Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot Hot Sauce Review

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot

I was not at all familiar with the Bulgarian Carrot pepper prior to coming across this sauce and bought it somewhat on a whim. The only previous sauce I’d ever from them, the Hatch Chile, was a tad on the underwhelming side, but I always get a little excited and my tail starts wagging and my ears prick up when I come across a new pod in a sauce that I haven’t had before, so I drove in full gainer...

...and was rewarded with a pretty fantastic sauce. For some reason, I thought this was a variety of a Habanero, which was borne out by the flavor, but looking into it further, Habanero is in the mix, but it is not a Habanero variant per se. Rather, it is a cross between a Habanero and a different Bulgarian pepper, with the idea being that the pod looks like a baby carrot. There are no actual carrots in this sauce, though the idea that there was initially drew me to it. 

This is not a sauce so much as a mash and is very pepper forward, with peppers being the first ingredient. There are a couple vinegars, rice and cider, which do a nice job of complementing each other and not transmitting any of the stinky foot aspect of the latter vinegar. There is also some sugar, some salt, and some of that good hardneck garlic and the flavor profile, top to bottom, is really quite brilliant.

It is very thick, very clumpy, and does not like to smooth out. There is a lot of rough sort of gritty bits to it as well, all of which sort of make this a bit of a challenge in terms of usage. As far as flavor, this went great with nearly everything, but as far as texture...for me, it works best in a sandwich setting, where you can spread it out or leave it in its own layer (I’d also love to try this as a pizza sauce, just this sauce by itself, to be clear), so things like burgers and chicken sandwiches and sub sandwiches respond very well with this, where it both meshes and retains a bit of its identity as it melds with proceedings. Even though Hot Winter calls this both very hot and their hottest available sauce, I found it rather mild all told and I don’t think it will give too many people much of a challenge.

Bottom line: An absolute ringer, just a dynamite gem of a product, but definitely one that I think is somewhat dependent on its setting.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6