Thursday, December 19, 2024

Melinda’s Louisiana Red Cayenne Hot Sauce Review

Melinda’s Louisiana Red Cayenne

Back a dozen (and change) years ago, when I started this blog, there were two names floating around, getting a lot of attention, this and Marie Sharp’s, but neither of them had a sauce I could consider getting, despite me checking out the entire lines of both, as they tend to be onion happy. Sharp’s is still, to my knowledge, that way, but Melinda’s has seemingly decided to make an overt push to become a much larger mass market commercial company, branching out into various sub-lines, and adding a lot more sauces to the line-up. I believe this may be one of those, as I don’t recall seeing it in the past.

Flavor-wise, it bears out the mass market push I was mentioning. This is a very tame sauce, with very pedestrian flavors and nearly all the hallmark edges of a Louisiana-style sauce, which the label is at minimum referencing, sanded off. The first hit is still vinegar, but it is considerably blunted. So, too, the Cayenne, which also has been neutered of any heat. This is a slightly salty taste and there is a definitely a strong note of garlic as well. This one is fairly heavy on xanthan gum, to the point where it reminded me more of ketchup, texture-wise, than either a Louisiana-style Cayenne or what I think it’s closer to, the spin-off Cajun style. In terms of flavor, it is definitely more Cajun style, but, the flavors are kind of amalgamated and meshed together into a much softer approach than we normally see in hot sauce.

That does not mean this sauce is by any means not. Indeed, I find the flavor to be pretty pleasant and think this would make a fantastic point of entry sauce (again, think mass market) for anyone just off-handedly picking it up. Perhaps that is the intent of it, and with that dulling down, this does lend a certain amount of flexibility to the sauce that might otherwise not be there. This, in conjunction with the thickness of the sauce and tendency to hold in place, makes it useful on pizza, for instance, where normally a Louisiana-style would not go. It does cover most of the usual stuff there, so breakfast and fried foods as well, even to ramen, where I would also personally not use Louisiana-style. All of those things work against it, for me, anyway, when it comes to richer dishes, like mac & cheese.

Bottom line: A very solid, very middle-of-the-road, albeit thicker consistency than usual, approach to a Cajun style hot sauce, only sans heat. Chileheads can skip this one, but it could serve a great entry point for the chile curious. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 0
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 6

Monday, December 16, 2024

Volcanic Peppers Corny Chipotle Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers Corny Chipotle

I’ve told the story before, in this very blog, about how I formerly shopped for vinyl records, or LPs, as we called them back then, and how I would be regaled by particularly entrancing artwork from Frazetta or Kelly. Some of my favorite albums came from this highly unscientific process, which would also include titles that tickled my fancy, which I also applied to books and various other media as well. Of course, my success rate, as one might expect, was fairly nominal with how many duds I came across and I eventually stopped...

...but not entirely. Case in point, this sauce, which I bought solely on the name alone, figuring that I didn’t run across corn as a hot sauce ingredient too often, this being probably the first and only instance of that, and I like Mexican street corn conceptually. I like it a lot when I make it and maybe half the time if someone else does. Chipotle should be a natural fit to this flavor profile and it sounded like something that could be really interesting and potentially quite good, if pulled off.

Therein, I suppose, lies the rub. This is another of those things that I (still) think is a really interesting concept, the idea of corn and Chipotle as the more dominant flavors for a hot sauce, but where it is highly dependent on execution. This sauce, for me, doesn’t quite get there. It is a pretty grainy, quite thick and sludgy concoction, and very clearly an attempt to put nearly all possible elements of elotes into a single sauce...or maybe just one specific version. The flavor isn’t bad, though it is fairly garlic heavy, which tends towards a bitterness I found myself wishing was not present. When using it on various foods, I had a lot of flavor cancellation and struggled to find a good setting where I thought it clicked. I do think it would work well adding it into something like cornbread or maybe masa flour for tamales.

This does kind of bring up the concept of elotes, which are meant to be their own self-contained dish. The idea is not to make Mexican street corn and then put it on a pizza or into a sandwich, as the label copy sort of suggests, but rather to enjoy it on its own terms as a dish. Had this sauce stuck more to the two ingredients it’s named for, I think it would have worked out better. As it is, the roasted corn flavor isn’t particularly prominent and there is simply not enough Chipotle, which rends the heat pretty low in this, but also is overtaken by the garlic. I can admire the experimental nature of this sauce, but I don’t find it to be a particularly successful one.

Bottom line: A noble, valiant attempt to bottle the flavor of elotes, which ultimately gets in its own way. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 0
           Flavor: 4
           Flexibility: 2
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

Thursday, December 12, 2024

Puckerbutt Smokin' Ed's Peach Super Hot Blend Hot Sauce

Puckerbutt Smokin’ Ed’s Peach Super Hot Blend

This one sat on the shelf for a bit...don’t remember now where I got it, either from the hallowed shelves of a BYT location or maybe from Puckerbutt directly, if they were having some kind of swank sale or other, as they are prone to do, but memory does not serve. In any case, like so many others before it, it sat on the shelf as I, when I first held it in my grubby little mitts, decided, based on the ingredients and runniness of the liquid in the bottle, that this was probably meant to be along the line of a Louisiana-style and I had what one might reasonably call a plethora of those this year.

Dear reader, I was wrong. Indeed, when I first opened this sauce, and caught the distinctive aroma of superhots, I figured I had pegged this correctly (I’m generally pretty astute at this type of thing, if I do say so myself), but when I splashed, or rather tried to splash - the nature of this sauce caused it to run along the threads and neck of the bottle here and there first, some of this even onto the food - it because very clear there was something wrong with this sauce. It took me a while to understand why, but I finally get it now. It’s because this is not really a hot sauce.

So, a brief digression as we take a look at the bare minimums for something to be a hot sauce. We can look again to Louisiana-style for this and those sauces are mostly composed of chiles, usually Cayenne, vinegar, and salt. Sometimes they will add water and xanthan gum as well, but as often not, and they are very clearly hot sauces, both in name and intention. So, let’s extend this mental exercise a bit. If you remove one of those three basic ingredients, you get the following: salted chiles, salted vinegar, chile vinegar.

It is the last option above where I think this product most aptly fits, as there is no salt in it. Salt is so ubiquitous and so usual and mainstream to our palates that take it away and it is immediately apparently that something is wrong, but in the world of hot sauces, where the sauce is meant to go with something else, it is not always immediately apparent what that is.

So, I am faced, once more, with the conundrum of how do I grade something that is not a hot sauce by hot sauce criteria, which is a bit, I suppose, like grading a dog or cat based on a human IQ test. Yet, the label very clearly says “hot sauce,” and I make it a point to take the makers at their words, so the scoring will be done as if this was a hot sauce, though I will add it not is not reflective necessarily of my impressions. I don’t really use vinegar and don’t really keep it on hand and when I do, it is always in a recipe of some kind. I do not just use it as a condiment on finished foods and can’t imagine anyone pouring vinegar on fried chicken or pizza (I know the Brits do it with fried fish, but I find that practice weird and icky and do not enjoy that).

So, following those lines, flexibility is non-existent, in terms of hot sauce, flavor is ok (again, as a vinegar), and as a hot sauce is fairly low as well because this is far too vinegar-forward.. Heat-wise, we have a nondescript super hot blend, which, according to Puckerbutt, ranges from Peach Ghosties to Peach Reapers. Fine, fair enough, this is definitely chilehead only territory.

Bottom line: This is not really a hot sauce, but a superhot chile-flavored vinegar, scorching enough to be reserved for chileheads.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Friday, December 6, 2024

Culinary Pepper Co. Limited Edition Hot Sauce Collection 2024 (Wal-Mart Exclusive) Mini Review

Culinary Pepper Co. Limited Edition Hot Sauce Collection

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Cws9VWmoVk

In what is becoming somewhat of a tradition, I wandered down to my nearest Wal-Mart to slum around and see what kind of chilehead stuff might be on offer for this year's holiday season. Some years I check after Xmas, to get some decent clearance deals, if any abound, but usually at least once before to see what's there.  I've done quite a few of these sets, nearly all of them mini-reviews (check TOC at right). A few of them I've done in the past are back this year, but I came across this one, which I had not seen or if I had, didn't remember, so I picked it up. These are from the Dat'l Do It company this time around, with three mini-flasks, labeled Chipotle Pepper, Americana Brands Red Serrano, and Global Selections Habanero. 

Chipotle Pepper

We'll start with the worst first and what we have here is a sauce labeled as Chipotle Pepper, but containing no actual Chipotle or even Jalapeno. In what would quickly become part of a trend for this set, this was a very abrasively vinegar forward Cayenne sauce, with the addition of a noxious-flavored fake smoke. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but this has fuck all to do with actual Chipotle and is far from representative of that flavor profile or pepper, like at all. So, we have false labeling and we're off to a roaring start. With this sauce, flavor was a total bust, easily the worst of the bunch, but at least it also had no heat to speak of. 

Americana Brands Red Serrano

Very clearly, we're just throwing words on a label and nothing means anything. Serrano does not appear on the label, but instead we have the vague and undefined "red pepper." Flavor is much closer to Jalapeno, however. This one, in addition to the abrasive vinegar, decided it would be best to ruin what would otherwise be an acceptably flavored sauce with an avalanche of salt. Once again, we have no real heat to speak of.

Global Select Habanero

I would almost say so many words, so little meaning, but this one does at least have Habanero in both the ingredients and very much so in the flavoring. It is by no means a great-tasting sauce, which is another trend, and is also overly salty, but it does have some heat, albeit on the very low side (basically pushing a 1 on my heat scale), and the vinegar is not quite as brutal here. 

All in all, this was a pretty disappointing set. The packaging is fantastic, with the flasks using a nice heavy glass, slick black packaging, probably intentionally meant to remind one of buying a nice chef knife, decent plastic insets inside the box to protect the precious flasks. If I was rating based solely on packaging, it would be pretty high, but that would be silly, given that the packaging is just basically going to take up space in your trash or recycle bin. None of the sauces tasted particularly good (though the Serrano, as mentioned, would have been acceptable, had it been much less salty) and only one, the Habanero, also the only one I'm going to use up, had any real heat to speak of. This winds up ultimately with me shelling out a fast fiver for 1.7 ounces of a very mediocre substandard sauce.

Thursday, December 5, 2024

Spice Dog Provisions Sailor’s Sky Hot Sauce Review

Spice Dog Provisions Sailor’s Sky

Story time: There is a really lovely standalone display at Roger’s Ogden location of Burn Your Tongue. It’s this sort of taller cardboard jobbie that fits a bunch of sauces in it and there were pretty much every variety from Spice Dog in it, being that is who the display is from. You’ve no doubt seen similar display in grocery stores, but I find it fairly rare for a hot sauce company to do this kind of marketing. Anyway, I’ve passed by it numerous times, always meaning to one day grab something, that old familiar refrain I’ve said many a time about many a backburnered sauce, but on the occasion I’d pick up a bottle, I’d see onions or, as was more often the case, my basket was already full with a number of other sauces I’d had on the hit list for longer or which had burned hotter and then I’d forget until I ran across the display again.

This time, the stars finally aligned, and while selection was notably down from the previous levels to the visit before this latest one, I still had some space in the basket and saw the display and figured I’d make good on that prior notion, finally. This was the only one I saw that struck me that day which didn’t have onions on it, so I picked up a bottle, so it could more conveniently sit on my shelf for a few weeks, but I got to this one in fairly fast time, considering.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but it was probably not this, which is a composite flavor profile, in which the ingredients all contribute to a greater whole, but no one part is particularly dominant in the flavor, though cinnamon does show up as an aftertaste probably the most frequently. Both Habaneros and Scotch Bonnets are here and those, in conjunction with the Bells and the pineapple, create a sort of tropical pepper vibe, which, despite the pineapple and additional sugar, is a touch vinegary. This is certainly an interesting and definitely unique flavor, nearly unto itself, as sauces that are composites tend to be. Heat-wise, given the peppers involved, this is quite moderate.

The drawback to these kinds of sauces is that they don’t tend to mesh well with other foods and unless you can find something readily to pair it with, these can linger around in the fridge for bit, both of which are true here. The flavor isn’t bad, but it’s a bit hard to figure. It doesn’t naturally lend itself to any one style, other than working pretty solidly with fried foods. I spaced over it a few times reaching for other stuff and, remembering that I hadn’t agitated it enough one time, that I got a lot of cinnamon, decided to try it as a dessert sauce, but it is in no way sweet enough for that. So, it winds up a sauce with a sort of self-defining identity and while I like it for a change of pace, I don’t like it well enough for this to be in regular usage.

Bottom line: If you’re been following this blog for any amount of time, you’ve perhaps ran across the phrase “more interesting than good,” and this is a sauce that is a prime example of that.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 5
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

Monday, December 2, 2024

Maritime Madness Simple Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce Review

 Maritime Madness Simple Scotch Bonnet

The last sauce of a wave of Maritime Madness sauces I bought earlier in the year. In some ways, it wound up being a case of in advertently saving the best for last...though, to be fair, I’m not sure if this or the Frig That’s Hot (reviewed elsewhere here) is my favorite sauce overall. I think this one tastes the best, but that one had a very good flavor as well and an additional heat push, so I might have to give the nod to that one.

In any case, this one serves as an outstanding introduction to one of the better-tasting pods out there, the Scotch Bonnet. Here, you can get a really good grasp of the flavor, which takes at least a pass at cousin Habanero, but is much better, as well as fruitier. If you had this and the Simple Tropical Habanero (also reviewed elsewhere here) side by side, that would give you a pretty full picture of the difference between them to compare and contrast. For me, I definitely prefer this one, but it is no secret which has been my strong preference for quite some time now.

This one also comes in the sort of squeezable clear plastic bottle, a packaging choice I definitely do like, and the sauce itself is very smooth. I find it quite flavorful overall, with a bit of body added with the carrots and a bit of amping up of the fruit notes with the mango. Yet, for all that, it is definitely the flavor of the Scotch Bonnet which is prominent and indeed, those others are there as grace notes, if at all. This one is a touch on the vinegar-forward side, though, it should also be noted. The sort of medium thickness might lead you think of it more as a sweet hot, but it is definitely not that.

I found this to be pretty interesting on a variety of things, though it is a bit too fruity to be useful on things like cream dishes. I found it to be a nice change of pace on pizza, though not something I’d want regularly. It particularly excels when used on things like fried foods and it is there I found it to be most fitting, though it was pretty fun to kick it around on other items. It’s delicious enough to be intriguing on many of them, though ultimately, I don’t know that I’d consider this a particularly flexible sauce. Heat-wise, given the Scotch Bonnet, it’s on the lower side.

Bottom line: One of the better Scotch Bonnet sauces out there, due largely to the strength of that flavorful pod, and for those not familiar, it would be hard to think of a better introduction than this sauce.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 6
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Delizie Di Calabria Bomba D’Amore Mini-Review

Delizie Di Calabria Bomba D’Amore

This is not a hot sauce. This is a jar of vegetables marinated in oil. This winds up in a very delicious end result, but it is not a hot sauce, Italian or otherwise. I say this because the label copy insists on calling this both a “hot pepper sauce” and “Italian hot sauce,” but it is not a hot sauce. Indeed, you’d be hard pressed to call it a sauce at all. (Of note, as of the time of this review, I see this has been renamed as “Love Bomb” and they are calling it a general condiment, which is correct. This review, then, is for the bottle I actually had.)

We have artichokes (good) and Calabrian peppers (better) and eggplant (less good) and porcini mushrooms (also very definitely good), all in a nice olive oil, with some presumably light splashes of vinegar and salt and so on, but like the usual artichokes suspended in oil, there is no sauce to be had here. Calabrian peppers are certainly tasty and if you made a list of the best-tasting peppers, this would definitely be in the top 2 or 3, but they are not notably hot, per se.

I love the packaging, with the heart-shaped window and the sort of wick on the top of the paper wrapping, sort of like the fuse to those old-timey Warner Brothers cartoon bombs that someone like Bugs Bunny might lob around, but I find the label copy to be odd. I don’t understand the point to calling a thing something it is most definitely not. Things can be just a hot/spicy marinated-in-oil vegetable blend. Giardiniera is absolutely a thing like that, but no one is calling that a sauce. A garnish, sure, maybe even a condiment, but not a sauce and definitely not a hot sauce, even if that can be slightly on the punchy side here and there.

Anyway, this is something they suggest for pasta, pizza, paninis, etc., essentially Italian food, to which I’d agree...provided you can apply some heat directly to it to lessen some of the oily feel a bit. If you’re more a fan of oil, then perhaps you might be inclined to add it after the fact, but not me. Straight from the jar, this is quite good, but I feel it works better with some heat applied to it, to dial down the oily slick feel, and to hopefully get some of the Maillard effect raging. I quite like this and am happy I got it and heartily recommend it, but it is no sauce, let alone a hot sauce and only appears here, grudgingly, as a Mini-Review, and only because the labeling insists on calling it otherwise.

Thursday, November 14, 2024

Bear River Bottling Cajun Ghost Story Hot Sauce Review

Bear River Bottling Cajun Ghost Story

Jon over at Bear River is one of the few sauce makers I've met, albeit very briefly, directly. While I think he's one of the more inventive makers (we need a word specific to these creators, like vintner - I suppose we could use chef, which applies to many as it is) out there, I haven't been able to review much of his stable, as he has an affinity for onions that I both do not share and is literally intolerable to me (well, my system, but I suppose people's bodies are a part of them and all). When I heard about this, I was immediately interested and put it at the top of my list, got a bottle soon after, and then put it on my shelf, where it sat for far longer than I had in mind. Kind of the way these things work out with me sometimes, I've noticed...

Anyway, this one seems clearly aimed at being a Cajun style sauce and the ingredient list bears that out, but I think this is somewhat of a mistake in direction, as the sauce itself is a fairly medium-bodied affair, not loose like most of the Cajuns (themselves a derivative of the Louisiana-style), and is far, far less vinegar-forward. By itself, the sauce reminds me a bit of a marinara and I think it would be aces as an actual pizza sauce, presuming you like some heat with your food. I did greatly enjoy it on a fairly wide variety of things, including burgers, where the lack of vinegar and the holding power of the sauce helped it mesh, but in other places, including where I would normally use a Cajun or Louisiana-style, that facet worked against it. 

One of the happier things I've noted here is the addition of coarse or cracked black pepper, which I do love in a sauce. There is a pretty good amount of it here, which I'm happy about, though it does contribute a bit to a slightly gritty mouth feel. The coloration of this sauce is also fabulous and is one of my favorite hues, of any sauce. For me, I think I'd drop the Cajun out of the name and just leave this as "Ghost Story" and treat it more like a hotter everyday sauce and let people experiment and play around with it. It is good-tasting enough that it even if doesn't mesh with the food, say with tacos, where I also tried it, it's not inedible of anything, either. 

Given that this sauce has two of my most favorite peppers, the Cayenne and the Ghost, along with what I consider the best version of the Habanero, the red variety, and given the heavy black pepper, this was probably always going to be a sauce I liked quite a bit. Heat-wise, this is a pretty strong 2, so definitely this will be beyond most novices, but for those aspiring chileheads, this is one of those gems that comes along that tastes good enough to encourage eating more of it, while also being a good stepping stone for tolerance. 

Bottom line: As long as you like some heat in your food, this is a sauce that I'd recommend anyone get. It's not quite up to SOTY level for me, but isn't too far removed, either. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 8
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

Little Dick’s Habanero Peach Hot Sauce Review

Little Dick’s Habanero Peach

I will refrain here from spending too much time on the vulgar colloquialism American slang tie-ins to the sauce company name (though I will probably succumb to temptation in the FOH video review, at least a little). This is another one of those kitchen sink, “more is more,” type of hot sauce, where ostensibly we have a fruit-based sweet hot, with peach as the main fruit and Habanero as the supporting pepper, but as is often the case once a lot of different elements are added, we start to drift and in this case, neither of those flavors shows up particularly prominently in the flavor. There is, at times, a bit of subtle peach, an undercurrent, perhaps, but no Habanero, though I suppose that is only there for what little heat is in this sauce.

There are a number of different spices added to this and while I do applaud the sauce maker for listing out all of those, I also kind of hate the way the ingredient label is orchestrated (as it is not clear when one composite ingredient (like pepper mash or mustard) is ending and we’re back to the ingredients of the actual sauce itself). The spices are very forward in the flavor, which, combined with the molasses, give a sort of slightly sweet spice cabinet vibe to the proceedings. To my mind, after a certain point, the more stuff you add to a sauce, the more it becomes a flavor referencing itself and moves away from flexibility and I find that to be the case here. It’s fine on fried foods, which are generally neutral enough to bear a very complex sauce like this, but I struggled to find anywhere outside of that where I thought it worked well. The flavor of this sauce by itself is ok, but not something I generally find myself wanting. I will say the idea of big flavor is probably accurate, but a lot of those notes come from the spices, and I’m not certain they mesh together. Certainly, it has moved fairly far afield from peach and Habanero both.

Bottom line: Ultimately, I found myself more confused with this sauce than anything. If the intent is to make a unique sauce, this certainly succeeds, but you also run the risk of having trouble finding a place for it, which happened here with this one for me. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 4
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3

Saturday, November 9, 2024

Brotaco Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Brotaco Pineapple Habanero

I sometimes wonder if I’m going to wind up doing every single sauce of this type without onions, as I’ve done a lot of them. Both fruit-based sweet hots generally and pineapple sweet hots particularly remain pretty high in my interests as I’ve always loved pineapple and can never quite seem to have enough of this kind of sauce on hand. Lately, I’ve noticed that some makers are tossing lime in, to varying success, but I’m not always sure if it’s part of a trend or if there is some specific purpose. For this sauce, I think it’s the latter and I will say that tropical and citrus can be a decent combination.

This sauce, given the name of the company making it, along with the inclusion of cilantro in the ingredients, seems to me pretty pointedly aimed at tacos. Lime doesn’t go with red meat tacos, generally, so it seems more pointed at the lighter meat tacos, with particular focus, perhaps, on seafood tacos and/or al pastor. I have found it also does nicely on fried fish as well as fried chicken, to a lesser degree, but the lime does create a bit of a dilemma in that the food one is using this sauce on must also accommodate citrus. I do feel this could also work very nicely in a salad or as part of a mixed drink, so it’s not as if it’s entirely unusable, just perhaps a bit less flexible than if there was no lime in it at all. It is definitely bright and lively, though, and that part also seems by design. This is only Habanero, so not particularly hot, but it is a very firm 1 and accelerates to that level fairly rapidly.

There is some curious elements to the packaging. While I always like a good level stripe with the label, this is a fairly thick, somewhat pulpy (and gorgeous-colored) sauce, so putting a restrictor cap better suited to a Louisiana-style sauce is both unnecessary and annoying. The label has a lot of small text copy in white on a yellow background and all of that should also be reworked, as it is way more trouble than it’s worth to try to read it.

Bottom line: A kind of an interesting entry into this kind of sauce. While it didn’t work on everything for me, where it did work, it worked wonderfully.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

Chile Lengua De Fuego Turmeric Bomb Hot Sauce Review

Chile Lengua De Fuego Turmeric Bomb

Note: This sauce appears on Season 19 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_N1qyzKo_0

This is, to my knowledge, the first Honduran hot sauce I've ever had and actually probably the first Honduran food of any type I've ever had. Honduras is a country I admitted don't have cross my mind often, but it seemed unusual to me for a Central American country to use both ginger root and turmeric into their different food types. So, as is often what happens, I got curious and looked further into things and discovered a lot of interesting aspects of that cuisine...this, indeed, is one of the happier side effects of the Hot Ones show and of hot sauce in general for me, the discovery of new and previously unsuspected culinary items of interest.

This is also a sauce I put off for a while, because I couldn't really determine where to place it. I think there is a degree of similarity in Central American foods, with the most familiar to us in the United States being largely, if not predominantly, of the Mexican variety, but there are certainly regional differences and it is pretty fun to compare and contrast. Still, I couldn't place what food from any of those places might involve turmeric and ginger root. Garlic? Sure. Hot chiles? Definitely. But turmeric always seemed to my mind more associated with Mediterranean or Middle Eastern foods...or mustard, while ginger root inevitably leads me hard to Asian foods. 

Getting into this, while it did remind me a lot of the Last Dab sauces that involve an array of spices, the Honduran hard liquor that is part of this makes a huge difference. It is at once slightly bracing and warming, but gives a general sense of roundness to the sauce, which does tend a bit towards the bitter, thanks not only to the superhots kicking around, but probably the turmeric as well. That spice is one for me where a little tends to go a pretty long way. There are some flavor complexities at play here, but this sauce is also a touch susceptible to flavor cancellation, depending on where you use it.

As mentioned, there are superhots abound. We have Ghosties and Trinidad Scorpions and Reapers, so this is definitely a chilehead only sauce. It is also a sauce that really breathes more and comes to life when warm, although I think ultimately this is another with a flavor more intriguing and interesting than actually good. It is very smooth and has a nice, almost delicate mouth feel, which I also found enjoyable. It is almost one of those sauces that is kind of its own thing and works well until itself, but I did find it worked pretty well on the Honduran food I was lucky enough to find, and was pretty solid on fried foods also...though admittedly, it would not be my first choice. There are definitely some flexibility challenges with the flavor here.

Bottom line: If you're a chilehead with a taste more for the exotic, this will probably be right up your alley, but if you're not food adventurous, it might be more a mystery than desired to find a place for this.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Monday, November 4, 2024

Hillside Harvest Pineapple Fresno Hot Sauce Review

Hillside Harvest Pineapple Fresno

As I may have mentioned in the past, Fresnos are one of my favorite pepper types. I don’t really love eating raw pods particularly, but that is not the case with Fresnos, where I will generally get those when they are available and keep getting them until they’re not. Discovering my fondness for them was something for which I’m eternally happy and after discovering that glory, I no longer look past those bottles on the shelf, even though I know the heat charge is going to be relatively tame, at best, unless there are other, hotter, pods at play in the mix.

Here, we have basically 4 ingredients total. Pineapple (probably juice), vinegar, Fresnos, salt. I can admire a sauce that is pure and simple, as long as it is also flavorful. This sauce is a gorgeous slightly reddish orange, and the flavor is as lively and vibrant as the color. It is, however, a touch more astringent than I would like, as I always inevitably feel that fruit-based sweet hots should be sweet. This is not a sweet sauce (definitely could have used a hit of sugar) and is a bit thinner than others in that category. The way it holds to the side of the bottle, along with those factors, makes me think this is probably pineapple juice as the main ingredient, though it is listed as pineapple. I also wish the Fresnos were a bit more forward in the mix, as in before the vinegar, but the flavor of pineapple and Fresno is a great combination.

As with most sauces that use pineapple, this works nicely with fried foods. I think it is a strong testament to the power of the Fresnos that even as astringent as this is, I still think it works fairly well on pizza as well, but flexibility overall is a bit low for this, as the food is generally going to need to be able to accommodate both fruit and heavy vinegar aspects. Heat-wise, Fresnos are not ever going to deliver much in the way there, so the challenge here will not be from heat. Had the vinegar been dialed back and/or some sugar added and the Fresnos been a bit more forward in the flavor, this would have been among the best in this category. As it is, I’d still put it in the top third, though towards the bottom of that third.

Bottom line: A solid addition to the pineapple hot sauces out there, using one of the best-tasting pods, though delivering precious little in the way of heat.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Saturday, November 2, 2024

Frye Provisions Hot Sauce Review

Frye Provisions


Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

So, what we have here is a sauce designed by a chef, a sauce that actually feels and tastes like what you might expect a sauce designed by a chef to feel and taste. This is definitely a quite gourmet sauce, with unusual elements, such as raisins and dates, as well as achiote paste, that last which I don’t think I’ve encountered in a hot sauce before...and probably not dates, either. It is a fascinating experience, delicate, and extraordinarily well-balanced, with various subtleties emerging as you get further into the flavor notes.

The leadoff pepper is Fresno, which is a great choice, as this is one of the tastiest peppers out there, in my book. There is Habanero for heat, but only at the tail end of the ingredients, so heat is clearly not a focus and I don’t imagine too many will find this challenging in that regard. I suspect this sauce will appeal more to people who are foodies before chileheads, such as yours truly.

I think the idea here is an everyday sauce, an idea which holds appeal to a lot of sauce makers. With that type of sauce, there are two main paths that can be taken. While all sauces in that category have to have a good flavor to function, the first path is to make a sauce that is so delicious that one will still enjoy eating a delicious sauce, whether it pairs directly with the food or not. The second is to have a more non-distinct approach, so that it will potentially work with more categories than keying a sauce to one cuisine type. For this sauce, it strikes me that it has foot in both worlds, where it is both delicious and entirely mutable in terms of where it might be good. Indeed, even with extensive testing, while I have found that I prefer other sauces in specific settings, I’ve not found a single instance where I thought it didn’t work at all or was bad. Obviously, with everyday sauces, flexibility has to necessarily be high and I think this sauce succeeds there. It also comes in a 9 fl. oz. bottle, which leaves lots of sauce to play around with.

Bottom line: This is a very refined, even elegant sauce, that has quite a bit to offer and is perhaps the most gourmet hot sauce I’ve had to date. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 8
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Sunday, October 27, 2024

Two Heads Music City Heat Hot Sauce Review

Two Heads Music City Heat

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram. 

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

It’s kind of interesting to me how different years shake out. I’ll get into it a bit more in the end of the year 2024 blog post, when I announce the winner of Sauce Of The Year for this year, but some years, it seems like I have a few right at the beginning of the year and then a long drought before I get more contenders, then one or two will come in right at the end, which is what happened this year. Other years will be sprinkled a bit more spread out through the months and I never really know which it will be.

So, as you may have surmised, this is another that is being added to my SOTY contenders for 2024 and this one hits a lot of sweet spots for me. I do love me a good bit of smoke into things, but it is a delicate balance, as that flavor note can easily be overused. Here, it comes across as perfection. The sauce itself is definitely more along the lines of a Cajun, with a very vinegar-forward base, with some garlic and other spice elements, and no less than 3 different types of peppers. We have the smoked Serranos, which impart a truly fantastic, near-joyous flavor, the Habaneros for the heat that comes on pretty quickly at the onset and kind of hovers at a good, solid 1, and Anaheim, to really round out and balance the works, and it all comes together to perfection.

This is probably my favorite Cajun-esque style sauce, which is one I consider an offshoot of Louisiana-style, and this is really saying something, considering there is not Cayenne pepper in this sauce. It is one I find so delicious, I want to try it on as much stuff as I think a vinegar forward sauce would work on and even a few things, like pizza, where I wouldn’t normally, but was curious. Given that this is as loose as it is, that also kind of speaks volumes, in its own way, and this is yet another that I easily cleared half the bottle, even with the restrictor cap still on it, within days of opening the bottle. Everything I’ve paired it with has been quite good, from the usual stuff of fried foods and creamy dishes, all the way to the aforementioned pizza and even some vegetable dishes, and I may need to get another bottle, just so I can further test it on more stuff. In fact, I daresay this will most probably happen.

Bottom line: If you’re a fan at all of the vinegar-forward sauces, and also like a bit of smokiness, do yourself a favor and chase down a bottle of this deliciousness. It is a sauce that makes me very happy every time I use it, which is what a good SOTY contender should do. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Saturday, October 26, 2024

Double Take B-Sides Hot Sauce Review

Double Take B-Sides

Anytime I have a sauce from The Hot Ones show that I find impressive and that introduces me to a new company, I generally will use it as a launch point and look more into the sauce company. In this case, Double Take is another maker that likes to heavily use onions, so this will be the end of my little foray into their lineup, unless other sauces come out that don’t include them, but this was one I picked up from somewhere during a Black Friday 2023 buy (yes, it sat on my shelf for that long, staring longingly at me – I wound up with a deluge of Lousiana-style/Cajun style sauces this year, unusually) and kept meaning to get to.

The verbiage on the label, which itself is kind of a throwback both to the earlier times of vinyl and to the psychedelic era, claims this as the best Louisiana style sauce, which is not a position to which I’d agree and perhaps didn’t ultimately pan out, as I don’t see this sauce any longer in their lineup. This is kind of a shame, as flavor-wise, this is definitely near the top for this style of sauce. I found it, with the excellent combination of Habanero and red bell, to be quite delicious and sort of representative of the style, with one major caveat. It is unfortunately that same caveat that sinks the rating overall on this a bit.

This is one of the loosest sauces I’ve ever had, basically the consistency of water. This is a huge problem as it tends to separate and pool rather easily, even with a restrictor cap. The tendency will be to use a lot of it because that same looseness leads to a lack of concentration of flavor, so to get the desired density, the thought would be to use more, but because it is so runny, you will readily get puddles, unless it is something that can absorb the liquid. Obviously food stickiness is a problem and the label copy suggestion, of putting it on pizza (does anyone actually use a Louisiana-style for that food?), sounds like a recipe for instant tragedy to me. It would have strongly benefitted from either being reduced and/or some xanthan gum.

Heat-wise, it’s only Habanero, which is towards the end of the ingredient list, so it wouldn’t have been challenging to begin with, but particularly not with the sort of watered-down effect of the sauce.

Bottom line: This sauce is a good example that was one finishing step away from being a top tier contender and had it been more concentrated and/or less loose, I believe it would have been in SOTY contender territory.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Saturday, October 19, 2024

Lisa’s Piece O’ Habanero Heaven & Extra Hot Habanero Hot Sauce(s) Review

Lisa’s Piece O’ Habanero Heaven & Extra Hot Habanero

Note: These sauces were provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

Here we have a couple of sauces that are sort of playing on the heaven (referenced directly) and hell (referenced less overtly) themes, with essentially the same base. I really like this idea, as you can very dynamically see, for example, the concept of moving to a hotter pepper experience, the flavor notes change and tend towards bitter, as the sauce (or pepper) gets hotter. By using the same base, aside from switching out the bell pepper variety used as accompaniment, this illustrated quite effectively and if you’re interested in that, buying this as a part will do well to amplify that.

However, doing so is perhaps slightly unfair to the “devilish” version, that being the Extra Hot, as it suffers in comparison. While it is a fine sauce in its own right, with a solid bit of heat for a Habanero sauce, along with a very nice sweet accompaniment to a Habanero flavor, with grace notes of carrots underlying, the “angelic” version is just really one of those more unique special sauces that come along so very rarely, that the appreciation when they do is instant.

Here we have a sauce where the sugar and carrots create a very nice harmony, with an excellent rounding by the orange bells, all with a very slight undercurrent of heat from the Habanero. I’m not sure if I should call it exquisite or not, but this is just an outstanding creation, easily one of the more flavorful sauces I’ve had this year and among the best ever utilizing carrots. Carrots are one of those odd sauce additions for me, where I get it conceptually, but even as a foodie, I find them much less sweet than I keep hearing portrayed. Here, the emphasis is a bit more on the carrot flavor, but instead of forcing them to also carry the sweetness equation, sugar is added and it winds up being just a delight, particularly with the aforementioned bells. While I will stop short of calling it outright great, I do like this sauce quite a lot.

The Extra Hot moves to yellow bells, which are fine, but as peppers go, the closer one gets to red and red variants (including brown), the more flavorful and sweeter they tend to be. This is clearly meant to be what it is, a much more Habanero forward sauce, and it is definitely that. I’m not a huge fan of the flavor of Habanero, which is well documented in these annals, so while I like what they’ve done here, it definitely pales in comparison to the “heavenly” version. I will say that this one did work better on Mexican food, thanks to that more Habanero forward flavor.

Both of them are sweet enough, though, to qualify essentially as sweet hots generally. The Mexican food experiment was not something I really wanted to repeat, as I found them a touch too sweet, but anywhere you might use a sweet hot, from fried foods to pizza and, given the prominence of carrots, on roasted vegetable or vegetable dishes in general, these will be well at home in. Yes, they’re sweet enough for desserts (but not angled in a way they would be good on ice cream), particularly a nice slice of carrot cake for at least the “heavenly” version.

Bottom line: We have a sauce here that approaches stellar (Piece O’ Habanero Heaven) and one that shows the trade of flavor for heat (Extra Hot Habanero), albeit is still a good sauce in its own right. Think more general sweet hot, as a category, albeit with a very tasty sweet carrot lean, for the former, and with a more pronounced lean for the latter.

Piece O' Habanero Heaven Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 9
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Extra Hot Habanero Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 5
           Flexibility: 5
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

 

Saturday, October 12, 2024

Hot Ones The Last Dab Reaper Edition

Hot Ones The Last Dab Reaper Edition

Note: This sauce appears on Season 5 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReZfElnzf8o

The final version that I hadn't gotten to of the original formulation (there is a mini-review of that) and interestingly, it more invites comparison to the other two than standing on its own. While not as hot as the Last Dab XXX (reviewed elsewhere here), it clearly is riding on a base that was keyed around a different pepper entirely and it sort of shows. The Carolina Reapers, appearing here in place of the various Pepper X variations of the other two sauces, contribute a very nice reddish hue to to think, making this the prettiest of the three, but the flavor works considerably best of all in the original Last Dab sauce.

Like the others, flexibility is somewhat of an issue as this doesn't appear to have a ready place. I am of the mind that the sauces are really meant to be stunt sauces and not really intended to go anywhere and just kind of be hot, but if that's the case, why the additional spices? Why bother at all with those? Like the others, this one works okay on chicken and might be kind of interesting with schwarma and if I liked Indian food at all, maybe there also, but realistically, this is not something I will be using other than on the wings in the quarterly FOH wing thing videos I do...and there, it's...fine. The fat of the wings seems to help things a bit, but there are also a multitude of other sauces I prefer more for wings.

Obviously, since it is in the 10 slot on the Hot Ones show, this is intended to cook and it gets into chilehead-only territory right out of the gate and only goes up from there, providing ample demonstration of why the mighty Reaper was the former record holder for hottest chile. 

Bottom line: As far as Last Dabs with the spice formulation go, this one falls firmly in the middle between the Original and the XXX, both in flavor and in heat, though it is the most visually attractive of the three. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Friday, October 11, 2024

Firewalker Mango Blaze Hot Sauce Review

Firewalker Mango Blaze


Hailing from Asheville, NC, which has, as of this writing, taking a beating at the hands of Hurricane Helene, we have here a very intriguing proposition. Not so content to go with a standard mango Habanero or even mango-pineapple Habanero, instead here we have a very potent dosage of citrus coming to the party, along with some garlic and "secret" spices. There are also carrots to round this out and smooth out the base and all in all, this is a pretty wild ride, with lots of interesting flavor notes along the way. This sauce also exemplifies what to me is a pretty profound difference between tart and sour, with this being the former of those two.

The one issue I have with sauces that utilize citrus is the tendency to have some difficulty placing them and I think so too is the case with this one. The recipe here looks very close to the Original Firewalker sauce, with the mangoes seeming to be the main difference, so this is by design and some of the suggestions I see on the website I honestly find a touch baffling. Eggs? With citrus? Popcorn? Ketchup? Ranch? Chex Mix? Burgers? What? Not for me, I shouldn't think...most of the flavor notes here are the citrus, along with a bit of the tropical fruits and the garlic. Neither the carrots not Habaneros contribute much to the flavor with those stronger-tasting ingredients.

I did find it very nice on some nice fried foods and I think it would do pretty well with all of those. There is a jicama citrus slaw that one can (and should) make to go along with fish tacos and I think it would be fantastic in that slaw or just slathered on the fish taco itself. For me, though, citrus goes on a fairly narrow array of foods, so flexibility here is a touch on the low side. Heat-wise, we're only dealing with Habanero, so nothing too challenging here.

Bottom line: This is a very well-crafted sauce that does a good job of presenting a composite of flavors, albeit a more citrusy-forward one. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Saturday, October 5, 2024

Knee Deep Blends Tropical Storm Hot Sauce Review

Knee Deep Blends Tropical Storm Pineapple Habanero


Yet another sauce from the hallowed shelves of BYT of another sauce company I didn’t know existed until I saw it there...which also describes a great many sauces here in these annals. This one, with some nifty, though kind of pushing the bounds of legibility for these old eyes, graphics on the labels, is a product I think is ultimately labeled incorrectly. As has been stated repeatedly, I like a little sweet with my hot and sweet-hots, particularly fruit-based sweet hots, will always have my interest. In the trip whereupon I picked this up, I also picked up at least a half dozen more of just that type.

I think this one sort of pushes the line of where does a hot sauce end and where does a different category begin. It is a very, very watery sauce, heavily sweet and looking at the ingredients, with the first two being cane sugar and canned pineapple in light syrup, it’s not difficult to understand why. Habanero is the very last ingredient and only appears here in powder form, so it does not play heavily into the flavor and is there mainly for what scant heat there is. There is also some soy sauce and vinegar in there, presumably to cut the sweetness a touch, along with some citric acid, but even with heavy agitation, that is a hard task to bear.

This one reads more as either a mixer component, as in making mixed drinks, a sort of elixir, perhaps or, better yet, as a marinade. It is so very loose and watery that it requires quite regular agitation and tends to spill off of everything it is put on, as well as running down the threads at the top of the bottle, as this does not come with restrictor cap. In many ways, it’s almost like this is still in development rather than a refined and tested product, but perhaps this is what they want and are just marketing it as something other than what it is. It will, of course, eventually soak into the breading on fried foods, but not quickly, and as hopeful as I was for this on pizza, that was pretty much a nonstarter. Finding the good niche pointed me in the two directions I mentioned where I think it works best and not especially too much else. Heat-wise, as it is Habanero powder and dead last on the ingredient list, as mentioned, this is a pretty tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: While the consistency is the main issue for me here, in terms of actually using it, I did find this a bit sweeter than I liked, with overall pretty minimal heat. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Friday, October 4, 2024

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Hot Sauce Review

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Secret Weapon

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

This is not a hot sauce, at least in my estimation. This is basically something I made a few times, albeit in a much smoother form, when I mixed a yellow mustard with the Dillanero (FOH video available, if interested). I don’t know that they used a relish, but this is essentially what it’s named after, mustard pickle or pickle mustard. This is not to say it’s a bad product. On the contrary, I am absolutely enjoying this and it’s easily my favorite product so far that I’ve gotten from Maritime Madness. I just don’t consider it a hot sauce, but a mustard or mustard-adjacent product.

Still, if the manufacturer wants to market it as a hot sauce, I’m not going to argue (much). Instead, we will just view this as a hot sauce. One of the reasons I have not included mustards in these pages is because I don’t think it’s fair. I like mustards if fairly narrow applications, mostly on phallic-shaped meats or burgers or certain deli sandwiches or on in specific salads. Sometimes on oven-baked pork chops as well, but as I rarely make those, I’m not really counting that. I don’t find that mustard is particularly flexible outside of that, discounting perhaps sweet mustards, which can be ok on fried chicken type foods. The other side is that mustards tend to have their heat from allyl isothiocyanate rather than capsaicin and it’s just another category entirely. There can be some bridging, sure, but at heart, it is truly a mustard and thus, does not really fit into a hot sauce blog.

That aside, heat here is rather low. The bottle calls it a 6, I call it a 1. I believe the peppers used here are Habanero, but they don’t really interact with the flavor much. Instead, we have the yellow mustard, heavily sweetened by sugar, and with a healthy dose of (probably) sweet pickles, the end result being heavenly...at least where you’d normally use yellow mustard and/or pickles.

Bottom line: This is a failure as a hot sauce (which is reflected in the individual rating numbers), but as a pickle mustard, it is absolutely fantastic, particularly if you like sweeter mustards or relishes.  

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 0
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 5

Thursday, October 3, 2024

Cry Baby Craig's Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Cry Baby Craig’s Habanero & Garlic

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

Hailing out of Faribault, MN, which is...somewhere, perhaps even relatively close to the place where I found it, we have here a sauce which is very clearly meant to be an everyday table sauce. Those are great and there is always a place in any rotation for an excellent-flavored sauce, which this surely is. For those to be successful, they have to be good in near ubiquitous usage, which means that a lot of sauces would really like to be that, but few pull it off well. This one is close to doing just that very thing, but doesn’t quite make it all the way.

To be sure, this is because it is fairly thin and bordering on watery. For me, it seems to be trying to delicately skirt a cross between a Mexican style sauce, which this one has strong flavor references toward, and a Cajun style sauce, with more the looseness and somewhat vinegar forward nature of the latter. Trying to do those two styles at once is kind of an interesting proposition, as I don’t find Mexican food with heavy shots of vinegar to be particularly pleasant, and conversely, do not want primarily Mexican flavors like cumin anywhere near where I might use a Cajun style, but this one manages the balancing act deftly, with a foot planted firmly in each style, but not so much that it is exclusive to the other. That this is also done with fresh ingredients is an especially neat trick.

The flavor here is quite embracing, easily accessible, and with some pretty nice flavor dynamics that develops as you get further into it on whatever you’re eating that will also take some vinegar. For instance, where this falls a bit short, for me, is on something like pizza, because watery sauces and pizza do not go well together. Watery sauces in general need to have a place where they can be somewhat absorbed or you run the risk of creating a saucy mess and that is definitely the case here as well. I did find it quite nice not only on all the Mexican foods I tried with it, but additionally where I might use a Louisiana-style or Cajun, so fried foods, creamy dishes, and the like. Heat-wise, it is a bit reminiscent of the El Yucatecos, where the punch is generally up front and whatever that initial hit is as hot as the sauce ever winds up getting.

Bottom line: While not quite meeting what I would consider a great or great table sauce overall, this one is fairly solid in terms of flexibility and is right there in terms of flavor. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Monday, September 30, 2024

2024 Q3 Update

2K24 Q3 Update

Hey, so remember before I was doing the FOH series and I used to just talk about whatever spicy fast food entrees I happened to have? We’re going to start off with a little throwback to those times. I went on a little road trip vacation in the early part of this quarter, July, to be specific, and I came across a Qdoba. Now, I was a bit miffed earlier in the year that I wasn’t going to get to try their Habanero-Lime steak, since I kinda sorta like the chain a bit and there is not any near me, but I availed myself of the presented opportunity and tried it out. I found it quite nice and now I’m kicking my dumb ass self for not dragging along a camera (and probably some lighting, since what was in the hotel was not great) and doing a review of it (I had the dish with Qdoba’s Diablo Queso, so I could have done them both). They also have a new Queso out called Apocalypto, so I’m going to add that to my list to do next year, whichever of them are still around...I won’t have my editing tower with me, but by all the lights, I will hopefully actually remember to bring the fucking camera with so I can do some on-the-road videos...maybe. Hopefully. It’s weird, I always talk myself out of it, even after running into the same goddamn thing when I road tripped to Albuquerque for the Fiery Fest in 2022...I mean, in case you were somehow wondering if I wasn’t an idiot, there you go.

Additionally, Burn Your Tongue, my absolute favorite hot sauce emporium, run by one of the truly greats of the industry, Roger Damptz, celebrated the 15th year anniversary when I was on the road, so a belated and hearty round of applause to him...AND, get this, not content with that, the very next month, added another location in Park City, to fill the void in that area Pepper Palace left when they bailed. Very seriously, until the Burn Your Tongue web store comes back, if you are within a 100 mile radius of any of the locations and care at all about this kind of thing, you owe it to yourself to visit one. It is a pilgrimage absolutely worth the drive and if you ever want to meet me IRL, I haunt those hallowed shelves from time to time. I also updated the Utah hot sauce spots list, which I was (again) woefully errant on doing.

Going back to the FOH videos for a moment, there is a major change that will be drifting in here and there, starting tomorrow. I’m mostly planned through the end of 2024 and I think I will wind up having a video up pretty much every Friday between now and the end of the year...more on why in the end of the year blog post in December, but actually, the streak is more like starting in mid-August through the end of the year. The Friday postings will also likely continue for a while into 2025 for...reasons, which will be outlined more in the Q4 update. I have a LOT of challenge stuff on deck, since I had so much fun with it last year, so look for that coming out in probably December and onward.

Finally, Season 25 of The Hot Ones came out in early September and it added exactly 2 sauces to my overall list. Update for that will be coming in the End Of The Year post at the end of Q4. As for this season, one of those sauces, the Dawson’s, seems very interesting. The other sees the return of Fresco, who made one of the more phenomenal sauces on the show, so cautiously optimistic there. This is another rather onion-heavy slate of sauces, though, and it does see the return of The Hot Ones Classic sauce to lead things off, which is one I’ve not ever found to be particularly impressive. It also does not change my streak of having both a written and video review up for at least one sauce in every season.

Thursday, September 26, 2024

Redacted Honey Trap Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Honey Trap


I love some good cheek, a fair good bit of cheek, one might even say, and finding this, a sauce company out of Tampa, who has apparently decided to take spycraft as their motif, albeit by way of something more akin to perhaps the fine work of the late great Leslie Nielsen. The entire website is decked out in all this glory and apparently this is another newer company, one I was not aware of at all until taking in the magnificence of the newest BYT location. There I spotted it and was instantly hooked by the label design and sauce names.

So we here we have honey and one of the more undersung pods for me, the venerable Scotch Bonnet, which is a great base, to be sure. There are also some carrots and mangos in there to kind of round things out, but neither shows up particularly in the flavor profile. This is much more the Bonnet & honey show and I think the sauce is better for it. Here, for instance, on perhaps great display, is a very good example of the taste relation between the Bonnets and their more ubiquitous, but not as good, as far as I’m concerned, cousins, the Habanero.

A good hot sauce, a good sweet hot in particular, will always have a place in my fridge...at least for a while until I clear the bottle and this is another I had to put the brakes on, so as to have enough left to shoot a video for it. To say I enjoyed using it would be an understatement and this is a pretty ringing introduction for the company. I definitely will be checking through more of their sauces, but as for this one, this style of sauce works very well in places you might use honey, so fried foods, but I wound up throwing it around a bit more than that. It’s not quite sweet enough to be used in a dessert context, though I also tried that, but as long as where you want to put it would be good with honey, this is a winner.

Bottom line: A very strong entry from one of the newer companies on the horizon, definitely worth getting if you like honey-based sauces and want to get a feel for the Scotch Bonnet in comparison to the Habanero.  

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 9
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

Merf's Her Majesty Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Her Majesty

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRqf9ATQXJA

Very intriguing entry here and one I was not aware existed up until I had this hot little number in my hands...actually "hot" in terms of spicy might not be the right thing here, as this is a very moderate heat, given that the main (and only) driver is Serrano. I had high hopes that it would be another fruit-based sweet hot and I don't run across berries nearly as much as the tropical fruits, so I was pretty excited to see it. This one also featured a combination of strawberry, blueberry, and blackberry. I've definitely done a few sauces with the first two fruits, but can't say that the third one comes up a whole lot, so I was definitely very interested in checking this one out.

The sauce itself, though, definitely tends hard towards the tart. I wasn't sure what the need for lime juice was, as the sauce is definitely closer to sour than anything else, along with some salt notes, but this very clearly was not intended to be sweet. This naturally came as a disappointment to me, as I don't really enjoy sour sauces and think most fruit-based sauces benefit from being on the sweeter side.

Because of this, naturally, this made it a touch on the challenging side for me to find places it to pair it with. This is by no means a bad sauce or unpleasant tasting one, but moreso something not aligned with my palate, though I tried mightily, all the way from savory dishes to actual desserts. It didn't ruin anything or drag any dishes down, but neither did it really add or compliment most of them. It was just kind of a thing I added and was there, separate and distinct. Part of this was also me being a touch unclear where this sauce was aimed. 

Bottom line: If you like your fruit (and fruit sauces) a bit more on the tart side, this might be worth a go. For me, I didn't quite vibe with it, but found it be another sauce more interesting than outright tasty. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor:5

Overall: 4

Saturday, September 7, 2024

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood Hot Sauce Review

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood


Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz at Burn Your Tongue, the greatest of hot sauce emporiums. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

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


This may be the most literal-named sauce I've come across. While the first ingredient maybe tomatillo, everything, from the smell on down to the flavor, is more dominantly that of the second, and for which this sauced is named. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, largely imagining a more run-of-the-mill tomatillo sauce, which tends to lend a bit towards tomatillo, of course, as well as a green chile like an Anaheim, maybe a bit of lime, and some cilantro, with just a touch of garlic and that's mostly where the ingredients here lead...other than no lime or green chiles...or cilantro. Instead, we have the much more prominent note of the smoke, followed by the green Habaneros.

I'm not quite sure what they intended for this sauce, but with most of those ingredients, I'm thinking it's a tomatillo sauce, which means Mexican style foods, like chimichangas or carnitas or enchiladas or perhaps a nice tamale, maybe a nice fish taco, or perhaps in a marinade potentially for some nice flank steak. In all of those things, I think this would be pretty wonderful, as those all have fairly strong and prominent flavors that this can bounce off of and play with, as well as temper the intensity of the smoke flavor a bit. By itself, it does come across very forcefully as maybe not one note exactly, but by far the majority of the flavor is in that. Also, like most Mexican style sauces, and particularly green sauces of that style, it does not tend to do well outside of that food format.

That said, I do like this sauce a lot and think it fits very well with the more complex dishes. The more there is something there to compliment this, the better, and indeed, it proves often a very nice and welcome addition. I don't typically eat a lot of green sauces, as a rule, so I don't come across these frequently, but the last time I remember one being this favorable was probably Danny Cash's Salvation Garlic-Serrano Sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) or maybe the El Yucateco green (also reviewed elsewhere here). Color is much better here than in the latter, though this one does come across with the flashy heat in a similar manner. It is mostly that, though, just a flash, as this is a fairly tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: A very smoke-forward sauce, with some very nice background notes of green Habanero and tomatillo, followed by a slight grace note of garlic, all with very moderate heat. Definitely plays well with others and in my mind, sort of requires complimentary stronger flavors for best results.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6