Grace Very Hot Pepper Sauce Review

Grace Very Hot Pepper Sauce

With so many sauces going in and out of production, it is often really hard to find a consistent name that will always be there and is of high quality, so it seems like I always have need for a good Louisiana-style sauce. This is by far my favorite style of sauce and definitely one of the most used of any condiment I have, given it's ability to match fairly well with a great variety of different foods. This one had a fairly nondescript name, but the look of the bottle, which has the restrictor molded into the glass, to the sauce itself signified Louisiana-style. It was perhaps a bit of large scale conjecture on my part as this sauce is not, however, exactly that.

It is fairly close to that style, as it is rather heavily vinegar-based, but this one does not use either of the two main peppers for that type of sauce, Cayenne or Tabasco, or even the newer arrival of Jalapeno, but rather goes to a combination of Scotch Bonnet and Habanero. I got the Scotch Bonnet immediately and was not surprised, when looking into it further, that the sauce is produced in Jamaica. There was a greater sweetness than I would have expected with the Bonnet, however, and so I dug further to find if there was something more exotic I was missing, or possibly a dash of Tabasco itself in the mix. That was where I found it was Habanero.

The heat, though it is tampered down a bit, is consistent with those two peppers. This is not something to use great amounts of, another key difference with the actual Louisiana-style sauces, lest it become overbearing. The thinness, the color, all of that is identical and this is perhaps more of an island-style take on that type of sauce. Still, for as good as it is, it is far enough away that I still find it jarring when I'm more wanting a more "normal" Louisiana-style sauce. All in all, very good, though.

Bottom line: Very strong entry into a very crowded field. While I find it a bit overly sweet and borderline hotter than I usually desire for this type of sauce for it to become a staple, this is well worth a look.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

2K18 Q2 & Q3 Update

As some of you may have noticed, this and my other wine blog (and to an extent, my Yelp) have been somewhat quiet this year. It is not because of any kind of running out of steam, but a combination of dietary changes and some projects (one of them is sort of a family thing, but that part of my family is not at all close in proximity to my location, which presents its own hurdles) that are intensely time-consuming. The dietary changes leave little room for hot sauce, in many cases, and with summer, a lot of the heated foods that work well with hot sauce are simply not part of offerings. My wife has returned to work, which has also lessened dramatically her time and interest in cooking and mine has ever been minimal to be begin with. Thus, this update winds up being for 6 months rather than 3.

I don’t have any intention of shuttering this blog, but the trend of sporadic reviews will probably continue for the foreseeable future. I still seek out and try all of the hot junk I come across in the various menus and have not lost my love for being a chilehead, but there is a ton going on right now and a lot of this extraneous stuff has to take a back seat…at least for now. I do have a few sauces on deck that I'm trying to get to and obviously, I still have, like the last few(!) years, no real strong contender for SOTY in sight, but unlike other years past, I am noting it only and not particularly worrying…obviously, that condition is not at all helped by one of my lowest posting total of any year, including maybe the year of inception, which was itself a partial year.