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