2K21 Q2 Update

 2K21 Q2 Update

Continuing on with the idea this is going to be another strong year for posting, both on the blog and with the FOH video series. I’m at 285 posts total, including this one, for the blog (likely will hit 300 some time in Q3). On the FOH video side, in addition to Friday postings of any sauces that appeared on The Hot Ones and any holidays that seem fitting, I’ve also decided to do Friday posting, at least through grilling season, of mustards. So, keep your eye on Friday, if you like the FOH videos, as if there is a video on a Friday, it will be either a mustard or a sauce from The Hot Ones. If I keep up with the current pace of video posting, I will overtake the number of full reviews of sauces by the end of the year, with full review sauce video postings hitting 100 around August. It also means that the video posting overall could conceivably overtake the posts of the entire blog in 2022...

Speaking of The Hot Ones, the sauces for Season 15 are up. I don’t have a ton of commentary, other than Sean Evans is back on his bullshit with the return of Beyond Insanity, which also makes that season, by default, one in which I’ve already done one of the sauces. That leaves Season 14 as the only season I haven’t hit yet, so I’m going to move that one up for this year, I think, which will be touches in all of them. Of the 10 sauces, there are only 4 that I will be doing for Season 15, as the preponderance of onions is quite pronounced. Three of those 4 sauces I will be doing also appear in other seasons, so this one will be fairly easy to cover.

I finally got around to posting all the hot sauce support videos I shot in 2020. Still working on the non-sauce FOH content from last year, but that should be done by end of Q3...I think. Part of the challenge there is that there has been a lot of stuff in that market segment out this year and YouTube is often a very topical medium, meaning that there is a certain predilection towards current, latest-and-greatest product content. This has really pushed back a lot of those non-sauce content videos, given how far ahead I am (I have enough in the can (filmed & completed) right now to go past the end of 2021 on the non-hot sauce side). I’m trying to really taper down filming in that regard, but I probably will run out of non-hot sauce products entirely before the end of Q3. For sauces, they run behind the non-sauce stuff a bit, but I’m either through or very close to through Q3 right now.

In that light, I have filmed/posted what I expect to be the last previously reviewed (archive) sauce I do for 2021, as I just have far too much of a backlog at hand to keep playing around with those. I may or may not do any at all next year, depending on how consumption goes this year. My main priority was finishing videos for SOTY and the top-drawing reviews and both are done (with the exception in the latter category of the Zatarain’s, which I still haven’t found for an acceptable price). I have also changed up the old diet (again), but am still trying to find a way to keep incorporating hot sauces. I probably have around 3 dozen unopened bottles waiting, as I type this...

When it comes time to post the videos (I usually only post a month ahead), my process is generally to look at what is done and available and then choose either the best of those (in terms of video, not in terms of sauces) or the ones with the most commercial appeal. Sometimes, there is some other mitigating circumstance, such as if I have a support video for a sauce that Roger kicked my way, or if I have a SOTY candidate, etc. Sauces appearing on The Hot Ones are posted outside of the normal times and if I have any of those, I will just fill them in on the earliest available Friday, trying to pick a sauce that will probably breathe on its own, even with a potentially competing sauce posted normally (on Sunday) that close to it.

The Head To Head Battle of the Hot Nuts is concluded at Round 9. That series covers 38 different products. If I find other spicy nut products, they will probably be standalone reviews. Both sauces (overall, not strictly support videos) and non-sauce products are over 100 videos each. I will still continue filming the end-of-quarter Wing Things indefinitely, even after I conclude The Hot Ones sauces (I should have enough of those to make a separate playlist at some point this year, maybe Q3). I’m already looking ahead to 2022 to see what else I might be able to wrangle up. My guess is that non-sauce content will be either every other week or maybe once monthly, but that also depends on the various manufacturers. If they keep kicking out stuff that fits, it will have my interest. A few people have suggested I do some challenges (or fresh pods), but, again, that is not really what I’m about. I honestly have zero interest in fresh pods, but challenges, if they can fit into what I’m doing generally, are ones I would at least consider attempting. The challenges I have done have either been opportunistically (like I ran across it in a store) or by accident and that trend will continue. I’m about flavor first, which is throughout the blog, but also reflected very strongly in my various Yelp reviews, which you can click too off the widget on the right, if interested. Most, if not all, of the challenge stuff I’ve had has been poor-tasting, at best.

As far as 2021 being this sort of “year of the [Carolina] Reaper” that I mentioned last year, I’ve definitely added a lot more products with Reapers into the mix for this year. My frustration with those is that it kind of forces me to keep tolerance somewhat high, if I do not want to pay the price with stomach cramps. I think it’s an ok pepper overall, so far, but that part is annoying. I don’t need to do that with any other pepper and indeed, not much else, other than products with a fairly high extract content. I honestly right now don’t see that Reaper sauces or products generally are going to have much of a place in my regular rotation once I’m done with the current crop that I have and any Hot Ones sauces containing it that I have still remaining.

Karma Cosmic Dumpling Hot Sauce Review

Karma Cosmic Dumpling Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gn8prgtWJ3Q

This is one that I found poking around on Roger's (Burn Your Tongue) Facebook page, back when I could do that [long story short, I don't have a Facebook account, never had, never will, so I can't login to view it these days] and came across this. As Asian-style sauces are ones I never seem to have enough of, this had my immediate interest and one of my subsequent "haul" trips up there, I located it and brought it back with me. 

Flavor-wise, this is very reminiscent of Asian-style sweet-hot sauces in general. The presences of soy, sesame, a touch of ginger and garlic are all there, but this particular variation is a lot more on the astringent side. Given that you would want to lean more heavily on the tang for fried stuff, such as wontons or gyoza, this makes a good degree of sense, but I find it also limits where I can use it, as you need to have something strongly flavored to offset that tang or it becomes a bit distracting.

Generally I'm not usually interested in Jalapeno sauces (I can't remember what the one prior to this or when it happened was - perhaps someday I will put together that pepper cross-reference), but this one was definitely worth stepping out for its very unique take on things. Given that pepper is the actual heat source, there is very little of it to be had here, again, very typical for most Asian-style sweet-hot sauces.

Bottom line: Short and sweet, but if you like your Asian-style sweet-hot sauces to be leaning more to the tangier side of things or if you want something more specifically to complement fried foods, this is well worth a look. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 3

Adoboloco Kolohe Kid Hot Sauce Review

Adoboloco Kolohe Kid Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears on Season 8 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvG61jbtFkU

I do not understand the fascination with apple cider vinegar. It always smells like sour sweatsocks to me, yet we see apple cider drinks, even gummies. It is one of my least-favorite vinegars, as long-time readers will note. Thus, using that as the platform, even if everything else in the sauce is great, it will render the sauce to mixed results with me, generally. However, it does have a very strong and distinctive taste and this sauce, rather interestingly, tries to play off against it. It's a novel idea, but I'm not sure it's entirely a successful one.

The idea here appears to be simple ingredients: Ghost pepper, the aforementioned vinegar, salt (I assume Hawaiian as this is a Hawaiian company), and garlic.Two of them are also prime components in Blair's Pure Death (also reviewed here), one of my very most favorite sauces. If you're expecting a Louisiana-style or Cajun sauce with alternate vinegars and peppers, you probably wouldn't be far off the mark. This is a very loose, very runny sauce and since there is no emulsifiers, is very prone to separation also. 

In the above comparison, which, while imprecise, is more on that not, this is where the flavor weakness of the superhots begins to show. With those other two, you generally have Cayenne, which is one of the better-flavored peppers out there, at least to my mind. Irazu, in fact, makes a Louisiana-style using Naga Jolokia backing up the Cayenne, which works wonderfully. Here, it is just the Ghost, which tries mightily to hold its own against the apple cider vinegar, but succumbs. So, too, with the Hawaiian salt. Garlic is lost entirely, which is a shame, as smoked garlic would have added a really wonderful note here. Alas...

Heat-wise, this is very moderate. They call it Medium-Hot, which is a meaningless term. The Ghost is being used for flavor, rather than heat, so while there is some bite, it is very mild comparatively. Ultimately, I find the way this sauce is constructed to be more interesting, rather than enticing. While you can pick out individual parts, if so inclined, this winds up as the whole being more than the sum of its parts, which I imagine is intentional. Being an interesting sauce, I don't find that it lends itself well or easily to anything I put it on. Without something to bind things in place, separation happens on usage and this is one that needs to be agitated during use. With that separation, though, the actual food flavors will tend to mask or eliminate some of the flavor notes and what is left can be palatable or leave one wishing for something else. If I'm being honest, most of it was the latter for me.

Bottom line: A bold experiment that I don't find entirely successful, this sauce, for me, is one to check out in the name of completeness for sauces appearing on The Hot Ones. As a curiosity, it is hard to see where it would fit into my current rotation.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4

Fresco Chipotle & Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Fresco Chipotle & Habanero Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears on Season 12 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cg5tEzO-nmwSo

I apparently thought the name of this sauce was Fresno, like the city, rather than Fresco, like a work of art. It definitely belongs in the latter category more than the former. As what happens when one has a lot of sauces at hand and has also reviewed or tasted a lot of sauces, they kind of blend together and fit sometimes neatly into various mental categories. When I see Chipotle or Habanero, my mind immediately goes flying off to Mexican style foods. In this case, that was rather a mistake as this is one food type that does not do well with this sauce. Mexican food is a very distinctive flavor, generally, and not gearing for that tends to preclude most sauces.

Once I got over my initial shock and read the label, I saw it was aimed much more at the Habanero carrot type sauces, which I thought for a while might be poised to make a strong surge towards the top of the market. That definitely did not happen, and I somewhat suspect that while the combination works well, it is ultimately a bit on the boring side also. Fresco rather neatly skirts this issue with the addition of black pepper. Black pepper is one of my most favorite flavors on the planet (and, like many other chileheads, is probably my first introduction to heat), but running across it in a hot sauce can often be very mixed results. Here, it is done exquisitely and makes this sauce, no question. When handled poorly, you get a bitter piperine mess. 

This one seems to do really well when it can stand somewhat by itself. Since this is grilling season, I used it to wonderful effect on some grilled chicken, but it is somewhat mild and even something like a hamburger can overpower it pretty quickly. It also does well in cream dishes, though one needs to use a bit more of it there. This perhaps points up one of the other issues with Habanero-carrot sauces in general - they don't have a ready steady application, unlike some of the other more established sauces. Heat here is very moderate. I think it was the third sauce on the season of Hot Ones it was on, which is about where it fits in the scheme of things, as far as incremental heat. 

Bottom line: A very curious, but delightful flavor, if a bit subtle, this is one of the better takes on the Habanero-carrot sauces and definitely one of the sauces from The Hot Ones show that has stood out.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Xtreme Hot Sauce Review

Xtreme Hot Sauce

So...this little *ahem* gem I came across one day when I was trying to track down sauces that started with letters of the alphabet I had not done yet. At the time that was U, X, Y (also, if anyone knows of any sauce companies that start with either "U" or "Y" that have sauces that do not contain onions of any kind and are also not novelty sauces, do let me know). Even though this is not strictly "X" in the name of the sauce company, I am a bit fast and loose with the rules (you can see this via the TOC), I bought it because I could not find the actual sauce company name (until it was too late) under the guise of filling the role of an "X" sauce and that is damn well what it is going to do. Also, that particular company name does not appear anywhere in the TOC, like a few others. 

That particular company is Spicin Foods and had I known that in advance, I probably would not have gotten this. As it was, I was pretty nervous as their tendency is to take otherwise ok-tasting sauces and spike them pointlessly with extract. Sure enough, looking at the ingredient panel, that is precisely what we had here. Still, I gave it a go.

Heat-wise, it is definitely on the lower end of the spectrum, probably coming in below Pain 100% (also reviewed here elsewhere). Flavor-wise, I'd put it below that. Ostensibly, the ingredient panel suggests a Habanero carrot sauce, but this reads more like a muted version of Beyond Insanity (also reviewed elsewhere here). It is not anywhere near like taking the mouthful of ashes that Beyond Insanity is, but that flavor note is definitely present, strongly present, in fact. Unlike the Pain, I did not get any kind of read of flavor on this, but just the disgusting notes of the extract. So, this is short, sweet, one and done, and my 2nd to last sauce ever from Spicin (I still need to do Da Bomb Evolution). 

Bottom line: Noxious garbage, sure to ruin any foods to which it is applied. Yet another that will not be getting any accompanying video as this one was bad enough to make me stop eating during the middle of testing and binning the sauce once the photo was taken.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0