2K20 Q2 Update
Super huge update, pack a lunch and let’s get to it.
From the last update, I resolved the filming issue for the Fundamentals of Heat video series on YouTube, which you can check out by clicking on any of the links in the Table Of Contents here for any sauces that have a video available. The plan to steadily shoot enough on weekends only to keep ahead is working well. As of this write-up, August and part of September is in the can.
I had to get a bit rangey (even though that took some slumming, dipping even as low as Takis) to keep things at 2 posts a week, but I’m good through probably October at this point, maybe beyond a bit. The non-sauce stuff was always meant to be temporary, but I want to keep it rolling as long as I can because those videos are pretty fun to tod. I do have some good sources for other snacks that I’ve recently discovered, so it will be a while before I have to move to every other week on those. I also have thought of a new series, though I think more likely that won’t start until 2021. Still undecided and need to work out the formatting a bit more in my head. As to sauces specifically, I now have enough waiting on the shelf that I will not be able to film them all this year (written review, maybe, but probably not).
I now have 4 separate playlists available in the FOH video series as well, to try to make it a bit easier to digest. I have added all of those playlists to the blog, as well, in another side widget.
I’ve been pretty pleased with this year so far, specific to sauces, the blog and videos only. Obviously, this is a very difficult and stressful year otherwise... For sauces, so far, I’ve had the best Asian-style sweet, the best Cajun, and the best mustard ever, which is pretty nutty when I think about it, considering how long I’ve been eating hot sauces, mustards even longer. The video series is definitely doing an ace job of driving posts for the blog and I’m hopeful it will grow in its own right. If you have not checked it out, please do so.
As of right now, speaking to the blog, I’m beyond the total amount of posts for all of 2018 (15) & 2016 (19) and tied now with last year, 2019 (20). The next ones are 2012 (21), 2014 & 2017, both with 23, and I fully expect to surpass those before end of Q3 this year. That would put us in range of 2015 (32). I think that one is also somewhat likely to fall, but I doubt we will approach the high point of 2013 (52). I will get into the whys of this a bit more in the end of the year recap.
I also have 4 SOTY contenders right now (Private Selection Calabrian, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper, if you haven’t ready them yet and are interested in checking them out), which is a great relief to me, as the last few years it has been nearly right down to the wire. Of those, Calabrian was eaten the fastest, Death By Kraken packed the biggest wallop and the Sweet Ghost Pepper is, by far, the best-tasting). I have also solved a mystery here in Q2, which was also kind of fun and cool to take a bit of a trip down through history.
Obviously, one of the side effects of the COVID-19 measures is that I have a far greater deal of time at home now, so I’m able to bank videos into the future. I don’t do that at all with the blog, but the sauce videos, especially for the new sauces, take much longer to film, since I have to actually do all the testing for the blog post well before I consider shooting a single frame for the videos. With the non-food stuff, I can generally just open a bag or box or can or whatever and dig right in. They have their own challenge with availability, though, as there are a lot more hot sauces than there are packaged spicy foods.
That aside, one of the things I’ve been trying to focus on, once it became clear that I was going to have some struggles coming up with all of the previous SOTY winners, is to work through a lot of those Hot Ones sauces. My tentative goal right now is to get all 4 of the first seasons (for the sauces that I will consider doing, that is) in the can by the end of the year. If I can do more, of course, I will, but that is the soft goal. Along with that, as many SOTYs as possible, and any Standbys I haven’t done. I’ve gone through all of the sauces Roger (Burn Your Tongue - find him on Facebook and show him some love) shot my way, along with a number of back catalog stuff and some newer ones that looked interesting. Of the SOTY winners, I have done videos for 3 and 3 are discontinued. This leaves 2 that I need to obtain in order to film.
As to those Standbys, once I have the SOTYs done, the Standbys will also be done. I’m not going to bother chasing down the Emeritus sauces, unless there’s a significant demand. I have also revised my Standby list as well. Barring anything unforeseen, I should be able to get all of the SOTYs and Standbys done by end of the year, and put a healthy dent into the sauces for The Hot Ones that I want to get to.
Speaking of the Hot Ones, the list for Season 12 has been posted and I have updated that TOC page with the new info...so, 12 seasons, 10 sauces a season is 120 sauces...except there are many, many repeats. Deleting the repeats gives us 87 individual sauces. However, there are some discontinued/limited edition items on there also. Removing those puts us at 84. Still a solid amount, a good respectable number. I have waived my extract exclusion for this series, but the onions ban is still in place. Ejecting those gives us 50 possible sauces. I have reviewed 15 already, which leaves us 35 to go to get this covered. Interestingly, I have not reviewed a sauce that appears past Season 5. I do want to note that the Hot Ones sauces, especially in the later seasons, tend to be more expensive than everything else out there, even beyond the Hot Ones branded flavors that are only available via Heatonist, which curbs my interest a bit. I don’t know if this is because of some kickback arrangement with the sauce companies and First We Feast, but I get a little balky at anything past $10/bottle (assuming 5 oz. bottle), unless the sauce has some super exotic ingredient, like truffles. Many of those sauces are $14/bottle and higher, which lowers their priority for me significantly and, if I’m being honest, will also tend to impact their Enjoyment To Dollar Factor rating...
You got a little bit there in that preceding paragraph, but I’ve really been trying to compile data, both because I have, like a lot of everyone these days, some goodly amounts of time on my hands, and because I’m somewhat of a data junkie (one of my soft goals is also to get an average rating), but also because it helps me to get an idea for future projection. I’ve added a few new pictures (and am getting closer to the point where nearly everything that I can add pictures to on the blog now has pictures) and started chopping out titles from the list that are no longer produced, such as the Zakk Wylde stuff and the Bad Brains sauce. There are a number of others that were evidently limited editions, now gone, so I will never be able to get to 100%. One hot sauce company, Wicked Cactus, sadly is shuttered entirely. By having an idea of how many I can possibly get, that will give me an idea of how long into 2021 I can extend the weekly video thing. There are also a number of sauces that have been reformulated in a way that will cause me to exclude them from future consideration and a number I intensely disliked and probably will not be bothering with at all, since I’m not going to re-buy sauces for the purpose of a single video (unless this somehow wildly takes off and I can do it professionally).
As of right now, I have 183 full reviews on the blog, which puts me well over 200, if you count the mini-reviews. 200 full reviews is do-able for 2020, but unlikely, as I also have some back catalog stuff to get in there for the blog/FOH tie-in. There will not be videos for everything or probably even close to it, but I’d be pretty content at around 50% or so, at least of the full reviews, which also won’t happen this year. I will probably re-compile everything sometime in Q3, when I start working on 2021. Check back for the quarterly update then, if you’re interested in this.
Hopefully you’ve all been enjoying the new stuff as I try to branch out a bit more. I will say it is a great load of fun to do and I’m enjoying myself immensely producing this content. Of course, if you have any suggestions on anything you could care to see in the world of spicy foods, drop me a line and I’ll definitely try to get to it.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Saturday, June 20, 2020
Inner Beauty Hot Sauce Review
Inner Beauty Hot Sauce
Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmTSUNOooKo
I should start this one off by noting right away that this is not so much to me what I would call a hot sauce, as much as it is a sweeter, pour-able dijon style mustard. The label calls itself a hot sauce, though, and that's what I try to go by when reviewing entries, but I don't consider it a hot sauce, per se. For heat, it relies on the wonderful Scotch Bonnet and I was kind of hoping it would be similar to the Bad Brains hot sauce kicking around a few years back. It wasn't quite hot sauce in that direction or to that level, instead definitely far more learning hard in the direction of mustard. It reminded me at times of that old favorite, as well as at times a nice honey mustard, though not heavy enough on the honey there for my taste. I eventually modified that with some raw honey and was well-pleased with the results.
This is also one of my more thoroughly, perhaps even somewhat exhaustively, tested sauces, as the flavor I loved instantly. I would not hesitate to call this perhaps the best mustard I've had. There was some minor suspension issue and the top of the bottle definitely was a bit different than the rest, once I got into it a bit enough to agitate, but all of it was great. Heat is relatively minor, as these things go, but, like Louisiana-style sauces, I don't necessarily want a whole ton of heat to go with them. It also comes in a flask, which I like quite a bit, as a rule (I don't know why, exactly, but I do).
The big question for me was whether or not this was going to fit into the SOTY criteria and that's not an easy answer. Mustards are a bit limited in what I like them on and dijons a bit narrower still. I had a couple of easy 10s in flavor and value, but heat as a 3 is about right. How then, could I conceivably get this into that higher echelon? The best mustard ever surely must belong in a conversation about SOTY? Right? But the best Cajun style sauce I had (also this year) missed the cut also. It brings back to why I have the categories I do. Getting near SOTY should not be an easy thing. It should be hard. It should be a trial.
But I loved this sauce, so much so that I tried it on everything in the vain hope that I could realistically give it a higher flexibility rating. Mustard on pizza...not a good idea normally, here, two flavors I liked separate, and together, just tasted like two separate flavors I liked in my mouth at once. On chicken strips, it was ok, but not sweet enough (hence my addition of raw honey). for my taste. Where it really excelled was on sandwiches and I came up with a variety of sandwiches, including hot ones, like hamburgers, to test this. I almost never have hot sauce on a cold sandwich, but here, this sauce excelled in an application that nearly no other sauce has or is likely to do in future. That has to mean something...but alas, I can't, in good conscience, given it enough of a nudge to get into the running for this year. Still a great mustard and if you love Scotch Bonnets in a mustard style sauce, or dijon mustard in general, this one will make you quite happy.
Bottom line: Best mustard I've ever had, and as a hot sauce, the best mustard I've ever had. Outstanding.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 10
Flexibility: 6
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 7
Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmTSUNOooKo I should start this one off by noting right away that this is not so much to me what I would call a hot sauce, as much as it is a sweeter, pour-able dijon style mustard. The label calls itself a hot sauce, though, and that's what I try to go by when reviewing entries, but I don't consider it a hot sauce, per se. For heat, it relies on the wonderful Scotch Bonnet and I was kind of hoping it would be similar to the Bad Brains hot sauce kicking around a few years back. It wasn't quite hot sauce in that direction or to that level, instead definitely far more learning hard in the direction of mustard. It reminded me at times of that old favorite, as well as at times a nice honey mustard, though not heavy enough on the honey there for my taste. I eventually modified that with some raw honey and was well-pleased with the results.
This is also one of my more thoroughly, perhaps even somewhat exhaustively, tested sauces, as the flavor I loved instantly. I would not hesitate to call this perhaps the best mustard I've had. There was some minor suspension issue and the top of the bottle definitely was a bit different than the rest, once I got into it a bit enough to agitate, but all of it was great. Heat is relatively minor, as these things go, but, like Louisiana-style sauces, I don't necessarily want a whole ton of heat to go with them. It also comes in a flask, which I like quite a bit, as a rule (I don't know why, exactly, but I do).
The big question for me was whether or not this was going to fit into the SOTY criteria and that's not an easy answer. Mustards are a bit limited in what I like them on and dijons a bit narrower still. I had a couple of easy 10s in flavor and value, but heat as a 3 is about right. How then, could I conceivably get this into that higher echelon? The best mustard ever surely must belong in a conversation about SOTY? Right? But the best Cajun style sauce I had (also this year) missed the cut also. It brings back to why I have the categories I do. Getting near SOTY should not be an easy thing. It should be hard. It should be a trial.
But I loved this sauce, so much so that I tried it on everything in the vain hope that I could realistically give it a higher flexibility rating. Mustard on pizza...not a good idea normally, here, two flavors I liked separate, and together, just tasted like two separate flavors I liked in my mouth at once. On chicken strips, it was ok, but not sweet enough (hence my addition of raw honey). for my taste. Where it really excelled was on sandwiches and I came up with a variety of sandwiches, including hot ones, like hamburgers, to test this. I almost never have hot sauce on a cold sandwich, but here, this sauce excelled in an application that nearly no other sauce has or is likely to do in future. That has to mean something...but alas, I can't, in good conscience, given it enough of a nudge to get into the running for this year. Still a great mustard and if you love Scotch Bonnets in a mustard style sauce, or dijon mustard in general, this one will make you quite happy.
Bottom line: Best mustard I've ever had, and as a hot sauce, the best mustard I've ever had. Outstanding.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 10
Flexibility: 6
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 7
Monday, June 8, 2020
Hotter Than El Ragin' Cajun Hot Sauce Review
Hotter Than El Gator Jake's Ragin' Cajun Hot Sauce
Quite a mouthful to say the full name of this sauce, but digging into it, quite a mouthful in each bite as well. It always amazes me that certain saucemakers are able to pack so much flavor in such a scant few ingredients. This is yet another one, something that takes great skill and which I am here to applaud. I notice also on the black neck wrap of the bottle a sticker with "WINNER 2018 Fiery Food Challenge". This refers to the Zest Fest of that year, but in looking through the list, I see this came in 3rd in the Louisiana-style category, which suggests the #1 and #2 respectively must have been some kind of fantastic.
I will get to the sauce shortly, but I can't leave without addressing a minor issue I have, which is not really helped by entities who know better perpetuating things. Take, for example, the Zest Fest itself. This was put in the Louisiana-style category, which is fine, if that's the closest you can get, but the full list for 2018 was 3 pages, just for the contests and top 3 finishers. If you can have a Louisiana style, you can have a Cajun (categories for any festival I might be deciding, incidentally, would be quite a bit more extensive) as well. Less so online, but when I talk to people about this whole hot sauce thing, which happens frequently, once they find out that I'm one of those weirdos who likes to light their mouth on fire, there is a lot of confusion about Cajun vs. Louisiana-style. I think this can largely be summed up in one ingredient: garlic. A good Louisiana-style sauce needs 3 things: Cayenne, vinegar, salt. Any other flavor components will tend to detract from the glory of the Cayenne, which should stand alone to better shine. With Cajun, there is a much wider range of potential ingredients, but every good Cajun sauce will have garlic. I realize I sound like a hot sauce sommelier, but one of the fun things about having a blog is that I can just redirect people here rather than explaining all of this to them when they equate Cajun to Louisiana-style. Similarities, sure, but identical. Nay, I say. Nay.
That aside, despite all the turmoil of 2020, I have to observe, from a purely chilehead perspective, that I've happily had experienced, for me, the best sweet Asian-style sauce (Mikey V's Sweet Ghost) and now, to my mind (and tongue) the best Cajun sauce. Most Cajun sauces tend to pound one half to death with garlic. I love garlic and have been known to roast several bulbs in the oven (with a little olive oil and kosher salt, natch - I'm no savage), to eat the cloves as another might candy, but with granulated, a little goes a very long way and too much and it will wind up stepping all over everything else. Here, the very delicate tightrope is handled very deftly, in that it is still present, but is not the overriding characteristic, but another supporting player. Exceedingly well-blended and crafted, this is by far the best example of a Cajun sauce I can think of.
So, I hear some of you saying, where and why do I use that in place of Louisiana-style, which is a valid question or maybe questions? Again, we look at the garlic. Where would we be without garlic in the sauce of a pizza? Nowhere. So, in places where garlic is a natural fit, pizza, nearly all pasta dishes, garlic burgers, maybe in a pinch Mexican food, and so on. Where it fails is in heavy cream sauces or cheese sauces, such as mac & cheese or a ham & cheese sandwich. To me, the Cayenne winds up fading a bit and I'm left with much more garlic than I would prefer. In the past, I would not consider keeping both sauces at hand, but I will say this one has opened my eyes a bit, rather than making Louisiana-style do full duty on nearly everything.
If there is a slightly shortcoming, heat, as is usual for this and the Louisiana-style, is a bit on the light side, meaning there is precious little of it. If you're a chilehead looking for your heat fix, this isn't going to help much. If you're looking for flavor, though, you won't go wrong.
Bottom line: If you're not familiar with Cajun style sauce, start here. If you are familiar with the style, but have not had this particular one, also start here. A true stem to stern fundamentally great sauce.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 8
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9
Overall: 7
Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlf0Yc_uJcw
Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of
Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over
to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection
available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.
Quite a mouthful to say the full name of this sauce, but digging into it, quite a mouthful in each bite as well. It always amazes me that certain saucemakers are able to pack so much flavor in such a scant few ingredients. This is yet another one, something that takes great skill and which I am here to applaud. I notice also on the black neck wrap of the bottle a sticker with "WINNER 2018 Fiery Food Challenge". This refers to the Zest Fest of that year, but in looking through the list, I see this came in 3rd in the Louisiana-style category, which suggests the #1 and #2 respectively must have been some kind of fantastic.I will get to the sauce shortly, but I can't leave without addressing a minor issue I have, which is not really helped by entities who know better perpetuating things. Take, for example, the Zest Fest itself. This was put in the Louisiana-style category, which is fine, if that's the closest you can get, but the full list for 2018 was 3 pages, just for the contests and top 3 finishers. If you can have a Louisiana style, you can have a Cajun (categories for any festival I might be deciding, incidentally, would be quite a bit more extensive) as well. Less so online, but when I talk to people about this whole hot sauce thing, which happens frequently, once they find out that I'm one of those weirdos who likes to light their mouth on fire, there is a lot of confusion about Cajun vs. Louisiana-style. I think this can largely be summed up in one ingredient: garlic. A good Louisiana-style sauce needs 3 things: Cayenne, vinegar, salt. Any other flavor components will tend to detract from the glory of the Cayenne, which should stand alone to better shine. With Cajun, there is a much wider range of potential ingredients, but every good Cajun sauce will have garlic. I realize I sound like a hot sauce sommelier, but one of the fun things about having a blog is that I can just redirect people here rather than explaining all of this to them when they equate Cajun to Louisiana-style. Similarities, sure, but identical. Nay, I say. Nay.
That aside, despite all the turmoil of 2020, I have to observe, from a purely chilehead perspective, that I've happily had experienced, for me, the best sweet Asian-style sauce (Mikey V's Sweet Ghost) and now, to my mind (and tongue) the best Cajun sauce. Most Cajun sauces tend to pound one half to death with garlic. I love garlic and have been known to roast several bulbs in the oven (with a little olive oil and kosher salt, natch - I'm no savage), to eat the cloves as another might candy, but with granulated, a little goes a very long way and too much and it will wind up stepping all over everything else. Here, the very delicate tightrope is handled very deftly, in that it is still present, but is not the overriding characteristic, but another supporting player. Exceedingly well-blended and crafted, this is by far the best example of a Cajun sauce I can think of.
So, I hear some of you saying, where and why do I use that in place of Louisiana-style, which is a valid question or maybe questions? Again, we look at the garlic. Where would we be without garlic in the sauce of a pizza? Nowhere. So, in places where garlic is a natural fit, pizza, nearly all pasta dishes, garlic burgers, maybe in a pinch Mexican food, and so on. Where it fails is in heavy cream sauces or cheese sauces, such as mac & cheese or a ham & cheese sandwich. To me, the Cayenne winds up fading a bit and I'm left with much more garlic than I would prefer. In the past, I would not consider keeping both sauces at hand, but I will say this one has opened my eyes a bit, rather than making Louisiana-style do full duty on nearly everything.
If there is a slightly shortcoming, heat, as is usual for this and the Louisiana-style, is a bit on the light side, meaning there is precious little of it. If you're a chilehead looking for your heat fix, this isn't going to help much. If you're looking for flavor, though, you won't go wrong.
Bottom line: If you're not familiar with Cajun style sauce, start here. If you are familiar with the style, but have not had this particular one, also start here. A true stem to stern fundamentally great sauce.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 8
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9
Overall: 7
Friday, June 5, 2020
Lola's Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review
Lola's Fine Hot Sauce Ghost Pepper
UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvx4-ERbON0
I don't usually start off reviews this way, but I strongly encourage you to read the Lola's Original review prior to reading this.
What I think we have here is a sauce manufacturer coming up with a base sauce and then substituting in various super hots for the heat element. This naturally also alters the flavor a bit as well. In this case, it improved the heat slightly and the flavor a bit more. It still does not work particularly well on Mexican foods, and generally follows the same applications as mentioned in the Lola's Original review. It did fail as well, pretty considerably, on mac & cheese, but did fare fairly well as a chicken strip dipping sauce.It does not really strike me as flexible enough, though and only 2 of the four criteria I have really moved. There is still precious little heat here (I'm reluctant to give it the full bump to a 2, as it is more between a 1 and 2), and the Jolokias have been considerably restricted and tamed here. The sauce flow problem also persists a bit with this one, but oversaucing will just create flavor issues, rather than any heat problems.
Bottom line: Markedly better in flavor (and slightly hotter) than the Original, it is still a far cry from the "everyday" sauce it claims and ostensibly tries to be.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 6
Flexibility: 5
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4
Overall: 4
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