until the marketplace caught up with and surpassed it and I wound up shelving it in favor of better entries. It seems like I tried some of their other sauces, to much less favorable results, though I don't recall hitting this one...until I ran across it one day in a grocery store. Though TryMe is not really a brand I look to any longer, the day I'm not interested in a good Louisiana-style sauce is the day they're packing the cold dark dirt over my head.

So, here we have Cayenne peppers, vinegar, water and salt, which is the same basis for another old favorite, Red Devil. In this case, vegetable gum is also added, but it's unlikely that would make much of a flavor difference, being mostly an emulsifier and viscosity agent. While I wouldn't go so far as to say this is a clone of Red Devil, it is more similar than not, which means it tastes quite good (not as good, but not too far away, either). It does have slightly more heat than Red Devil and is definitely a lot less watery (thanks to the vegetable gum).

I am admittedly somewhat confused as to why an obviously Lousiana-styled sauce is named after Tennessee, especially with no presence of whiskey in the sauce, but I imagine this is to differentiate it from TryMe's Cajun sauce, which is maybe supposed to be more true or something (Update Note: See Cajun Sunshine review for more on this). Like most of TryMe's line, it's a bit on the pricier side of sauces, given what it is, but it's still overall a fine sauce.

Bottom line: At double the price, but with a less tasty flavor, this would not have been much of a consideration in my earlier sauce-buying days, despite a slight heat acceleration. It is, however, a very worthy sauce and a solid choice for a Louisiana-style sauce.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6