Frank's Red Hot Xtra Hot Sauce Review

Frank's Red Hot Xtra Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtIsFcLSnQs

Like Tabasco Original, it's hard for me to hate on Frank's too much because it's been around for a century, it means a lot to the industry as a whole, and it's a gateway to being a chilehead for a lot of folks. Like the Original Texas Pete, I also did a mini-review of the Frank's Original, which I have not particularly found enjoyable ever. I kind of hate the advertising, the "I put that S*#@ on everything," implying the vulgarity of putting "that shit" as in that sauce on everything, but treading a thin line because tying your product to the idea of putting actual shit on everything is probably beyond a bit unsound. I presume them to mean it as "I put that sauce on everything" but I suppose they feel a need to be cutesy with it and that's the kind of dull-minded, pedestrian nonsense that works well for whom they're trying to target. 

The idea that Frank's was the original sauce for the original Buffalo Wings in their first genesis ever is really doing a lot of work. It is likely also a false idea, but I'm not going to debate that. I will note that in the later 70s, the sauce was sold and became the commercial behemoth it is today. It is another of the actual national hot sauces out there and like nearly all of the rest of those, it is towards the lower end of the quality scale. It always has had a sort of innate "cheapness" in taste to me. but given that it's mass-produced by French's, I suppose that stands to reason. Still, for a lot of people, there is enough here to like that it catapults them into an exploration of what else is out there and as an industry-supporting chilehead, I respect that.

Unlike Texas Pete Original, this one does not have a very good-tasting base sauce. They clearly mean it to do double duty as a wing sauce, so it is a bit smoother and creamier than most Louisiana-style sauces tend to be. This may lend it to a wider variety of food types, in addition to cutting down the runniness somewhat. In the case of the Texas Pete Hotter (which is also reviewed here), they took a pretty solid base sauce and wrecked it entirely with the addition of extract, in the quest for greater "heat." Here, the difference, while present is somewhat minimized comparatively. The flavor of the Original Frank's Red Hot is a lot more present and intact, though there is still the noxious and bitter accompaniment of the extract. This sauce is also notably less hot than the Texas Pete Hotter, particularly if you compare both "extra hot" versions with their base originals. Also, like the Texas Pete Hotter, this one is more difficult to find, but, given the ubiquitous nature of Frank's Red Hot in general, it was much easier to find than the Texas Pete Hotter.

I honestly did not go into this expecting much. I'm familiar with Frank's Red Hot, as a lot of restaurants use it for the standard of their wing sauces. Despite me not being fond of it, it is a relatively innocuous, inoffensive sauce. Here, we have a sauce that is on the border of being too bitter to be of much use. Flavor, again, is sacrificed in the chase for heat and what is left is a sauce that combines the usual "cheap" flavor with the edgy bitterness of extract, but with very little heat rendered for all that. I'm still on the fence about whether or not I will finish the bottle. I suppose probably not, but there is a solid 12 ounces in this bottle, so I may keep playing around with it for a while to see if it works well on anything. I don't find usage of it as broad as they portray in commercials (they try really hard to sell it as an "everyday" sauce, but I don't find Louisiana style in general to be fitting for that and certainly not a poor example like Frank's) and generally just keep it for things that I would normally use a Louisiana-style on. With this, I have to restrict it further to only stronger tasting things, in the hope that the bitterness of the extract will be hopefully blunted.

Bottom line: Possibly the most famous hot sauce line nationally, if you like the Original Red Hot and feel like that hot sauce could use a little more actual "hot," this is maybe worth a go, but what modest flavor there is in that Original Red Hot is reduced in the quest for heat, of which only a moderate amount is actually delivered.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 3

Hell's Kitchen Habanero Mango Salvation Hot Sauce Review

Hell's Kitchen Habanero Mango Salvation Hot Sauce

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.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9YWmq8_e7g

Hell's Kitchen intrigued me enough with Taco Cat to give this a shot. I seem to have landed on the Habanero-mango train and can't seem to find my way off, but sweet-hot is generally one of my favorite styles of sauces and last round up at BYT, I didn't have too many of the fruity varieties. Once I got it cracked open, I must say this sauce rather surprised me. I was expecting a very present sweetness, as is usually the case with those, but instead, I found a very garlic forward sauce. 

This presents a bit of a conundrum for me. namely do I want or even like sweet garlic (think garlic puree or concentrate) sauces? The answer to that is not especially. I love garlic and don't mind it in sauces, as long as it is part of the parcel, not the entirety. Here, it is so strong and dominant, it tends to overpower the other flavors, which I would really rather be tasting. It is hard to detect mango as a flavor and instead get a rather general sweetness. Indeed, this is a sauce I would go so far as to say I disliked solo. The recommends here are grilled chicken, fish, tacos, pizza and more. My response to that is nope, nope, actually pretty solid, nope, and only if the "more" means more Mexican-styled food. I'll be honest, this works great on Mexican-style foods and I tried it on several of them once I discovered that. 

For the other ones, when you have to rely on the sauce to either mesh with the food or to be tasty enough by itself to hold over until the food flavor comes in, this is honestly a poor choice. It did not mesh with the pizza and the grilled chicken and fish were nowhere near strong enough to stand up to the garlic. I was a bit surprised at the pizza, given that garlic usually shows up in pizza sauce, but with the tacos, there was enough of a forceful presence from the food so that the garlic tone was largely gone and the sauce was then able to accentuate the actual dishes. Heat-wise, this is very minimal. There is very little punch to be had here.

Bottom line: If this had about half the garlic force, it would be an excellent sauce...as it is, this is more representative of garlic-sweet than an actual sweet hot and is not one I found pleasant overall, other than, as noted, on Mexican-style food.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

Pepper Palace Wok Dis Wei Hot Sauce Review

Pepper Palace Wok Dis Wei Hot Sauce

I may as well start with this...I find this sauce to be problematic, as I think it treads on a too-narrow line of cuteness, right over into leaning too hard on pidgin English (in literal Chinese, the phrase is gibberish). I suspect the company may be aware of this, as the title of the page is called Wok This Way, which is infinitely better. When I picked it up, I thought it was just Wok and didn't see the rest until after I was looking at the sauce prior to opening it. Upon that discovery, I was immediately dismayed as I surely would not have ever picked it up had I found that.

That does not end my issues with this sauce. It is not like it's a great sauce behind a shit label. My initial interest in it was twofold...first, there never seem to be enough good Asian-style hot sauces out there. I suspect this is more of a market-driven facet, but one can always use good Asian-style entries, so it was worth checking out there. The other side is that it used Thai peppers. Now, Thai peppers are one of the few pods that I prefer eating rather than in other format and given the flavor profile, they don't strike me as flavorful enough to make a solid sauce. So, I was quite curious to see what they were doing here...add in some Mandarin oranges and ginger as elements, which I also don't see a ton, and I'm curious...

What I got here was one of the worst sauces I've run across. This isn't like, say, the Swampdragon, and is basically hard liquor calling itself a sauce. This was sour, repulsive, and ruined anything it touched. I did attempt it on a few things beyond Asian foods and it failed there also. It was such that my first usage on Asian food resulted in me loudly shouting at the food I had put it on, something I almost never do. There is no heat at all present here and not much flavor, either, beyond a sort of vinegary nastiness, slightly tinged with soy. This one also has "sugar" as an ingredient, which the company seems fond of doing, and garlic as well. I did not pick up any pepper, garlic, or ginger flavor, and any Mandarin flavor that may have been there was steamrolled.

This will probably be the last Pepper Palace sauce I review here for a bit, as I am now 0-3 with those I picked up, which is a streak unrivaled by any prior sauce company I can think of. This is just a bad sauce. It's been a while, but I'm hauling out the negatives once again for this one. Needless to say, there will be no video. This is already binned.

Bottom line: Utterly useless.

 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: -5
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: -14

Overall: 0

Pepper Palace Diabolito Hot Sauce Review

Pepper Palace Diabolito Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFP20wJXWrk

After the somewhat dismal showing of the Heat hot sauce from Pepper Palace (review elsewhere here), I admittedly started to to get a touch nervous. I didn't have really high hopes for that, but the others were of some interest. This one, for instance, with its nifty little pirate hat graphic and a special explosion splash to let you know it was made with ghost pepper, seemed like it might have some utility. Now, knowing what I know now, which is not the same as what I knew then, I probably would not have bothered as soon as I saw the price tag, but I didn't notice at the time. The pricing on it is not what I actually paid for it (this will be discussed more in the video), but that is kind of their thing...jack up the price for what I would describe as mediocre sauces, at least of the three I've tried, including this, then give someone a discount so they think they're getting a deal or will buy more for a greater discount, etc. Again, I did not go there to get sauce but for a product for the FOH video series of non-hot sauce stuff and picked them up as an afterthought.

With this one, I seriously don't know what they're trying for. I thought it was maybe a stab at Happy Beaver (my first SOTY, also reviewed here elsewhere), but if so, they missed wildly. It's hard to say there is ghost pepper in it, this is not to say that I doubt that there is, as the heat is not particularly pronounced, but there definitely is sugar. Not any particular kind of sugar, but sugar. There is also a heavy smoky flavor, which reads a lot as chipotle. I suppose it could be smoked ghosts, but it doesn't say that...but then again, nor does the label say chipotle, but that is by far the dominant flavor. Combined with sugar, the overall effect is odd...and somewhat cheap and unrefined. 

Consistency is very runny, not quite runny enough to be watery, but very loose...it could probably do with a restrictor cap, but my bottle did not come with one. I found it best on relatively neutral foods. Anything strong and it would begin to trend to bitter, including something as innocuous as ramen. The sugar vanishes and you're left with a mild heat charge and a good amount of bitterness. It is not, at the end of the day, a particularly enjoyable sauce and I had much debate over whether or not there would be an FOH video for it...I have decided yes to that, but I am definitely not going to finish the bottle.

Bottom line: This now makes Pepper Palace 0-2 and I'm increasingly concerned about the rest of the sauces. There is no point to getting this as there is no real point to this sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 2

Gindo's Honey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Gindo's Honey Habanero Hot Sauce

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.

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYj3cc0J09s

Gindo's is seeming to be one of the latest small-batch, high end sauce makers, putting out limited runs and using exotic ingredients. Their move towards differentiation extends to the packaging, which is very classy in terms of the label, and unique in the square bottles they use. In many respects, this is kind of a neat idea, as it has the potential to utilize space better in the refrigerator moreso than do the round bottles, but this is also what held me back initially, as I wasn't sure it would fit in my fridge door. This is also why, as much as I like flasks, I don't buy them or have many of them open at once. 

I did mean to get to this last year, but that year was quite a bit less able to be scheduled than normal. This sauce in one in which I kind of regret not getting to it sooner, as it is delicious, but then again, I was more than ready to savor it, an aspect which there is much to be said for. The ingredient profile is one that was nearly tailor-made for me in that it has both honey and Habanero, two things that go exceedingly well together, plus pink Himalayan salt (my preference would have been Hawaiian, but I suppose that just smacks of me angling towards Blair's Pure Death, which is probably not wrong). 

I mentioned Blair's Pure Death just there, as I love that flavor profile, but here, finally, we have a sauce that really does and nice job of capturing the Habanero's innate fruitiness. I will readily admit that I didn't find that pepper particularly fruity and have waxed and waned on it for the better part of a couple decades, but here, in this exquisite concoction, we have a resulting fruitiness that perhaps leans on the yellow Bell peppers a bit, but definitely does a nice job of highlighting that aspect of the Habanero. Flavor-wise, we have a nice, sweet, extremely well-balanced sauce that does a nice job of capturing the best of that pepper. It is also somewhat mild, so you could use quite a bit and it is not a strong flavor, so it will go well with almost anything.

Indeed, it is like the Pure Death in that you can put it on anything and it will be good. Unlike the Pure Death, this one will not overpower your dish, but instead blend and sometimes accent, sometimes vanish nearly entirely, leaving a touch of sweet and a touch of heat. There is a litany of items to try this sauce on (good thing it's an 8 oz. bottle) and I like to follow the guidance of the makers, if nothing else, to put the sauce in its best setting. This one, clearly designed as an "everyday" sauce, has quite a list and I'm working my way through it, but everything I've tried thus far has been excellent, including an Asian dish, in which this was much better than the actual Asian-style sauce I was also testing. Heat-wise, this is rather minimal. The emphasis is clearly on flavor, as most boutique sauce-makers are wont to focus on, and the result is outstanding.

Bottom line: Accessible by nearly everyone, this is a great demonstration of the fruitiness of the Habanero, as well as an excellent way to introduce the pepper. Chileheads may be disappointed by the heat, with the focus on flavor, but this is ultimately a stunning example of the heights to which hot sauce is capable. It's also another candidate for Sauce Of The Year and if I'm being honest, this is also the frontrunner at this point.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8