Gindo's Mild Roasted Red Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s Mild Roasted Red Pepper

This is a bit of an unusual selection, in that I wouldn’t generally pick something that is intentionally low heat. A couple of things strike me, one which was a factor in me getting the sauce in the first place and the second something that came about later after consideration of me contemplating something on the label. The first of those was that Habanero was listed in the ingredients, so I thought there might be perhaps a modicum of heat. To that end, there is not. There is no heat really to speak of at all in this sauce, but that ties in to what was on the label. It is intentionally a mild sauce and there is mention that it is a perfect sauce for beginners new to the chilehead world. I definitely would not disagree with that, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good thing. 

I write these reviews and make these videos and cast them out in the world on their own, without ever knowing who may be reading or viewing and perhaps, if all the stars align, may be inspired by something they read or see, some neuron, the right neuron, fires and things click over for them. I have tried to not get into gatekeeping territory and it’s been very important to me for a very long time to be as inclusive as possible and it struck me that people who may be in the beginning of their chilehead journey are not especially represented here. The blog has generally been more reflective of where I see myself, which is far more intermediate to upper end of heat chilehead, but that was its design. While this doesn’t mean there will be more milder sauces that I intentionally pick (and I have backed off of my earlier impulses over time), I do think it doesn’t hurt anything to have sauces like show up from time to time. All of us start from zero and have different beginnings, different origin stories on our path into the chilehead journey.

Anyway, as to the sauce, roasted red peppers was one of my happiest food discoveries, perhaps ever. I should back up. Fried red peppers was a world-altering event for me, but those I found a tad hard to come by, but it was that which set me on the discovery to roasted red peppers, which were far more readily available. I loved those quite a lot, but also discovered that at times, they would come out of the jar a bit slimy. This sauce is basically like a fresh and vibrant roasted red pepper, in its very best form, made into a sauce, with that same freshness and vibrancy. It is that flavor, tinged with salt and vinegar, which constitutes nearly all of the flavor and it is pretty wonderful...provided you like roasted red peppers, of course. This would be brilliant on a sandwich or pizza or any other place you might use the roasted red peppers and the sauce is both so flavorful and mild, that you will not be punished for oversaucing. 

Bottom line: Definitely a potential gateway sauce, as those have to taste great, though I think this serves more as just an excellent version of roasted red pepper more, given the lack of heat.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 6

Butterfly Bakery Chipotle Squash Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Chipotle Squash

If one wanted a sauce that was strongly reminiscent of fall and a warm, comforting hug in a bottle, one would be hard pressed to find one more apropos than this. Once again, Butterfly Bakery comes forth with a work of genius, pairing roasted butternut squash, one of my very favorite fall foods and one that never fails me to drag me back to those chilly and biting nights that heralded both the end of summer and that the harvest was well and truly at hand. Fall has been my favorite time of the year for a very long time and things like that I suspect constitute a significant part of that formation. Add to that the smell of smoke in the air, as people fired up their furnaces or had bonfires, perhaps a last ceremonial hurrah before the bite of winter ended outdoor activities of that nature for another year.

The squash, of course, you could make into nice soup or add to casseroles or perhaps into a sauce for a nice macaroni dish and it’s one of those ingredients that if I ever see it used in a hot sauce, I’m immediately interested, instantly curious to see what they did with it. It is a tad unusual, but here, it is used to glorious effect, along with the pairing of some lovely tomatoes, to add a nice richness and depth, and, of course, the fresh Chipotles that are part of the proceedings. The first ingredient to all of this, it should be noted, is red Serranos, which I’m beginning to think more and more are underrated as a sauce ingredient. 

This sauce has a slight bit of grit from the seeds, but a nice amount of heft to it, creating a quite solid mouth feel. It is also very tame as far as heat, and they laid back a bit on the smoke, so one can use quite a lot of this sauce when experimenting and it is a very good sauce to do that with. The adage that if you make a good enough tasting sauce, the flexibility will be built in still holds true and I think you could have yourself a lovely time just playing around with different food pairings and this sauce, naturally going through all the suggestions on the label, of course. They are once again on the mark here with a truly unique and delicious sauce. 

Bottom line: A very accessible sauce that speaks to me on a number of levels, but with the low heat level, this is one probably more appealing to foodie first chileheads.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Four Sixes Salt Creek Hot Sauce Review

Four Sixes Salt Creek

Here’s another one that I threw on to get me over shipping on Amazon, for which it serves its purpose admirably. I had never heard of Four Sixes and bought it more or less because of the price and ingredients. Once I got around to opening it, I took a closer look at the label and saw B & G Foods, one of our many gigantic conglomerates, who also was the owner of Trappey, architects of one of my more beloved sauces, Red Devil. Examining it closer, I got more confused, as the entire Four Sixes line seems to be duplicates of existing product, so I wasn’t sure of B & G’s motivation. It wasn’t until I discovered that this had some tie to Taylor Sheridan, apparently an author and creator, though I am unfamiliar entirely with this person, that I began to understand and I imagine, given them going out of that way for that reference, this is akin to a vanity sauce.

If so, fine. I’m not that curious to discover anything about the Four Sixes Ranch or who Sheridan is, but instead, we will focus on the sauce, which is more or less just a solid example of the Louisiana-Style Cayenne sauce. Cayenne is one of the most used pods on the planet and small wonder why. It always tastes phenomenal and is extremely versatile, offering great flavor and, probably contributing to its popularity, generally fairly miniscule heat. If someone is confused about what a Louisiana-Style Cayenne sauce might be, this is a good example to show or give them. The consistency is the usual wateriness, to the point that it comes with a restrictor cap. The sauce itself is the normal red-orange hue, with bits of the pepper suspended. The flavor is very vinegar forward, but has no heat to speak of, but you can get a good sense of the 3 main ingredients, which are the aforementioned vinegar, the pod, and the salt. You need nothing else for this style of sauce, really.

There are definitely sauces I like better in this style and this one, for me, is a bit pedestrian and middle of the road, but at the risk of overusing a certain word, it’s fine, entirely inoffensive. It tastes like what it is, which is a mass market version of the Louisiana-Style Cayenne sauce, and unless I miss my guess, is most likely a relabel of existing Trappey stuff...which, if that’s the case, more to the good. Trappey sauces are generally pretty decent. Ultimately, I've had better, I've had worse, and this one is more or less in the middle of the pack, though the rather notable lack of heat would prevent me from repeating this.

Bottom line: This is not a sauce I would say to go out of your way to obtain, unless you’re a megafan of Sheridan, I guess, but does the job capably enough. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Butterfly Bakery Maple Sparkle Sriracha Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Maple Sparkle Sriracha

One of the nicer things is finding out that a company you deeply admire because of their immense culinary skill is also comprised of really good people doing good things. It just adds a little extra wonderful overtone to supporting them. While I greatly admired Butterfly Bakery before because they make what I feel are pretty consistently delicious sauces, I was not aware of the whole Genersaucity mission they have to give back...until I saw this sauce, a sauce which is to support the Pride Center of Vermont. In these current times we live in, I feel it more important than ever to take a stand and plant your flag in the name of diversity and inclusion, which has been a hallmark of my time and of this blog and of the FOH video series and the very channel itself and I commend Butterfly Bakery for their further monetary support to help foster a sense of belonging.

I’ve said it numerous times, that I’m very very tired of the flavor of sriracha sauce generally, because I had so very much of it in my younger years, but when I saw this sauce and saw what it supported, I instantly wanted in. Happily, what is here does not contain many of the regular sriracha characteristics of which I’m so tired. Instead, what we have here is a sauce that is very forward on the red Jalapenos, all of which is buffered by the grace notes of the garlic scapes and the maple syrup. The label suggests this sauce is intended to go on a wide spectrum of foods and I think, indeed, that the flexibility of this is pretty pronounced, far more than a regular sriracha would be. It is also far more delicious than any of the more perhaps authentic srirachas.

This is a very accessible sauce and it starts by being utterly delicious. I’ve long said that when someone is in the front part of their potential entry into being a chilehead, it helps if the sauces are tasty, as then they will want to use it more. This fulfills this mission quite handily. It reminded me very slightly of the richness of a ketchup, though it is not so sweet as one of those, but even moreso as a very nice cocktail sauce, smoother than those usually are and far tastier as well. I adore this sauce on seafood, but I think it would be equally at home on Asian foods, such as a nice Vietnamese spring roll or banh mi or on a burger, pizza, as well as generally anything fried. It’s one of the facets of great-tasting sauce, which naturally adds to the number of things it will go well with...presuming the food base itself tastes great, of course. Because it is only red Jalapenos, heat, which is typical for sauces of this type, is quite low.

Bottom line: Not very representative of the classic sriracha flavor, but to my mind better, and could serve as a fantastic entry point not only to that, but to hot sauces generally. It is ultimately a fantastic sauce for a wonderful gesture. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Woodstock Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Woodstock Ghost Pepper

This is one of those rare reviews that are a tad difficult to write, so I beg your indulgence if we bounce around a little...or a lot. I will start by saying there is something wrong with this sauce and by that, I don’t mean it has turned or oxidized or anything, but from a flavor perspective, this is the most floral Scorpion tasting “Ghost” anything I’ve ever had. Given that the vaunted Ghosties are my favorite superhot, I’ve also had a lot of them...and plenty of the Scorpions as well, before the flavor wore me down. 

So, when something goes wrong, it’s important to try to trace the understand the issue and trace the origin. I mean, mistakes do happen and it wouldn’t be the first time I got something incorrectly labeled. Here are a few distinct possibilities I consider most likely. The incorrect peppers could have been used for the sauce batch. The correct peppers were used, but the wrong label was put on the bottle. There was cross-pollination at play. I suppose the wrong plants could have been planted and/or labeled prior to harvest as well. In any case, I find it a tad frustrating on a couple of levels. The first one is that I’m largely disinterested in sauces that read that florally and second, whoever else got a bottle similar to mine is going to get an incorrect impression of Ghosties. 

As to the sauce itself, it’s somewhere between being thin and maybe medium thickness and flows very nicely. The color is also nice, the sort of red-orange hue one would want from a Louisiana-style, which is the type this sauce is closest to. It is also a quite punchy sauce, in addition to being overly floral, and I suspect this will be too much for normies. The flavor here is such that I don’t find it overly flexible and used it mainly where I would a Louisiana-style. It is fairly vinegar-forward, but much more pepper forward, just not flavored in a way I find enjoyable...and after fighting it for a month, I finally am tossing in the sponge. I knew it was going to be a problem the second I opened the cap and smelled those floral notes that made me instantly thing of a Scorpion and I wasn’t wrong. If you like the flavor of Scorpions more than I do, you might find it more solid than did I.

This also brings up another sort of issue, for me, anyway, in that if this is not, as I strongly suspect, an actual Ghost pepper sauce, how do I go about rating it? I hemmed and hawed for most of that month I mentioned before finally deciding to judge it based on what was in the glass, but if it is a mislabel, the rating won’t be indicative of the actual Ghost pepper sauce. Then another problem arises in that if I get another bottle and it’s the same thing, that is one more I have to bin...also, maybe that is what they meant. There is a huge potential here, as both this sauce and the Scotch Bonnet from them also (I think they used to be called the Tropical Pepper Company prior to Woodstock) were priced quite nicely, but if it’s not a sauce you find especially palatable, I suppose any price realistically is too high.

Bottom line: A massive disappointment and the first sauce of 2026 that is getting the boot.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2

Butterfly Bakery Honey Cantaloupe Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Honey Cantaloupe

As soon as I saw the name of this sauce, I was in. I love cantaloupe, especially fully ripened, and it’s an ingredient that I almost never see in hot sauces. Followers of this blog or of the FOH YouTube series (hopefully both) will know by now that I’m ever interested in unusual or exotic ingredients in hot sauces and picking one of my favorites, along with an ingredient more common, but still interesting to me, honey, is almost a surefire way to get my attention. So, it was with high hopes, given that the ace Butterfly Baker sauce makers were at the helm, that I picked this up.

Once I got the bottle, I wasted no time in cracking it open and it was love at first taste. They somehow managed to keep the taste of fresh and ripe cantaloupe, in all of its resplendent glory, along with very nice accents of the salt and vinegar, along with a slight fruitiness and slight backend heat from the red Habs. Honey didn’t play into things too much directly, but was there perhaps more as composite, to reinforce and bolster the cantaloupe, which is the main star. This is probably the best-tasting sauce I will have this year and herein, a bit of my design works to cross purposes a tad.

So, pairing melons to entrees is fairly rare. As part of a fruit tart or dessert, surely, but in terms of an entree...probably as rare of a thing as using those in a hot sauce, which is rare indeed. There are some nice and intriguing suggestions on the bottle, but to be as clear as I can be, I want whatever I use it on to be as unadorned and neutral as possible. For most sauces, I want them to elevate the food and increase my enjoyment of the flavors, but here, I want it to be a vehicle for this utterly delectable sauce and I don’t want flavor cancellation or things getting in the way. So, the various chicken forms, as long as they are not part of something more complex, like a sandwich, all to the good, same with pork chops, but this sauce is so delicious, it seems a shame to me to diminish it in anyway. 

Fruit-based sweet hots are naturally a tad on the less flexible side, moreso when the fruit is a melon. This is by nature, but when the sauce is so delicate and near-flawless in flavor profile that I don’t want to interfere with it in anyway, this also sort of lowers the flexibility, though perhaps a bit artificially. Where I’m going with this is the composite score will take this out of the running for SOTY contention, but it is unquestionably a sauce I love very dearly...and one that makes me, however briefly, reconsider using the 10 scale...

Bottom line: As long as one likes cantaloupe, this sauce is a godsend and a good showcase to show non-chileheads what is possible in the hands of a brilliant and gifted saucemaker.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Gindo's Strawberry Basil Hot Sauce Review

Gindo's Strawberry Basil

This is one I was admittedly a touch iffy on. Strawberry hot sauces can be one of those a bit difficult to place. I do find them often enjoyable on strawberry green salads, where this one would also be great, I suspect, especially if paired with a strawberry vinaigrette dressing, but if they are very sweet, the tendency is for them to gravitate more to the realm of desserts and I’m not the hugest sweets fan. Usually, if I get a bottle, it will be hanging out in there for a while and it’s kind of like cranberry sauces, in a way, I suppose. Not so much in flavor profile, but more in that I tend to view them in fairly narrow applications.

Still, this was Gindo’s we’re talking about here, one of my favorite sauce makers and one who, even if I don’t love the sauce, never really misses. And indeed, this is a very flavorful sauce. I’m a big fan of red Bells and that is the lead-off ingredient here, which bolsters the Habanero nicely, making this a very astute pairing. The strawberry here is back a bit, more of a delayed almost grace note, but a bit more prominent. It is happily that of fresh strawberries, my definite favorite way to have those. Strawberries can be a fairly delicate flavor and heavy processing tends to kill the best parts of the fruit flavor, I find. There is none of that here, which is a testament to the skill of the chef(s) involved. There are a lot of subtleties and the balance allows the various salts and vinegar to come forward a bit in the flavor. This is definitely not a hot sauce closer in line to the strawberry syrups, not even remotely.

This allows it to work especially well with chicken, which the sweeter ones do not particularly. I did try it as a dessert sauce a few times, which led to the near complete cancellation of the strawberry and left me with the flavor of the peppers, the vinegar, and the salts...interesting, but not something I would want to regularly have. Interestingly, the basil doesn’t really show up at all in the flavor here...or at least in the various ways I tried it. Heat-wise, this is only Habanero, so it is quite moderate. 

Bottom line: This is a sauce I view favorably and find a quite flavorful sauce, but not one I can say I love. If you like real strawberry flavor in a hot sauce, but don’t want it on the sweet side, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Butterfly Bakery Vermont Habs Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Vermont Habs

I went in to this one kind of thinking the sauce would be thicker...I’m not sure why I thought that...the relative density of sauce is not always easily established with an unopened full bottle that has the shrink intact, but sometimes I get these ideas in my mind that become a bit difficult to shake...at least until the bottle is open and once is confronted with the evidence. 

This one is maybe not the thickness I was thinking it would be nor is it quite the watery nature of a Cayenne Lousiana-style, though with the modicum of ingredients: pepper, vinegar, salt, I suppose it is perhaps closest to that in application. There is quite a bit more pulp here, more body, which gives the sauce a very nice mouth feel if/when taken straight. I don’t suppose too many will actually do this, but it is quite nice and you can get a good feel for the subtleties of this sauce, which you will assuredly not get if/when you use it on food. 

This sauce, perhaps more than any other I’ve had in recent memory, puts the often-maligned and ubiquitous Habanero in its best possible setting and light. Here, they are using red Habaneros, definitely the supreme variant of that pod, and one can get a grasp of the fruitness and hint of sweetness from those in full ripeness. They are the first ingredient and front and center and if you are able to find a food pairing that will let this be the dominant flavor, one will be well-rewarded.

What I found was that the flavor would tend to vanish a bit in actual use. Even though there is a healthy vinegar hit up front, it fades quite rapidly, which is not always desirable in the usual suspects for applications of a Louisiana-style sauce. Rather, this sauce tends to meld with whatever you’re using it on, which is highly desirable in other settings. For instance, this is one of the few sauces that I think does an excellent job of stepping on tomato-based Italian sauces without interfering with those distinctive flavors. When it comes to heavier food, though, that same tendency hampers its ability to cut through richness, which is one of the attributes I’m most after, as I quite enjoy balance in dishes. 

This is an utterly delicious sauce, though, another absolute gem from one of the more masterful saucemakers out there, and I had a great deal of fun trying it in almost every setting I could think of, including Mexican, though I’m not really a fan of astringency there.. It is slightly too loose for stuff like pizza, unless you’re really careful, but there is a good amount of flexibility. Heat-wise, since we’re only deal with Habaneros, it is pretty moderate, so it should provide a nice accessibility for most people.

Bottom line: Yet another excellent entry from one of the more impressive sauce-makers out there. Those with an affinity for gourmet flavors in a vinegar forward sauce will find much to love here.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Hot Winter Original Hot Sauce Review

Hot Winter Original

This is yet another reward for having an open mind, I think, in that the first sauce I had from this company, the Hatch variant (reviewed elsewhere here), I didn’t find particularly impressive. While I didn’t write the company off entirely, I did put them pretty far on the backburner for a time. Once I had the Bulgarian Carrot (also reviewed elsewhere here) from them, it brought them more to the fore and I thought I should probably get the original, since I enjoyed that other sauce so much. This was a quite wise decision, as things turn out.

When sauce makers designate a sauce as “Original” or something along those lines, it suggests a sort of flagship, an initial or perhaps best foot forward sauce, to introduce you to the company. While this maybe doesn’t mean definitively that it is their very best product, in the case of both Hot Winter and Gindo’s, it does serve as an unparalleled flavor platform, a sort of “starting at the top,” if you will, and I can definitely appreciate that all makers are trying to get fans of their product, which will hopefully mean repeat consumers, even perhaps someone who is willing to fly the flag and maybe make some recommendations to other people to similarly give it a go.

Here, we have the Hot Winter pepper, a varietal exclusive to them, as far as I know, that has a fairly moderate heat, but also a very nice sort of sweetness to it. This is one of the more flavorful peppers out there used to make sauce, by my reckoning, and they very wisely do little to alter it. In many ways, speaking generally to the entire line-up, the sauces here read almost as much as purees, being thick and chunky, for the most part. They can tend a tad towards the gritty, with the seeds being left intact, but that slight downturn in flexibility is perhaps more than made up for by the heft and mouth feel. The sauces seem fairly well orchestrated and I suspect this is intentional.

I quite like the flavor of this, but there are a number of places I don’t particularly want grittiness added. While this particular sauce is pretty far from rough, you are going to hit seeds and depending on what you’re pairing with this, it could be a tad jarring. I personally find this wonderful in sub sandwiches and on pizza, which can take the grit a touch better, but on things like mac and cheese or other creamy dish foods, I would prefer it not be there at all. This does particularly well on meats and I think you could put it with just about any of them. Indeed, if this sauce was a tad smoother, it would definitely bump the flexibility higher and we’d be talking about another SOTY candidate, but as it is, it just missed...still a very high water mark and overall, an excellent sauce.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for a flavorful and delicious taste adventure that is fairly moderate in terms of heat, look no further.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Gindo's Bacon Bourbon Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s Bacon Bourbon Ghost 

I opened the bottle up and a strange thing happened. I went in expecting some smoky notes, which is typical of most bacon sauces, but there was none to be had here. At the time, I kind of shrugged and went on into my sampling and testing process for the sauce and largely forgot about that part...all the way up until I shot the video for it. Not quite sure what happened, but there are neither bacony notes nor bacon at all in this sauce, nor is it listed in the ingredient list, so understanding the name eludes me a tad.

For all that, it is a quite flavorful sauce. There are yellow and red Bell, Cayenne, Habanero, and Ghosties all in the mix, with the Ghosties providing the slight bitter superhot notes and the fairly moderate heat that is here and with everything providing a nice flavor base. This is another very pepper-forward sauce, which I quite enjoy, and as I got further into the bottle, I started to get some of the tropical pepper vibes, a fruity aspect without it being particularly sweet, which I attribute to the Habaneros in Gindo’s skilled hands.

I do admit to some misgivings with this sauce, as I have not had too many bacon sauces I’ve loved or even enjoyed a great deal and booze in sauces I find more of a minefield than an ingredient especially enjoyable, but I trusted Gindo’s with the latter of those two and was very curious to see what they would do with the bacon as an ingredient. My curiousity will have to remain unsatisfied in that regard, at least for now, it would seem.

This is still a lovely concoction, a very bright, lively, and wonderfully vibrant sauce. There are a number of suggestions on the label, many of which I could see, but some, such as the breakfast sandwiches, I’m a lot less certain about. I half wonder if they were made with the idea that this sauce would have some intense bacon smokiness to it, which would meld pretty well with all of the things mentioned. I do appreciate that they’re there, even if I found these slightly off-kilter comparatively. For me, I didn’t want to tread on this sauce, but rather use it in settings where it could shine, so things like chicken and fish and lighter flavors generally seemed to work well. I strongly feel this could also work spectacularly on a nice sub sandwich, which I also think is one of the more underrated applications for hot sauces generally.

Bottom line: I definitely would like to try the version of this that actually has bacon, but for what’s here, I find this another flavor marvel from Gindo’s, though perhaps not quite up to the highest levels of some of the other sauces. Absolutely worth a go if you love the flavor of pods.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6