2K21 Q1 Update

Strap in...it’s going to be another long one...with an FOH announcement (read on)... 

I’ve been planning on keeping it pretty light and easy for most of this new year. I thought I wasn’t really pushing on sauces quite as much so far, mostly because I had a lot left over towards the end of 2020 and I really wanted to try to work through those. Having tons of open bottles floating around, which I ran into a bit prior to the last quarter of 2020, just gets to be a bit much. Despite all of that, my postings are considerably higher than Q1 of last year, which was the 2nd highest year ever, in terms of blog postings. In fact, I have more for 2021 as an entire previous year (2018). 

I happily have a couple of SOTY candidates already, both from the same company, only the third time in the history of the blog that’s ever happened, but I also blew one of my goals from the 2020 Recap post. This is due to the atrocious Swampdragon Bourbon hot sauce, which will not be getting video treatment, then followed by the Lola’s Trinidad Scorpion, which seemed pointless to do given the flavor profile, especially when I already have somewhat of a glut of material. As it stands right now, I have enough sauce videos in the can for all of Quarter 2 (and into Quarter 3), without filming another video. Also, I’m feeling like we’re either in or on the verge of another good wave of spicy foods, perhaps even a renaissance of heat, which should mean no shortage of new products hitting the shelves... 

The blog did hit another milestone, which is that I’ve finally hit 1000 cumulative points, with the Big Red’s 3 Kings review. The total is slightly over that now. Hitting 1K took 221 sauces (and quite a few years). The cumulative average score, as of this writing, for the sauces of the blog is 4.53. As a note, I am going to also observe this is for full reviews only, as I do not assign a numerical rating to mini-review sauces. If I did, with the 36 mini-reviews I’ve done, I conceivably would have hit the 1000 mark sometime last year and it probably would change the average score somewhat. 

I did wander in to the Reaper fray, partially by running myself nearly entirely out of non-Reaper sauces. One of the things I’m not liking much with that particular pepper is that I need to keep tolerance up and/or do some prep prior to consuming. If I forget myself, it is usually pretty quick to remind me in an unpleasant manner. No other pepper, not even extract, does this. I’m still in the midst of the experiment, but if I find this continues to be the case, I do not foresee a regular rotation of Reaper products, as I like to be able to take breaks and use stuff casually which, so far, Reaper products in general seem rather poor-suited towards. 

In the first quarter so far, I’ve posted videos for all of the SOTY winners for the life of the blog, at least those which were still available and not reformulated. I’m really taking a hard look at the backlog for this year, to see which are realistic and worthwhile to pursue. The first method of determining this that I settled on was to look at the most popular sauces, in terms of blog views. 

The Top 5 sauces are:

1) Private Selection Mango Scotch Bonnet - Video posted
2) O’Brother Chipotle-Habanero - Video posted
3) Sweet Baby Ray’s - Video posted
4) Zatarain’s - Need To Acquire
5) Valentina XXXtra Hot - Video posted
 

While I may generally prefer more boutique and smaller batch sauces, if you take a look at that list, with the possible exception of O’Brothers, all of them are mainstream commercial sauces. I may go further on down in the list, based on views, but there are a couple problems with that. One of those is that if I’m reading a blog, I start with the newest posts and scroll down. I also have three separate pages of Tables Of Content, depending on how one wants them sorted (I may one day created another sorted by style of sauce, another by main pepper used, etc.). I don’t know that any of those pages or the main feed count towards individual page views, so that might not be the best approach. The second is that the dropoff for individual page views is pretty substantial after the Valentina... 

I’m more circling back to ratings being the main guide and really shying away from the idea of doing any more of the zeroes. Life is too short for bad hot sauces and I have a pretty crazy backlog already. This might be one of the bigger changes for 2021 in that I’ve already, as noted, decided not to do video reviews for a couple of sauces I did written reviews for, one because it was so dreadful I absolutely did not want to suffer through it again (Swampdragon Bourbon) and the second because it was not hugely different (Lola’s Trinidad Scorpion) from another variation I’d already posted. 

Now, if this was a profitable endeavor, I still might do them anyway, for the sake of having content, but that is not the case currently. I do need to have stricter evaluation, as I’ve bought sauces from the back catalog of written reviews three separate times without scrutinizing the label and had to pitch them all because I found out that they contained elements unacceptable to me, which means the current sauces are not identical the ones I reviewed initially. I’m still doing this more or less opportunistically, though I’m also going to start eliminating possibilities as far as which have been reformulated or are no longer produced, as I keep finding there are a lot more of those than I expected. 

As to non-sauce content, as mentioned, I have enough either already recorded or uploaded and scheduled to go thr rest of this year before I have to start scrounging, even with doing some holiday doubling here and there, so that’s a pretty solid cushion. I have started to sprinkle in more mustards into my plans, as I think that’s a pretty natural extension for chileheads. Still going back and forth, but may do the same for BBQ sauce as well. 

Here is the announcement I mentioned earlier. From this point on, any FOH support videos for sauces that appeared on The Hot Ones will be posted Saturdays. They will be in addition to the regular non-sauce videos on Wednesdays and the regular sauce postings on Sundays. I do roughly 1 sauce that appeared on The Hot Ones per quarter now, but thanks to some judicious buying during sales, I have enough of the sauces at hand to double or maybe triple that. 

As things stand right now, back to the backlog discussion for a moment, I’ve uploaded and scheduled through April, but have enough non-sauce content, without filming another second, to take me through 2021, so I’m running way, way ahead. I still have another maybe dozen videos of non-sauce content to film, as well. On the sauce side, I’m running ahead, but not as much, only through August currently. I have around 3 dozen sauces that are in need of reviewing/filming. 

I wound up doing a daily double video posting for Valentine’s Day, and looking over the calendar, it seems that a few more holidays coincide with the normally scheduled Sunday posting of the sauce reviews...I may do a few more of those, sprinkled throughout the year, but the next holiday I have any designs on considering at all is probably July 4. I also completed my Mexi-Style sauce custom blend at 1:1 of the Palotta Hot Fire Habanero and Irazu’s Fire-Roasted Habanero. Video for that is available on the FOH series, though I may continue tinkering with it over the next batch. I've gone through the first batch and am well into the second and I can say unequivocally that it is a fantastically delicious sauce and such is its power, that it goes well on a pretty considerable variety of things, much like Pure Death. If I was reviewing it as an actual manufactured sauce, it would be absolutely be in contention for SOTY and be an instant strong favorite. This addition makes the new Standby list look like this: 

*Emeritus Everyday sauce: Trappey's Red Devil
*Emeritus Asian-style sauce: Huy Fong Chili-Garlic Sauce
*Everyday sauce (and current overall favorite): Blair’s Pure Death Sauce
*Grilling sauce: CaJohn's Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero (BICH)
*Mustard-style sauce: Inner Beauty
*Pizza sauce (as in used instead of actual pizza sauce): Boar’s Head Jalapeno Pepper Sauce
*Mexican-style sauce: Custom Blend of Irazu Fire-Roasted Habanero + Pallotta Hot Fire Habanero
*Louisiana-style sauce: Irazu Cayenne
*Sweet-hot sauce: CaJohn's Happy Beaver

*= Not looking for a replacement

 
To commemorate the new logo of Burn Your Tongue, I also did a new bumper for the sponsored sauces. That is available for the video of the Arthur Wayne Montana Rooster sauce, which also has a new label now (review/video is with the old one), posted at the end of March, just prior to this blog entry. That bumper will also be on anything else sponsored from BYT going forward. 

As to the Hot Ones, I’ve touched every season of that show (except Season 14), so far, and once I cut my on-deck area of sauces waiting to be reviewed down to size a bit, will be looking at trying to add in some more of those. My soft goal for 2021 is to be able to have enough of them posted for a separate FOH playlist, but there’s a lot of miles between here and there. 

Speaking of Season 14 of The Hot Ones, I updated the posted list with those sauces...I note that almost half of the sauces for this season (4 of 10) are Hot Ones branded, which I find kind of curious...those might be the sauces I do last, just depending on what I can find easier elsewhere, such as on Roger’s shelves...7 of 10 of the list for this season I will consider for reviews, videos, etc., but it will be a while...I need to finish out my backlog and the single digit seasons first, of course, and, again, in no great rush, as those sauces tend to be more expensive, as I noted last year. Again, the vast majority of stuff I do on the blog and on the FOH video series (I make no money from either) is stuff I am directly paying for and the more sauces get over the $10 figure, the more demanding I am of them and hesitant to throw in on them, particularly if I’m dubious...at least in the earlier seasons, enough time has passed now that those are less expensive...

Pepper Palace Heat Hot Sauce

Pepper Palace Heat Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNN3z761t9w

I've been meaning to get to a lot more of the commercial sauces for a while now, hence why you see things like Tabascos, Private Selections, Culinary Tours, Texas Petes, etc., stuff I never really get on a regular basis, showing up in here and it's for the same reason I try to touch on some of the stuff that appears on The Hot Ones show. That reason is that it is important overall for the industry to hit some of these "names" and if someone is doing a search and comes across this blog and is thereby introduced to something better or we have another chilehead emerging, all to the good. 

Pepper Palace is a curious case in that their coverage, particularly in the primarily urban areas, or in proximity to, in the case of the one in Park City, is as close as we have to a national hot sauce storefront chain. Everything (scratch that - most everything - there are some snacks and other stuff that has different branding) in the store is branded with their line, of course, and ranges fairly far from strictly hot sauce and I thought that before the mask mandate gets dropped, it might be a place I should move up from the back burner, if I intended on doing it at all.

While there will be a sprinkling of some other sauces from them along the way, I decided to start off with a Louisiana-style. This one has the unnamed "aged red peppers," which usually means Cayenne, but could possibly be red Jalapeno as well. It could even be a blend, I suppose. I have no idea why it's not specified, but the taste reads more like Cayenne. Now, long-time readers of this blog will recall that Cayenne is one of my favorite peppers and Louisiana one of my favorite styles of sauce and the one I use the most. If I counted up all the sauce I've eaten in my life, that style would be the first by quite a lot. 

Using that as preface, I will say that this is one of the more poorly done of that style I've had. The sauce had separated in the neck somehow, very odd considering the listing of xanthan gum, and not a good portent. Nothing I love to do more than open a bottle and immediately waste sauce in a pour-off, but that's the way it goes sometimes. I poured out the offending liquid and carried on. The taste reminds me a lot of Crystal, in that it is harsh, abrasive, and unrefined, the kind that will do well in a pinch, but will not be the thing you reach for. Flavor here is decidedly not great, maybe somewhat below Crystal, even. Heat-wise, despite having heat in the name, this registers as near non-existent, but, again, somewhat typical for that style, as is the runniness. Restrictor is molded into the bottle mouth.

Bottom line: My first-ever product from this company was a major whiff, in a sauce style that's relatively easy to at least be passable. This one I will probably shoot a video for, but it's unlikely I will finish out the bottle.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 1
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Hog's Breath Red Hot Sauce Review

Hog's Breath Key West Red Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Voyy2IJj5pM

Hog's Breath, unknown to me at the time when I picked this up, is evidently a saloon in Key West, Florida. They have a fairly odd naming structure to their other sauces, with a hotter version (with different ingredients) evidently being named "Extra" and a Green version, which I presume is called Green. This one, the Red, is basically a straightforward Cayenne-based Louisiana style sauce. The ingredients are literally all that I think are necessary for that style of sauce, which is the peppers (or pepper mash), vinegar, salt. Very basic, sticking to fundamentals, but given that as the case, why did this take me so long (nearly 2/3 of the bottle) to get a handle on it? 

There is a world of differences in sauces, even with those 3 ingredients. These are the same ingredients, for example, in one of my all-time favorite sauces, Trappey's Red Devil, but that particular sauce is one the best-tasting of all Louisiana-styles and one of the best-tasting ever. Crystal also has those same 3 ingredients, but is abrasive enough that I wonder if I could de-grease my engine block with it. This sauce falls somewhere in between. It is fairly non-descript and I think that is part of the issue in that it wasn't really memorable enough to me for settle into a place immediately. As it stands now, it is a lot less harsh than the Crystal, but not anywhere near as palate-pleasing as, say, Louisiana Gold, let alone Red Devil. I am not a saucemaker and don't know specifically why this is the case, but I'd hazard a guess it comes down to both the batches and strains of pepper, as well as the actual cooking method.

The sauce itself is fairly straightforward, so I'd probably put it somewhere closer to the Gold than the Crystal, but somewhere between those two. As it is clearly meant to be a Louisiana-style sauce, there is also precious little heat to this, again, very consistent with the style, as is the watery consistency. It also does well on all the usual Louisiana-style applications. Given that this is my go-to style sauce, I tend to use it on nearly everything that does not have a distinctive flavor profile that I think would clash (so no Asian or Mexican foods) and it held up as expected.

Bottom line: Somewhat run-of-the-mill, but overall solid, example of the Louisiana-style sauce, more or less in the middle, with both better and worse examples out there, especially given the price here.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Old Bay Hot Sauce Review

McCormick Old Bay Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WyTS20i_5KE

I've been given to understand, from some of the other labels I've seen, that this is meant to be a Limited Edition type sauce, but my bottle has no such markings. Indeed, I think this would be a huge mistake for McCormick to not keep this out there. For me, and for many other chileheads, I imagine, this is a long time coming, one of those things that's such a natural one wonders why it took this long. The big question is whether or not alleviates the need for adding in a Louisiana style sauce to things flavored with the Old Bay powdered seasoning, which naturally this sauce is heavily based on and which I've spent a lot of time doing.

In one respect, to that last point, I have long come to terms with them being separate and having them that way allows me to modify the ratio as I wish on things like boils and so on. Here, it is combined for the user, which may or may not be a good thing. For me, it's fine, though I will note that overuse of this sauce generates the same problem as does the powder, which is a quite strong celery seed flavor coming through. This can be overly bitter in excessive and if it's not a flavor you enjoy, this sauce should probably be skipped. Like the Old Bay powder seasoning, it is quite prominent.

Heat-wise, given that this is essentially a modified Cayenne sauce, it is fairly minimal, about what you would anticipate from most Louisiana-style sauces. The genius of Old Bay is that it translates across two distinct regional cuisines styles, that of the Cajun/Louisiana as well as the upper East Coast. It is also a mass market sauce, so cost is generally pretty minimal, but I've oddly found that accessibility is quite streaky. 

What this really *ahem* boils down to is how much you eat the kind of things where this sauce would go. If you're a celery seed fan, rejoice, as you can make this a ubiquitous sauce. For me, I like Old Bay on seafood generally (a bowl of clam chowder or seafood chowder, for instance, is not complete without a healthy dose of both Old Bay AND a Louisiana-style sauce, as far as I'm concerned), but on very little else. I will try it out on my quarterly Wing Thing (on the FOH video series), but I disliked it on chicken strips, so I'm not expecting it to be a favorable experience. Even mac & cheese, which should be a pretty natural fit, was merely ok with the addition of this and that particular application is one of my diehards for a Louisiana-style.

Bottom line: If you're a fan of the Old Bay seasoning or the flavor of celery seed, this is a must. If you're like me and also like Old Bay in combination with a Louisiana-style sauce on seafood, worth a go. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 5

Bigfat's 6o8 Hot Sauce Review

Bigfat's 6o8 Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g82-a6dN2H8

Bigfat's was one of the bigger names back when I initially started the blog and I always sort of had them in the back of mind to get one of their sauces, but most of the sauces seemed to contain onions, the presence of which immediately ends any interest for me in a sauce. Of the ones I was curious about, I didn't often run across the sauce line in general and when I did, something else always seemed more interesting, so they got endlessly backburnered. Sadly, they also became one of the companies who wound up as casualties of 2020 and this will likely be both my first and last sampling of their wares. They were a large presence in this world I wound up spending a lot of time in and I do wish I had gotten to their stuff much sooner. There is a story floating around about their naming convention, which I do not now recall, but it is an "o" (letter o), not a zero in the name. I suppose the point is largely academic now, however.

That aside, what we have here is a very curious sauce. Normally, when I see these ingredients, I think it is wanting al pastor tacos or maybe carnitas, something Mexican-y along those lines, but no, this one has a target more in mind of Hawaiian food, given the creation of its formation in Hawaii. Indeed, the sauce oddly conflicts with cheese, which I don't remember seeing ever in Hawaiian food, so unless you eat tacos or carnitas without some sort of cheese presence, this sauce is not a great choice there. Given that it is meant for Hawaiian food, in my view, that also means it should do well on Asian dishes and it is nice there. If you do have it with carnitas, definitely the less items you have with the meat and sauce, the better.

There is a nice degree of heat here as well. It is perhaps on the mid to upper side for Habaneros, which I somehow forget a lot when eating it and am thus constantly pleasantly surprised. It's made also with pineapple juice, as opposed to pineapples proper, so it is a very loose and runny sauce. It occupies overall this sort of weird zone where I don't mind having it at hand for things like notching into Asian food, as it meshes nicely there, but I don't really eat Hawaiian food enough nor Mexican pork dishes. I probably would not have ultimately kept it on hand, but it does help me to understand why the company was such a big deal for so long.

Bottom line: One of the more curious fruit-based sauces I've had, from a now-defunct company. If you can find a bottle of it and you like the foods I mentioned here, definitely worth a pick up.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Big Red's 3 Kings Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Three (3) Kings Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=684j70NmBnM

As I've mentioned before, while I root for anyone out there trying to slug away at making hot sauces, if I am a fan of certain companies, this would definitely be one of though. I need to parse this a bit, though, as that like for the company doesn't always translate over into the sauces. This is the final one from a large haul of products from them that I picked up last year and it definitely was a matter of saving the hottest for last. 

Named 3 Kings due to the inclusion of the 3 last (and current) reigning record-holder for heat peppers, the venerable Ghost, the Scorpion, and the Carolina Reaper, this one is clearly meant to be punchy...and it definitely is, particularly for a non-extract sauce. This is somewhat reminiscent of the God's Wrath, in that we have another kitchen sink approach to this sauce, which seems to be a hallmark of all their sauces.

I go back and forth on this approach a bit. While God's Wrath (reviewed elsewhere on this blog) does a nice job of being accessible to things like Italian foods, this one strays from that a bit. It does not work overall quite as well as did the GW, but what it loses in terms of flexibility, it more than makes up for in heat. It is however, very nicely, a flavorful heat, not just a blast furnace. I was not able to pick out flavors of individual peppers, given the blend, but rather a very cohesive and somewhat unique whole. Not to worry, even with that step in heat, there is still a very solid amount of flexibility as well.

I don't really understand this approach, the whole "more is more," in terms of hot sauces generally, I guess, which tend to be very strongly flavored. Here, we have hibiscus. I'm curious to know if during testing, they tried it with and without hibiscus, as that tends to be a very subtle flavor note and one I can't detect here personally. The coffee extract I can kind of see, particularly if using tomato paste, let alone brown sugar and carrots also, to keep the sauce from getting too sweet, but with any conglomeration featuring this many ingredients, I always wonder if there was specific intent to all of those different ingredients and to what desired or intended effect. Most probably that would not be something that would be publicly shared, as I'm guessing these are going to be rather closely guarded secrets, but it is at least a strong source of curiosity for me. It's interesting to me how their sauces share so many similar ingredients, but are overall so radically different, and that is a mark of excellence and of a high degree of technical skill.  Of that, there is no question.

Bottom line: Hottest product from a very enjoyable company making very, very solid products, including this, which serves as another outstanding display of flexibility and tremendous flavor paired with very respectable heat. This is definitely one hot enough to restrict to chileheads, though, and now, for the third time in the blog (and second year in a row), I have 2 SOTY candidates from the same company.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 6
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8