Prescribed Burn High Pulp Hot Sauce Review

Prescribed Burn High Pulp

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=5gNpZVKkCXQ

Straight out of Northern Cal, we have another newer company on the block, rolling out with a Cajun style sauce. The style is very hit or miss for me, but here we have both Cayenne and Scotch Bonnet, two of my favorite peppers, so going in, I had fairly high hopes. The High Pulp appears to refer to a crossover with a band by that name, but when I originally put it on the hit list, I assumed it was because of a high pepper pulp content in the sauce itself. I don't know if this, using more of the pepper in sauces, is becoming a trend, as it does change the nature of sauces that use Cayenne, but as it turns out, both aspects to the name apply.

Even with those fairly high hopes, I was not expecting the knockout punch this thing delivered the first time I tried it. Given how many sauces I've done, the "wow" factor is not something I tend to encounter a lot, but this sauce saw the return of it. It's quite unique to itself, separating itself from the pack, though largely still a Cajun style. it's definitely a very nice blend of the peppers, mostly relying on the Cayenne for flavor, with the additional elements of garlic and a very nice hint of a grace note from the pineapple. The Scotch Bonnet doesn't really show up in terms of heat - this is a quite mild sauce - but does wind up help to develop the flavor, combining very nicely with the Cayenne.

All in all, this is probably the best Cajun style sauce I've had and since opening it, I've been flying through it. Most of this is for testing, as I find this, like many other excellent-tasting sauces, to have a fairly high flexibility aspect. I found it wonderful on meats (including burgers, where the wateriness and astringency of Lousiana-style and most other Cajuns tend to preclude), pizza (where the comment about burgers would also apply), and all the usual dishes where I'd normally reach for a Louisiana-style Cayenne sauce. Truth be told, my preference in those settings, the creamy or very rich dishes, is still with the Louisiana-style, but this sauce was quite enjoyable there as well, which would make it a nice change of pace, if nothing else.

Bottom line: A highly enjoyable Cajun style, easily my favorite of that type, and another of the happier surprises of this year, and yet another contender for Sauce Of The Year.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 10
       Flexibility: 9
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8

Adoboloco Island Wings Hot Sauce Review

Adoboloco Island Wings

Note: This sauce appears on Season 18 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrAl4Oouh9w

When I first saw the ingredients of this sauce, I was curious if it would be another like other sauces I've had with the "Hawaiian" motif with cayenne and pineapple, in which the pineapple barely shows up, when at all, but the bright orange hue gave me some pause. Further, pineapple here was the first ingredients, not the last, almost as afterthought, so it suggested pretty strong potential as a fruit-forward sweet-hot. Also, Adoboloco's approach to their sauces has been outside of what I'd thought the sauce might be before getting into it, so I was cautiously optimistic and a bit excited to see what they'd done here.

What we have here is a pretty interesting and sometimes dynamic mix of pineapple and some of the assorted spices, such as the onion powder, creating what I'm guessing is supposed to be a balanced mix of sweet and savory, with a bit more emphasis on the sweet. The cayenne provides a small spark of bite, but doesn't factor particularly heavily into the flavoring, which I find a bit of a shame, but clearly a bit outside of the design of the sauce as a main taste element, despite being prominently on the label.

I don't know if this sauce was built for the Hot Ones show or was already part of the plan or in the lineup, but given how nicely it plays with meats in general, I suspect it will work wonderfully on wings, as their sauces have tended to be, at least of the ones I've tried. Pineapple on pizza is something I find to be a compelling combination, but here, I will note, there is too much savory and I didn't find it at all a favorable application. Where it really shines is on fried foods, where it becomes quite delectable. Overall, I think it's a rather delicious sauce (I've had to intenitonally curb usage to keep enough for the FOH Wing Thing coming up - Q3 2023) and probably my favorite of the Adobolocos I've tried, as well as one of the better ones for the show. 

Bottom line: With the heavy emphasis on pineapple, if that's not a flavor you enjoy, may want to skip this one. If you do, this is well worth taking out for a spin. 

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 6
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6

Merf's Fresa Picante Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Fresa Picante

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=cS3xintXCzw

I thought I had done one of the sauces from this company before, but could not locate it in my database or on this blog, so I'm probably confusing it with something else that may have a similar label. If this is my first dance with Merf's, they are an intriguing partner. Here we have a meshing of strawberries, jalapenos, and monkfruit sweetener, that should go together nicely, and do, for the most part, but with some twists. This is a quite pleasant sauce when you can experience it fully, but therein lies the problem, a bit.

I wasn't sure what to expect, because the sauce tends a bit more towards the red-orange of a normal hot sauce, but leading off with strawberries immediately brought to mind strawberry preserves. When done right, they're great, but I find most of the commercial ones tend to the overly sweet for me. Here, we have an oddly muted effect, possibly as a result of using the monkfruit rather than regular sugar. The red jalapenos add some interesting notes here, and a slight amount of trace heat, but once the thought of "what if they were fire-roasted," once stuck in my head, refused to come unstuck, as I think that would add an interesting note to this. 

Strawberries, unless amplified as you see in things like preserves, tend to be somewhat of a subtle fruit and with this sauce dialing down that flavor a bit, we start to see a cancellation effect with various foods. Most of the time, this resulted in a somewhat unpleasant salty note that I found somewhat distracting, but in the right setting, such as on desserts, pies in particular, at least where you'd want the presence of strawberry, it was a very nice melding of worlds. This is definitely one that is dependent on the right setting, but if you find it, it can be a quite enjoyable and somewhat unique experience.

Bottom line: Interested debut to me of this company, though I find the sauce seems a bit unsure of what it wants to be...too salty to be a dessert sauce per se, yet not quite planting a firm foot as a straightforward hot sauce, either.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 0
       Flavor: 8
       Flexibility: 3
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Pex Peppers Bangin' Mango Hot Sauce Review

Pex Peppers Bangin' Mango Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZWuD344uC-M

This sauce features the CGN21500 pepper, which is the actual name of it, apparently. It evidently was discovered in Brazil and the naming convention is derived from international pepper series databases and has no other name. Certainly, this is one of the more uniquely named pods, but the flavor itself is quite reminiscent of the Habanero, perhaps even a bit Scotch Bonnet-y, but definitely on the lower end of the heat. It is alleged to be sweeter than either of those, which it may well be, but it would be hard to get that impression from this sauce.

Indeed, if you don't particularly like fruit-based sour-hot for your sauces, you may as well pack it in right now, because that's exactly what this is. Even with a theoretically sweeter pepper, passion fruit and agave syrup, this is still one of the more sour sauces I've come across in a while and my suspicion is that this can be pointed right at the mangos and them potentially being unripe. It is possible this is the intent of this sauce, I don't know specifically, but if your feeling mirrors mine that fruit-based sauces need to be sweet-hots only, then this might be a bit disappointing.

For me, it adds flavors notes I don't want. This renders this much less flexible as it narrows down the foods where I'd consider it an acceptable addition. For now, that is mainly very rich composite foods that don't have another sauce as a strong component of the dish. I don't find the sauce overall to be bad-tasting, particularly. One can get a sense of the pepper flavor, along with a bit of the passion fruit, with some grace notes of mango, but it is that overwhelming sour aspect permeating everything that comes across as dominant and by far the most memorable element. 

Heat-wise, I didn't find it particularly challenging or hot. I tried to use enough that would build, if it carries that characteristic over from Habaneros generally, but nope. Instead, it is more like the sauce I did prior to this (DND Dragon's Breath) on the blog or the Red Habanero El Yucateco (reviewed elsewhere here), in that you get an initial blast of whatever heat it has to offer and then it tapers off fairly quickly after.

Bottom line: While this sauce definitely sparks interest in the CGN21500 pepper, it is hard to say this is a good representation of it in a sauce. Heat is low, but this one necessitates a partiality to sour sauces on the part of the user for enjoyment.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 6
       Flexibility: 3
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3

Dungeons & Dragons Dragon's Breath (FYE Exclusive) Hot Sauce Review

Dungeons & Dragons Dragon's Breath 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gs3LAoyibJI

The sauces at FYE tend to be a mixed bag...sometimes, there are really good ones, good enough, in fact, in the Retsuko Rage (reviewed elsewhere here) to be in contention for sauce of the year, but as often, they're, for lack of a better term, mere "product." I would largely include the relabels, which this sauce is, thus far in the offerings of FYE as well. 

This one comes from Southwest Specialty, who you may be familiar with as makers of the "From Hell" or "Ass Kickin'" lines, a few sauces of which I've done some verbiage and FOH content on (if interested, check the Mini-Reviews & Full Reviews TOC pages, which link to the videos), but it is another of their lines, which is called "Desert Creatures" that I think this sauce is probably lifted from. Southwest is not shy about their interest in offering relabels, though I suppose this could be a specifically generated sauce. Given that the ingredients duplicate exactly those of the Desert Creatures Rattler's Bite, a sauce I have not specifically tried so I could be wrong, but I will presume it is that. I will note that the ingredients also somewhat match the Habanero Hot Sauce From Hell, which I have had before, but I remember that sauce a lot more favorably than how I'm finding this.

This is, more or less and despite having the addition of carrots, a Cajun-style sauce, with Habanero flavoring rather than Cayenne. I don't know if that is the specific intent, but that is how it's best used. So we have a vinegar heaviness in the flavor profile, along with Habanero and slight notes of carrot and some trace spices. The main issue I have with this is that it is quite salty, nearly overwhelmingly so, and to the point where I'm unsure if I will finish the bottle out. I don't know if there are people out there who put sauce on their food and then salt the sauce, but if so, I am surely not among them. Indeed, most of the time I take pains to reduce the amount of salt. I don't dislike the flavor or anything, but more I'm looking for balance and if one flavor note becomes overly flavorful, it is generally at the expense of something else. For this sauce, I would submit it comes at the expense of everything else.

As far as a novelty sauce, again, like the FYE Godzilla (also reviewed elsewhere here), this is more in line with expectations and probably one I'd put in the middle, though somewhat edging towards below average. I imagine I can find some uses for it, but given that the sauce by itself is not great, it eliminates things such as fried foods (like chicken tendies) and other areas where the sauce is meant to integrate while still standing up as its own flavor note. I suspect there may be enough vinegar forwardness to function well in richer composite dishes, such as mac & cheese, but I also need to test this a bit further. I may wind up just pitching it. Heat-wise, this is very moderate and it's unlikely too many people will find this challenging. 

Bottom line: Unless you're a huge DND fan that needs to have everything imprinted as a tie-in in your collection (or really like oversalted sauces), this is one you can pretty safely skip or wait until it hits clearance. Rather on the underwhelming side...

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 4
       Flexibility: 3
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2

Puckerbutt Chipotle Express Hot Sauce Review

Puckerbutt Chipotle eXpress 

Note: This sauce appears on Season 13 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOA_c_Gj7W4

I don't run across the Pepper X super often and I think doing the Duel Chip Challenge for the FOH video series was probably my first and I think the only other time was with the Hot Ones Nugget Honey, also available on the FOH video series. Even here, it's not necessarily in a setting that is going to give me a true measure of the pepper, but I will say that when it's mentioned that its heat exceeds that of the Carolina Reaper I can believe. Here we have the proverbial mouth full of blast furnace and unlike the Reaper, this one is immediately scorching. It's a somewhat bitter flavor note, but not unpleasant, reminding me of the Ghosties a bit. Indeed, this sauce is very reminiscent of the Adoboloco Kolohe Kid, reviewed here elsewhere, except we have replaced the smokiness of the Ghost in that sauce with the Chipotle here, which is very different kind of smoky, of course, and amplified the heat considerably with Pepper X.

It's described on the Puckerbutt website as a sweet sauce, which is the first adjective they use in the description, but that is pretty dead wrong. The sauce is very prone to settling, and is quite thin as well, so I've spent a lot of time agitating it both prior to and during use and while I can pick out the smokiness of the chipotles, the bitter of the Pepper X, and the apple cider vinegar, I don't detect sweetness. I suspect this is because honey is used and that is a fairly subtle sweetening agent. It definitely does not show up at all as a flavor note. Same with the lemon and the ginger. Ed seems to like using ginger a lot and I'm a fan as well, but neither of those ingredients has much impact. Really, it's the 3 notes I mentioned above, with subtle passes at those, but not in a very forward manner.

Usage-wise, thanks to extensive testing of the Kolohe Kid, I find works well on similar stuff, in particular meats. It's great on burgers and chicken and frankly meats generally. I personally find the sauce delicious, even though it is unquestionably punishing and this is, for me, one of the tastier blazing sauces I've come across. I like the smoke of the chipotle quite a bit as it does a nice job of dialing down that apple cider vinegar taste, which possibly the honey is also helping to tamp down, even if it doesn't show up as a direct flavor. Altogether a very nicely put together sauce, those is unquestionably far too hot for anyone but chileheads. 

Bottom line: Another of the #9 slot sauces from the show, this is another banger from the legend Ed Currie, as well as yet another quite good entry of show sauces..and surprisingly a bit, another candidate for Sauce Of The Year.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8