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.

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

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

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

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

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

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