Pirate O's Surface Of The Sun Hot Sauce Review

Pirate O's Surface Of The Sun Hot Sauce - [TSAAF Sauce Of The Year 2016]

This is obviously a relabel job and I don't know who is actually producing the sauce, but for all that, this is one of the better new ones I've had this year. There are a few things of note about it. The first of which is that it comes in a notably larger bottle than "normal" hot sauces. The second is that it is, strictly speaking, much closer to a BBQ sauce than an actual "straight" hot sauce, per se and lastly, this is the first time I think I've been exposed to green Tabasco and I must say that I find it oddly intriguing and much more palatable than the traditional red.

It does have a very nice medium-level spikiness to the heat, enough to take some attention, but not so much as to be intrusive. The flavor is definitely the main thing here and the sort of embracing approach they've taken to this sauce as its characteristic lends itself well to a fairly wide variety of different foods. I haven't tried it on Mexican food yet, but that is sort of the lone exception. There are certainly sauces I like better on fish, unquestionably, but revving up some accompanying cous cous, say, this does the job a lot better than what I would use on the fish.

Flavor profile is excellent, but I can see it being off-putting to someone who wants more of a straight hot sauce than the sort of BBQ-tinged near-hybrid this is. I don't particularly like ketchup, which precludes the vast majority of BBQ sauces for me, but this is a very effective substitute for me, despite the fact that its consistency is very runny and much closer to what one would anticipate in a hot sauce than a BBQ sauce, which is meant to stick to food. I've never seen a BBQ sauce that runny ever, in fact and the label portrays it specifically as a hot sauce.

Bottom line: This was an afterthought purchase, but it was definitely one of the shining lights of this year. In a sort of competition vacuum, this becomes the closest thing, thus far, to a SOTY contender.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8