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.

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

Firewalker Mango Blaze Hot Sauce Review

Firewalker Mango Blaze

Hailing from Asheville, NC, which has, as of this writing, taking a beating at the hands of Hurricane Helene, we have here a very intriguing proposition. Not so content to go with a standard mango Habanero or even mango-pineapple Habanero, instead here we have a very potent dosage of citrus coming to the party, along with some garlic and "secret" spices. There are also carrots to round this out and smooth out the base and all in all, this is a pretty wild ride, with lots of interesting flavor notes along the way. This sauce also exemplifies what to me is a pretty profound difference between tart and sour, with this being the former of those two.

The one issue I have with sauces that utilize citrus is the tendency to have some difficulty placing them and I think so too is the case with this one. The recipe here looks very close to the Original Firewalker sauce, with the mangoes seeming to be the main difference, so this is by design and some of the suggestions I see on the website I honestly find a touch baffling. Eggs? With citrus? Popcorn? Ketchup? Ranch? Chex Mix? Burgers? What? Not for me, I shouldn't think...most of the flavor notes here are the citrus, along with a bit of the tropical fruits and the garlic. Neither the carrots not Habaneros contribute much to the flavor with those stronger-tasting ingredients.

I did find it very nice on some nice fried foods and I think it would do pretty well with all of those. There is a jicama citrus slaw that one can (and should) make to go along with fish tacos and I think it would be fantastic in that slaw or just slathered on the fish taco itself. For me, though, citrus goes on a fairly narrow array of foods, so flexibility here is a touch on the low side. Heat-wise, we're only dealing with Habanero, so nothing too challenging here.

Bottom line: This is a very well-crafted sauce that does a good job of presenting a composite of flavors, albeit a more citrusy-forward one. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Knee Deep Blends Tropical Storm Hot Sauce Review

Knee Deep Blends Tropical Storm Pineapple Habanero

Yet another sauce from the hallowed shelves of BYT of another sauce company I didn’t know existed until I saw it there...which also describes a great many sauces here in these annals. This one, with some nifty, though kind of pushing the bounds of legibility for these old eyes, graphics on the labels, is a product I think is ultimately labeled incorrectly. As has been stated repeatedly, I like a little sweet with my hot and sweet-hots, particularly fruit-based sweet hots, will always have my interest. In the trip whereupon I picked this up, I also picked up at least a half dozen more of just that type.

I think this one sort of pushes the line of where does a hot sauce end and where does a different category begin. It is a very, very watery sauce, heavily sweet and looking at the ingredients, with the first two being cane sugar and canned pineapple in light syrup, it’s not difficult to understand why. Habanero is the very last ingredient and only appears here in powder form, so it does not play heavily into the flavor and is there mainly for what scant heat there is. There is also some soy sauce and vinegar in there, presumably to cut the sweetness a touch, along with some citric acid, but even with heavy agitation, that is a hard task to bear.

This one reads more as either a mixer component, as in making mixed drinks, a sort of elixir, perhaps or, better yet, as a marinade. It is so very loose and watery that it requires quite regular agitation and tends to spill off of everything it is put on, as well as running down the threads at the top of the bottle, as this does not come with restrictor cap. In many ways, it’s almost like this is still in development rather than a refined and tested product, but perhaps this is what they want and are just marketing it as something other than what it is. It will, of course, eventually soak into the breading on fried foods, but not quickly, and as hopeful as I was for this on pizza, that was pretty much a nonstarter. Finding the good niche pointed me in the two directions I mentioned where I think it works best and not especially too much else. Heat-wise, as it is Habanero powder and dead last on the ingredient list, as mentioned, this is a pretty tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: While the consistency is the main issue for me here, in terms of actually using it, I did find this a bit sweeter than I liked, with overall pretty minimal heat. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Hot Sauce Review

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Secret Weapon

This is not a hot sauce, at least in my estimation. This is basically something I made a few times, albeit in a much smoother form, when I mixed a yellow mustard with the Dillanero (FOH video available, if interested). I don’t know that they used a relish, but this is essentially what it’s named after, mustard pickle or pickle mustard. This is not to say it’s a bad product. On the contrary, I am absolutely enjoying this and it’s easily my favorite product so far that I’ve gotten from Maritime Madness. I just don’t consider it a hot sauce, but a mustard or mustard-adjacent product.

Still, if the manufacturer wants to market it as a hot sauce, I’m not going to argue (much). Instead, we will just view this as a hot sauce. One of the reasons I have not included mustards in these pages is because I don’t think it’s fair. I like mustards if fairly narrow applications, mostly on phallic-shaped meats or burgers or certain deli sandwiches or on in specific salads. Sometimes on oven-baked pork chops as well, but as I rarely make those, I’m not really counting that. I don’t find that mustard is particularly flexible outside of that, discounting perhaps sweet mustards, which can be ok on fried chicken type foods. The other side is that mustards tend to have their heat from allyl isothiocyanate rather than capsaicin and it’s just another category entirely. There can be some bridging, sure, but at heart, it is truly a mustard and thus, does not really fit into a hot sauce blog.

That aside, heat here is rather low. The bottle calls it a 6, I call it a 1. I believe the peppers used here are Habanero, but they don’t really interact with the flavor much. Instead, we have the yellow mustard, heavily sweetened by sugar, and with a healthy dose of (probably) sweet pickles, the end result being heavenly...at least where you’d normally use yellow mustard and/or pickles.

Bottom line: This is a failure as a hot sauce (which is reflected in the individual rating numbers), but as a pickle mustard, it is absolutely fantastic, particularly if you like sweeter mustards or relishes.  

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 0
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 5

Cry Baby Craig's Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Cry Baby Craig’s Habanero & Garlic

Hailing out of Faribault, MN, which is...somewhere, perhaps even relatively close to the place where I found it, we have here a sauce which is very clearly meant to be an everyday table sauce. Those are great and there is always a place in any rotation for an excellent-flavored sauce, which this surely is. For those to be successful, they have to be good in near ubiquitous usage, which means that a lot of sauces would really like to be that, but few pull it off well. This one is close to doing just that very thing, but doesn’t quite make it all the way.

To be sure, this is because it is fairly thin and bordering on watery. For me, it seems to be trying to delicately skirt a cross between a Mexican style sauce, which this one has strong flavor references toward, and a Cajun style sauce, with more the looseness and somewhat vinegar forward nature of the latter. Trying to do those two styles at once is kind of an interesting proposition, as I don’t find Mexican food with heavy shots of vinegar to be particularly pleasant, and conversely, do not want primarily Mexican flavors like cumin anywhere near where I might use a Cajun style, but this one manages the balancing act deftly, with a foot planted firmly in each style, but not so much that it is exclusive to the other. That this is also done with fresh ingredients is an especially neat trick.

The flavor here is quite embracing, easily accessible, and with some pretty nice flavor dynamics that develops as you get further into it on whatever you’re eating that will also take some vinegar. For instance, where this falls a bit short, for me, is on something like pizza, because watery sauces and pizza do not go well together. Watery sauces in general need to have a place where they can be somewhat absorbed or you run the risk of creating a saucy mess and that is definitely the case here as well. I did find it quite nice not only on all the Mexican foods I tried with it, but additionally where I might use a Louisiana-style or Cajun, so fried foods, creamy dishes, and the like. Heat-wise, it is a bit reminiscent of the El Yucatecos, where the punch is generally up front and whatever that initial hit is as hot as the sauce ever winds up getting.

Bottom line: While not quite meeting what I would consider a great or great table sauce overall, this one is fairly solid in terms of flexibility and is right there in terms of flavor. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

2024 Q3 Update

2K24 Q3 Update

Hey, so remember before I was doing the FOH series and I used to just talk about whatever spicy fast food entrees I happened to have? We’re going to start off with a little throwback to those times. I went on a little road trip vacation in the early part of this quarter, July, to be specific, and I came across a Qdoba. Now, I was a bit miffed earlier in the year that I wasn’t going to get to try their Habanero-Lime steak, since I kinda sorta like the chain a bit and there is not any near me, but I availed myself of the presented opportunity and tried it out. I found it quite nice and now I’m kicking my dumb ass self for not dragging along a camera (and probably some lighting, since what was in the hotel was not great) and doing a review of it (I had the dish with Qdoba’s Diablo Queso, so I could have done them both). They also have a new Queso out called Apocalypto, so I’m going to add that to my list to do next year, whichever of them are still around...I won’t have my editing tower with me, but by all the lights, I will hopefully actually remember to bring the fucking camera with so I can do some on-the-road videos...maybe. Hopefully. It’s weird, I always talk myself out of it, even after running into the same goddamn thing when I road tripped to Albuquerque for the Fiery Fest in 2022...I mean, in case you were somehow wondering if I wasn’t an idiot, there you go.

Additionally, Burn Your Tongue, my absolute favorite hot sauce emporium, run by one of the truly greats of the industry, Roger Damptz, celebrated the 15th year anniversary when I was on the road, so a belated and hearty round of applause to him...AND, get this, not content with that, the very next month, added another location in Park City, to fill the void in that area Pepper Palace left when they bailed. Very seriously, until the Burn Your Tongue web store comes back, if you are within a 100 mile radius of any of the locations and care at all about this kind of thing, you owe it to yourself to visit one. It is a pilgrimage absolutely worth the drive and if you ever want to meet me IRL, I haunt those hallowed shelves from time to time. I also updated the Utah hot sauce spots list, which I was (again) woefully errant on doing.

Going back to the FOH videos for a moment, there is a major change that will be drifting in here and there, starting tomorrow. I’m mostly planned through the end of 2024 and I think I will wind up having a video up pretty much every Friday between now and the end of the year...more on why in the end of the year blog post in December, but actually, the streak is more like starting in mid-August through the end of the year. The Friday postings will also likely continue for a while into 2025 for...reasons, which will be outlined more in the Q4 update. I have a LOT of challenge stuff on deck, since I had so much fun with it last year, so look for that coming out in probably December and onward.

Finally, Season 25 of The Hot Ones came out in early September and it added exactly 2 sauces to my overall list. Update for that will be coming in the End Of The Year post at the end of Q4. As for this season, one of those sauces, the Dawson’s, seems very interesting. The other sees the return of Fresco, who made one of the more phenomenal sauces on the show, so cautiously optimistic there. This is another rather onion-heavy slate of sauces, though, and it does see the return of The Hot Ones Classic sauce to lead things off, which is one I’ve not ever found to be particularly impressive. It also does not change my streak of having both a written and video review up for at least one sauce in every season.

Redacted Honey Trap Hot Sauce Review

Redacted Honey Trap

I love some good cheek, a fair good bit of cheek, one might even say, and finding this, a sauce company out of Tampa, who has apparently decided to take spycraft as their motif, albeit by way of something more akin to perhaps the fine work of the late great Leslie Nielsen. The entire website is decked out in all this glory and apparently this is another newer company, one I was not aware of at all until taking in the magnificence of the newest BYT location. There I spotted it and was instantly hooked by the label design and sauce names.

So we here we have honey and one of the more undersung pods for me, the venerable Scotch Bonnet, which is a great base, to be sure. There are also some carrots and mangos in there to kind of round things out, but neither shows up particularly in the flavor profile. This is much more the Bonnet & honey show and I think the sauce is better for it. Here, for instance, on perhaps great display, is a very good example of the taste relation between the Bonnets and their more ubiquitous, but not as good, as far as I’m concerned, cousins, the Habanero.

A good hot sauce, a good sweet hot in particular, will always have a place in my fridge...at least for a while until I clear the bottle and this is another I had to put the brakes on, so as to have enough left to shoot a video for it. To say I enjoyed using it would be an understatement and this is a pretty ringing introduction for the company. I definitely will be checking through more of their sauces, but as for this one, this style of sauce works very well in places you might use honey, so fried foods, but I wound up throwing it around a bit more than that. It’s not quite sweet enough to be used in a dessert context, though I also tried that, but as long as where you want to put it would be good with honey, this is a winner.

Bottom line: A very strong entry from one of the newer companies on the horizon, definitely worth getting if you like honey-based sauces and want to get a feel for the Scotch Bonnet in comparison to the Habanero.  

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Merf's Her Majesty Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Her Majesty

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

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRqf9ATQXJA

Very intriguing entry here and one I was not aware existed up until I had this hot little number in my hands...actually "hot" in terms of spicy might not be the right thing here, as this is a very moderate heat, given that the main (and only) driver is Serrano. I had high hopes that it would be another fruit-based sweet hot and I don't run across berries nearly as much as the tropical fruits, so I was pretty excited to see it. This one also featured a combination of strawberry, blueberry, and blackberry. I've definitely done a few sauces with the first two fruits, but can't say that the third one comes up a whole lot, so I was definitely very interested in checking this one out.

The sauce itself, though, definitely tends hard towards the tart. I wasn't sure what the need for lime juice was, as the sauce is definitely closer to sour than anything else, along with some salt notes, but this very clearly was not intended to be sweet. This naturally came as a disappointment to me, as I don't really enjoy sour sauces and think most fruit-based sauces benefit from being on the sweeter side.

Because of this, naturally, this made it a touch on the challenging side for me to find places it to pair it with. This is by no means a bad sauce or unpleasant tasting one, but moreso something not aligned with my palate, though I tried mightily, all the way from savory dishes to actual desserts. It didn't ruin anything or drag any dishes down, but neither did it really add or compliment most of them. It was just kind of a thing I added and was there, separate and distinct. Part of this was also me being a touch unclear where this sauce was aimed. 

Bottom line: If you like your fruit (and fruit sauces) a bit more on the tart side, this might be worth a go. For me, I didn't quite vibe with it, but found it be another sauce more interesting than outright tasty. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor:5

Overall: 4

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood Hot Sauce Review

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz at Burn Your Tongue, the greatest of hot sauce emporiums. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

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

This may be the most literal-named sauce I've come across. While the first ingredient maybe tomatillo, everything, from the smell on down to the flavor, is more dominantly that of the second, and for which this sauced is named. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, largely imagining a more run-of-the-mill tomatillo sauce, which tends to lend a bit towards tomatillo, of course, as well as a green chile like an Anaheim, maybe a bit of lime, and some cilantro, with just a touch of garlic and that's mostly where the ingredients here lead...other than no lime or green chiles...or cilantro. Instead, we have the much more prominent note of the smoke, followed by the green Habaneros.

I'm not quite sure what they intended for this sauce, but with most of those ingredients, I'm thinking it's a tomatillo sauce, which means Mexican style foods, like chimichangas or carnitas or enchiladas or perhaps a nice tamale, maybe a nice fish taco, or perhaps in a marinade potentially for some nice flank steak. In all of those things, I think this would be pretty wonderful, as those all have fairly strong and prominent flavors that this can bounce off of and play with, as well as temper the intensity of the smoke flavor a bit. By itself, it does come across very forcefully as maybe not one note exactly, but by far the majority of the flavor is in that. Also, like most Mexican style sauces, and particularly green sauces of that style, it does not tend to do well outside of that food format.

That said, I do like this sauce a lot and think it fits very well with the more complex dishes. The more there is something there to compliment this, the better, and indeed, it proves often a very nice and welcome addition. I don't typically eat a lot of green sauces, as a rule, so I don't come across these frequently, but the last time I remember one being this favorable was probably Danny Cash's Salvation Garlic-Serrano Sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) or maybe the El Yucateco green (also reviewed elsewhere here). Color is much better here than in the latter, though this one does come across with the flashy heat in a similar manner. It is mostly that, though, just a flash, as this is a fairly tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: A very smoke-forward sauce, with some very nice background notes of green Habanero and tomatillo, followed by a slight grace note of garlic, all with very moderate heat. Definitely plays well with others and in my mind, sort of requires complimentary stronger flavors for best results.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Brick & Mortar Hot Sauce Spots In Utah Update

Update 2024

I am seriously bad at doing this...I, once upon a when, had designs on doing this annually and now, with this post, is nearly the first time I've updated it since November 2020...naturally, things have changed a lot since then and I figured, with the newest location of Burn Your Tongue (celebrating 15 years in July 2024!) in Park City, which is an absolute showstopper (more on that forthcoming), now is a good time to re-up it.

Gone from last time are Pepper Palace in Park City, which is not really much of a loss, and both the Draper and Logan locations of Burn Your Tongue, which might not have been around in 2020. Also, FYE, various local grocery outlets, and World Market, have all done a bit of upgrading to their hot and spicy offerings. I try to keep tabs on all of that, either noting in the written reviews here on this very blog or, if it's not a hot sauce, doing an FOH video on it, which you can check out by following the links at right to my YouTube page. Additionally, all of these locations (as well as some others not in Utah) are covered on my Yelp page, which has a link, also at right. Finally, I also encourage you to check out the previous entries into this less than constantly attended Brick & Mortar series.

Now then, the list:

Burn Your Tongue - inside Quilted Bear - Newgate Mall, Ogden, UT

800+ sauces. I might not need to add anything else to this, actually. This selection is intense and covers every spectrum of hot sauce you might think of, including some mustards and syrups. If you combined ALL of the shelf offerings of everyone else on this list, you’d maybe hit 200 - 250, but not much more. All of them. Combined. Roger, in addition to being the ambassador to spiciness, particularly with his support of the chilehead community, is also an all-around good guy and if you happen to catch him there, you’ll be treated to a great conversation about peppers, the industry, and exactly which sauce you should be taking with you, and maybe even a discount. 

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - University Mall, Orem, UT

This one is a sort of truncated version of Ogden, with maybe half of the selection, 350 - 500 sauces or so, with a bunch of snacky stuff and different powdered mixes and popcorn, among other things. Even with the lower shelf space, this location is still more than all of the other non-BYT  spots combined and is super convenient. This is the location I haunt perhaps more than the others, so if you ever want to catch me in the wild, it will probably be here...or would have been, if not for the next entry.

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - Upper Level Outlets - Park City, UT

Has even more selection than the granddaddy location up in Ogden, with several sauces there that I did not see in Ogden, including an entire Hot Ones sauce section, including their entire branded line, by far the largest I've seen on anyone's shelves. As usual, there was quite a lot of stuff I hadn't heard of on the shelves and encountering the shelves for the first time, I was blown away, which is pretty hard to do for me, at this point. This is easily the biggest selection not only in Utah, but in at least a 500 mile radius, possibly more.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

This is what it sounds like, a small market servicing a deli counter that makes some of the tastiest sandwiches known to man. Everything there is in service to that, from the fresh desserts to the substantial drink selection to the snacks and so on. There is one neck-high shelving unit that is dedicated to the sauces, but in that area is probably a good 50 or 60 different types, some of which I’ve seen nowhere else. Selection here is a pretty far cry from any of the BYT locations, but still probably second most. It battles back and forth a bit with Pirate O's for that honor at various times, but both of those are more like semi-annual trips for me these days.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

Speaking of, this is more of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else. The owner seems somewhat of a chilehead, and is also another good guy that I’ve enjoyed chatting with about sauces, but a couple of shelving units along the back wall means he’s deferring to other stuff that probably sells better and is more profitable, though selection waxes and wanes a bit. Although the last few visits have yielded zero sauces for me to walk out with, since I've covered the entirety of the hot sauce area, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions that are way more in the "rainy day" category,  I do enjoy the visits here a lot, just something warm and comfortable about it, that so-called je ne sais quoi.

While my overall favorite, and the place that by far gets the majority of my purchases, is Burn Your Tongue, I do have a soft spot for both Grove, for lunches and for being the OG hot sauce location, where I've spent many good hours in conversation with the owner there, as well as Pirate O's, just because there is so much cool stuff to see and even after multiple visits, I still find new stuff that wasn't there the time before. I appreciate that kind of relentlessness. To sum up, for the last major ones standing, three very different approaches, with BYT definitely covering the gamut of the "chilehead" experience, from chile-curious, all the way to hardcore firehead and with a constantly curated selection, often with sauces you can find nowhere else, including in online outlets, while Grove mianly offers some outstanding sandwiche, along with some of the bigger sauce maker names and novelty stuff, leaving Pirate O's, which I always find just an overall fascinating experience, with lots of imported delectables and sauces more in the direction as Grove.