Butterfly Bakery Hot House Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Hot House

Note: This sauce appears on Season 26 of The Hot Ones. 

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect with this sauce, both cilantro and dill in hot sauces can be a mixed bag, but my trepidation was set immediately at ease in the capable of hands of Butterfly Bakery and it is, in fact, this sauce that threw me over into adding them to my favorite hot sauce brands list (full list in the SOTY page, link at right). This is a remarkable sauce, a work of near culinary genius in flavor. The blend here makes a taste experience absolutely unlike anything else. 

We will start with the dill and cilantro, which go exceedingly well together and add a nice brightness and freshness to the sauce. The tomato imparts a wonderful richness to base of five different peppers, which are Serranos, Habaneros, Carolina Reapers, Ghosties, and Carmens. I was not familiar with the Carmen, but it appears to be a sweeter pepper and you can’t go wrong with some nice sweet peppers in the mix. Even though the base contains two superhots and was in the 6 slot on the Hot Ones show for the reason it was on, this is a relatively tame sauce. It is past a 1 for me, but not quite all the way to a 2. 

Butterfly Bakery is very much a flavor-first hot sauce company and it all goes back to what I’ve said repeatedly. If you make a great-tasting sauce, versatility will be automatically covered and that’s kind of what we have here. While I didn’t love this so much on chicken, to be clear, I didn’t dislike it, either, I found it outstanding on red meat and things like fried pickles, which seemed to me to be a natural. This is such a delightfully flavored sauce that it immediately sparkles, but to be sure, I don’t think I’d want it on pizza or on a rich sauce base dish. I think it is definitely a sauce more on the flexible side, but not necessarily full tilt in that department.

Bottom line: This is a full tilt flavor wonderland, unexpected in its brilliance for me, and not only a fantastic sauce, but the very best kind in that it’s wildly creative. Absolute must try, particularly for food adventurer chileheads.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7