Dawson's Sweet Pear Chili Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s Sweet Pear Chili

Don’t often run across pears too much in hot sauce, but I do love me some pears and I was pretty curious how the tap-dancing around what is a generally fairly delicate flavor would go...in a way, I’m saddened that it went the way I was expecting, but the resulting sauce definitely is a nice end result that has some very definite applications where it works well.

Like most of the other Dawsons’s, this is sauce is on the thicker sludgier side of things. Again, we have the olive oil, so there is a nice smoothness to it and the Vietnamese chilis, which I also don’t really see used a great deal, impart a pleasant heat without introducing much on the flavor. This is quite a good pairing there, those chilis with the fruit. Where it got a touch out of hand was the garlic, which tends to be a pretty strong flavor and here, it definitely asserted itself, despite being about in the middle of the ingredients. 

This, then, sort of ran roughshod over the pears and we have a fairly light somewhat non-descript fruity sweetness to the sauce. I admit I was hoping for a lot more presence from the pear and the resulting flavor, in conjunction with the garlic, moved this more into complex flavor applications, such as on a fried chicken sandwich, say, rather than just on some chicken tendies. 

I do like the sauce and find it pairs fairly nicely with mayo, where it adds a pretty fascinating dimension to things. I could also see this working extremely well as part of a salad dressing, so definitely there are some applications, but this is a sauce where I think you would need to experiment with it a bit, as it doesn’t seem to readily point at any food in particular. 

Bottom line: Another highly creative and inventive sauce from Dawsons’ and I absolutely applaud the use of infrequently used ingredients...for me this is a sauce more on the way than at its destination, but if the more experimental vibes are up your alley, this is well worth a look.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4