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.

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

Two Heads Music City Heat Hot Sauce Review

Two Heads Music City Heat

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

It’s kind of interesting to me how different years shake out. I’ll get into it a bit more in the end of the year 2024 blog post, when I announce the winner of Sauce Of The Year for this year, but some years, it seems like I have a few right at the beginning of the year and then a long drought before I get more contenders, then one or two will come in right at the end, which is what happened this year. Other years will be sprinkled a bit more spread out through the months and I never really know which it will be.

So, as you may have surmised, this is another that is being added to my SOTY contenders for 2024 and this one hits a lot of sweet spots for me. I do love me a good bit of smoke into things, but it is a delicate balance, as that flavor note can easily be overused. Here, it comes across as perfection. The sauce itself is definitely more along the lines of a Cajun, with a very vinegar-forward base, with some garlic and other spice elements, and no less than 3 different types of peppers. We have the smoked Serranos, which impart a truly fantastic, near-joyous flavor, the Habaneros for the heat that comes on pretty quickly at the onset and kind of hovers at a good, solid 1, and Anaheim, to really round out and balance the works, and it all comes together to perfection.

This is probably my favorite Cajun-esque style sauce, which is one I consider an offshoot of Louisiana-style, and this is really saying something, considering there is not Cayenne pepper in this sauce. It is one I find so delicious, I want to try it on as much stuff as I think a vinegar forward sauce would work on and even a few things, like pizza, where I wouldn’t normally, but was curious. Given that this is as loose as it is, that also kind of speaks volumes, in its own way, and this is yet another that I easily cleared half the bottle, even with the restrictor cap still on it, within days of opening the bottle. Everything I’ve paired it with has been quite good, from the usual stuff of fried foods and creamy dishes, all the way to the aforementioned pizza and even some vegetable dishes, and I may need to get another bottle, just so I can further test it on more stuff. In fact, I daresay this will most probably happen.

Bottom line: If you’re a fan at all of the vinegar-forward sauces, and also like a bit of smokiness, do yourself a favor and chase down a bottle of this deliciousness. It is a sauce that makes me very happy every time I use it, which is what a good SOTY contender should do. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Double Take B-Sides Hot Sauce Review

Double Take B-Sides

Anytime I have a sauce from The Hot Ones show that I find impressive and that introduces me to a new company, I generally will use it as a launch point and look more into the sauce company. In this case, Double Take is another maker that likes to heavily use onions, so this will be the end of my little foray into their lineup, unless other sauces come out that don’t include them, but this was one I picked up from somewhere during a Black Friday 2023 buy (yes, it sat on my shelf for that long, staring longingly at me – I wound up with a deluge of Lousiana-style/Cajun style sauces this year, unusually) and kept meaning to get to.

The verbiage on the label, which itself is kind of a throwback both to the earlier times of vinyl and to the psychedelic era, claims this as the best Louisiana style sauce, which is not a position to which I’d agree and perhaps didn’t ultimately pan out, as I don’t see this sauce any longer in their lineup. This is kind of a shame, as flavor-wise, this is definitely near the top for this style of sauce. I found it, with the excellent combination of Habanero and red bell, to be quite delicious and sort of representative of the style, with one major caveat. It is unfortunately that same caveat that sinks the rating overall on this a bit.

This is one of the loosest sauces I’ve ever had, basically the consistency of water. This is a huge problem as it tends to separate and pool rather easily, even with a restrictor cap. The tendency will be to use a lot of it because that same looseness leads to a lack of concentration of flavor, so to get the desired density, the thought would be to use more, but because it is so runny, you will readily get puddles, unless it is something that can absorb the liquid. Obviously food stickiness is a problem and the label copy suggestion, of putting it on pizza (does anyone actually use a Louisiana-style for that food?), sounds like a recipe for instant tragedy to me. It would have strongly benefitted from either being reduced and/or some xanthan gum.

Heat-wise, it’s only Habanero, which is towards the end of the ingredient list, so it wouldn’t have been challenging to begin with, but particularly not with the sort of watered-down effect of the sauce.

Bottom line: This sauce is a good example that was one finishing step away from being a top tier contender and had it been more concentrated and/or less loose, I believe it would have been in SOTY contender territory.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Lisa’s Piece O’ Habanero Heaven & Extra Hot Habanero Hot Sauce(s) Review

Lisa’s Piece O’ Habanero Heaven & Extra Hot Habanero

Note: These sauces were provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

Here we have a couple of sauces that are sort of playing on the heaven (referenced directly) and hell (referenced less overtly) themes, with essentially the same base. I really like this idea, as you can very dynamically see, for example, the concept of moving to a hotter pepper experience, the flavor notes change and tend towards bitter, as the sauce (or pepper) gets hotter. By using the same base, aside from switching out the bell pepper variety used as accompaniment, this illustrated quite effectively and if you’re interested in that, buying this as a part will do well to amplify that.

However, doing so is perhaps slightly unfair to the “devilish” version, that being the Extra Hot, as it suffers in comparison. While it is a fine sauce in its own right, with a solid bit of heat for a Habanero sauce, along with a very nice sweet accompaniment to a Habanero flavor, with grace notes of carrots underlying, the “angelic” version is just really one of those more unique special sauces that come along so very rarely, that the appreciation when they do is instant.

Here we have a sauce where the sugar and carrots create a very nice harmony, with an excellent rounding by the orange bells, all with a very slight undercurrent of heat from the Habanero. I’m not sure if I should call it exquisite or not, but this is just an outstanding creation, easily one of the more flavorful sauces I’ve had this year and among the best ever utilizing carrots. Carrots are one of those odd sauce additions for me, where I get it conceptually, but even as a foodie, I find them much less sweet than I keep hearing portrayed. Here, the emphasis is a bit more on the carrot flavor, but instead of forcing them to also carry the sweetness equation, sugar is added and it winds up being just a delight, particularly with the aforementioned bells. While I will stop short of calling it outright great, I do like this sauce quite a lot.

The Extra Hot moves to yellow bells, which are fine, but as peppers go, the closer one gets to red and red variants (including brown), the more flavorful and sweeter they tend to be. This is clearly meant to be what it is, a much more Habanero forward sauce, and it is definitely that. I’m not a huge fan of the flavor of Habanero, which is well documented in these annals, so while I like what they’ve done here, it definitely pales in comparison to the “heavenly” version. I will say that this one did work better on Mexican food, thanks to that more Habanero forward flavor.

Both of them are sweet enough, though, to qualify essentially as sweet hots generally. The Mexican food experiment was not something I really wanted to repeat, as I found them a touch too sweet, but anywhere you might use a sweet hot, from fried foods to pizza and, given the prominence of carrots, on roasted vegetable or vegetable dishes in general, these will be well at home in. Yes, they’re sweet enough for desserts (but not angled in a way they would be good on ice cream), particularly a nice slice of carrot cake for at least the “heavenly” version.

Bottom line: We have a sauce here that approaches stellar (Piece O’ Habanero Heaven) and one that shows the trade of flavor for heat (Extra Hot Habanero), albeit is still a good sauce in its own right. Think more general sweet hot, as a category, albeit with a very tasty sweet carrot lean, for the former, and with a more pronounced lean for the latter.

Piece O' Habanero Heaven Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Extra Hot Habanero Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 5
           Flexibility: 5
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

 

Hot Ones The Last Dab Reaper Edition

Hot Ones The Last Dab Reaper Edition

Note: This sauce appears on Season 5 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReZfElnzf8o

The final version that I hadn't gotten to of the original formulation (there is a mini-review of that) and interestingly, it more invites comparison to the other two than standing on its own. While not as hot as the Last Dab XXX (reviewed elsewhere here), it clearly is riding on a base that was keyed around a different pepper entirely and it sort of shows. The Carolina Reapers, appearing here in place of the various Pepper X variations of the other two sauces, contribute a very nice reddish hue to to think, making this the prettiest of the three, but the flavor works considerably best of all in the original Last Dab sauce.

Like the others, flexibility is somewhat of an issue as this doesn't appear to have a ready place. I am of the mind that the sauces are really meant to be stunt sauces and not really intended to go anywhere and just kind of be hot, but if that's the case, why the additional spices? Why bother at all with those? Like the others, this one works okay on chicken and might be kind of interesting with schwarma and if I liked Indian food at all, maybe there also, but realistically, this is not something I will be using other than on the wings in the quarterly FOH wing thing videos I do...and there, it's...fine. The fat of the wings seems to help things a bit, but there are also a multitude of other sauces I prefer more for wings.

Obviously, since it is in the 10 slot on the Hot Ones show, this is intended to cook and it gets into chilehead-only territory right out of the gate and only goes up from there, providing ample demonstration of why the mighty Reaper was the former record holder for hottest chile. 

Bottom line: As far as Last Dabs with the spice formulation go, this one falls firmly in the middle between the Original and the XXX, both in flavor and in heat, though it is the most visually attractive of the three. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 4
           Flexibility: 2
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 4