Sauced & Glazed Marty's Fusion Fuel Hot Sauce Review

Sauced & Glazed Marty's Fusion Fuel 

In August of 2022, I reviewed Doc’s Fusion Fuel (link in TOC at upper right), which is the flagship sauce. I found it seeming to want to straddle the line between a hot sauce and a barbecue sauce, which is fine. I didn’t find it particularly hot, so the intent of this sauce, which wants to be a milder version of that, I find kind of baffling. Since it has directly invoked the comparison, I think we’ll roll with that for a bit. In fact, I wasn’t overly interested in this sauce at all after reading through the ingredient list, but I figured since I did the Doc’s, I may as well do this as companion piece. I will say now that my recommendation is strongly towards the Doc’s, which at least makes a flavorful pass at what it’s attempting. 

To the comparison, both have the annoying foil labels that like to bounce whatever light source you’re trying to use to read it. This one makes a mention of giving it to kids and the website calls it “family-friendly,” which is one of the more nonsensical things I think I’ve seen for a product purporting to be a hot sauce. So, the intent here is a sort of “my first hot sauce” vibe? I will take them at their word and assume this is what they meant by putting out a milder version of an already mild product.

I’m all for accessibility and gateways for the chile-curious, as I have repeatedly noted, but we have a few problems with the approach here. If you lower the heat of something that already has fairly low heat, you’re left with no heat, which is what we have here. Chipotle is the only heat source and it is the third ingredient, so what heat is there will be and is minimal. The ingredient panels are the same between sauces, save for Doc’s Fusion Fuel having red Habaneros as the heat driver, again in the 3rd spot, with the addition of smoke flavor. Of the two, Doc’s reads as more notably smoky as well.

It’s nice they’re trying to make a product for children interested in chiles, I guess, but to my mind, the best gateway sauces are the ones that are flavorful and taste great. While Doc’s was a definitely push towards a barbecue sauce, as noted, this one seems to move from that nearly entirely. What is left is a sort of rough very tomatoey, slightly bitter, and noticeably unrefined collection of the various powders as notes on that platform, an approach I find baffling. I’m not sure what happened here, exactly, but what is here I don’t find works as either a hot sauce or a barbecue sauce. It is probably closest to the latter of those, but not a very good version there, either. This is not to say it is a bad or unpalatable sauce, but more a confusing and overall somewhat mediocre one. It is not one I find especially enjoyable and will probably be binning. 

Bottom line:  I might be wrong about who this is for and it’s perhaps more meant as a novelty companion piece for fans of the Back To The Future movie franchise and not intended to be consumed. I found it remarkably underwhelming and an unnecessary alteration to the Doc’s.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2 

Mikey V's Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Mikey V’s Pineapple Habanero

I like pineapple a great deal, and hot sauce, of course, and pairing pineapple with Habanero was a very big deal in the hot sauce world for quite a while. It seems less so now, especially once mango and Habanero sort of came into the fold, but I’ve had a lot of both styles. For a while, before things started to drift more towards mango Habanero, I had the idle thought that I might just wind up covering every single pineapple Habanero sauce that was around, sans onions, naturally. Sweet hots and fruit-based sweet hots, where these sauces usually reside, are among my favorite styles, so I consider myself well-versed enough in these to sort of have internal sub-categories of the style. This particular one fits more into the “pineapple juice” area. 

While it is clearly fruit-based, I can’t say it’s a sweet hot, though. This one reads a lot more as salty pineapple, which reminds me a bit of the churrascarias that put a rock salt water spray on the pineapple and roast them on a spit, twirling on a trompo. I don’t think that’s exactly what the intent was here, though...I’m not sure quite what the intent was, but there are quite a few ingredients that don’t really show up in the flavor, which is vinegar, pineapple, salt, with the vinegar making things more tangy than a blast, and a slightly bitter note here and there from the Habs. I quite like this flavor, but I have a bit of a problem with this sauce.

One of my favorite places to put the tropical fruit-based sweet hots is on pizza and I’m always happy when I’m able to do that. With the more watery and loose sauces, such as this one, that is right off the table, as the sauce will just run and sog out the crust, if you’re not exceedingly careful. Another issue with the sort of “pineapple juice”sub-category I think this falls into is that you tend to lose concentration of flavor. Sure, this can mean saucing more, but what happens when a sponge is saturated and you try to pour more water on it? I think this sauce would be dramatically improved by being a good two to three times thicker, go for a nice medium body to it. As it is now, it probably should have come with a restrictor cap. 

The best places I found this are generally with meats where you’d want pineapple, so things like chicken and pork, grilled pineapple slabs, or mixed drinks. For the foods where you’re not so worried about the sauce pooling and puddling, this can make a welcome addition, though I found the flavor frequently got lost in things like breading of tendies, for instance. It is a touch on the hotter side than these kinds of sauces, specifically the ones more like juice, tend to be, but I’d say more like 1 - 1.5, rather than racing towards a two. It is a quite nice, pleasant heat.

Bottom line: While I think this is overall a solid sauce, particularly in the flavor direction, the consistency definitely works against it. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate (Hot) Hot Sauce Review

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate Hot

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two and a half years since I did the Mild version of this, review available here: https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2023/10/black-eyed-susan-death-by-chocolate.html, but it was worth the wait...way, way worth the wait. This is an extremely well-done sauce, very excellently delivered, and quite unlike anything else out there...just like the aforementioned Mild version. In fact, I’m tempted to just say to read that other review, because everything else applies, with the main difference being this one has a more satisfying heat. This one hovers more between a 1 and a 2, while the other was perhaps even under a 1 slightly, but both are utterly delicious. This also, incidentally, makes their ratings identical.

If I had to pick between the two, it would be this one, on account of that nicer heat level, but I also like the flavor of this slightly better. The more food adventurer you have in your blood, the more you will appreciate this, as there’s a lot going on and it’s a great deal to fun to play with some of the more meat-forward Mexican-style dishes that might bear some mole’ influence, like carne asada, carnitas, and Al Pastor. The sauce is a bit sweeter than most of the mole sauces I’ve encountered, but I found it a wonderful addition generally where I tried it. 

Bottom line: Picking up directly from the Milder version (again, read that review, as nearly all of it applies), this is, for me, the more preferable version of a thoroughly unique sauce, featuring one of the lesser used and undersung pods out there, the venerable Chocolate Habanero.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6 

Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost

I had noticed this brand on various grocery shelves here and there for a while, but the flavors always seemed a bit tame, so I thought it was maybe a boutique brand that was geared more towards intriguing flavor combinations, but not necessarily a heat that I would find satisfying. I gave them no more thought until I saw them on the hallowed shelves of BYT and noticed some other flavors that sounded intriguing. This was the one I picked up as introduction to the company, given that the ingredients up front were Ghosties, Chipotle, dates, and, inexplicably, cumin, but naturally I disregarded that last one.

After getting into it a bit, I think this sauce may be another that is somewhat miscategorized. For me, this is much more in line with what I recognize as a steak sauce than a hot sauce. It is fairly astringent, but like most steak sauces, the various ingredients are part of one unifying whole, an amalgamation of flavors rather than one individual component, other than maybe the black pepper. Interestingly, in both smell and aftertaste, that is the one ingredient that tended to read the strongest and hang in there the most, but it is not an especially black peppery sauce. 

What I was most excited for was the idea of having something smoky and perhaps leaning into the dates, which is a fruit I quite love, and with Ghosties in the name, I expected some degree of heat as well. Heat is here, but quite minimal. This is not going to be challenging for anyone in that respect, I wouldn’t think. The dates appear to be here more as part of the texture and body of the overall composite, rather than an individual flavor note. I was able to detect some grace notes of carrots here and there as well, which was interesting. Of note, apple is also in the mix here as well, but I think it’s more like the date, providing body to the whole. To be sure, this is not a particular sweet sauce, either.

I tried it in the usual places, but it didn’t work the way I was hoping, until it tripped over in my brain that I was applying it to the wrong foods. Once I switched over, things fell more into place. I thought the sauce was nice and the flavor pleasant, but it also seems to me “wrong,” for lack of better word, unless it is on something like a burger or maybe some pork, generally the same sorts of food where you might reach for a steak sauce. There it is excellent and unless they were to reformulate it and lean much more heavily into the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, which are also on the label, I think they’d be better off calling it a steak sauce instead of hot sauce.

Bottom line: Very intriguing introduction to this company, with a blend of ingredients that are somewhat unusual to behold for a hot sauce. If you stick to where you’d normally use a steak sauce, this delivers a quite lovely element to things.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

The General's Berry Breach Hot Sauce Review

The General’s Berry Breach

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

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

I have a stance about fruit-based sauces and it is that I think they should always lean towards the sweeter side of things. Now, admittedly, this is my direct preference and does not preclude me trying and sometimes enjoying sauces that don’t fit into this characteristic exactly, but that is what a not inconsiderable part of me wants when I see fruit as an ingredient in a sauce. For this, I was very interested to see what the result would be with their first fruit-based sauce, given this company’s very distinctive approach to the other sauces. 

The General’s sauces all tend to have a fairly notable characteristic in the flavor note that I’m fairly sure is due to the fermentation and how much mash is going into the respective bottles. This sauce joins the others in that and like most of the others, is relatively few ingredients. We have blueberries, Habanero mash, vinegar, honey, and salt. The honey is an interesting addition, given that it is far too subtle of a flavor to be there as a tasting note and instead winds up as sweetener. Most of the flavor here is Habanero, with a salted blueberry side note. There is a degree of bitterness here from the Habs as well that I could have lived without, even with the honey probably at least tempering that somewhat. This is definitely far from a sweet sauce, however. As far as heat, what is there is mostly immediately, but with Habaneros comes a slight build as well, which this does. I would call it a nice warmth, but not particularly challenging.

As with many other sauces that skew away from sweetness, I think it works against the sauce here and it would have been better served to lean a lot harder into the sweet side. I know, I know military-theme, tough guys, rah rah and all that, but that’s marketing and irrelevant to what’s actually inside the glass. I think had they skipped the honey and instead used pure maple syrup and also more of it, the result would have been a lot closer to my happy zone. I definitely enjoy what is here, which works nicely on both chicken and especially red meat, but making it sweeter would not have detracted from those and would have also positioned it nicely against the other sauces in the line-up. It also would have opened up things for dessert, which I assume even military rah rah tough guys also enjoy from time to time. 

Bottom line: The first foray from The General’s into a fruit-based sauce was as interesting as I was expecting. While solid, it ultimately does not quite hit the spot I was hoping.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Butterfly Bakery Mustard Cranberry Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Mustard Cranberry

This is a fascinating sauce and one of the few that comes to mind which places the Ghosties front and center from a flavor perspective. Most of the time, when sauces use this ingredient, it is more as accent, if used for flavor, but generally, the idea is that it will provide some superhot heat. Here, it delivers both heat and flavor, which is enhanced considerably by the lovely Carmen peppers also in the mix. To be sure, while the heat is not quite what I would call chilehead only, there is little question a superhot is in the mix and I suspect it make take normies unaware, if they are not prepared somewhat for it.

So we already have that profile, which gets us some pod fruitiness, along with some bitter superhot notes, and then in comes the mustard and cranberry. Mustard and the quinine of cranberry tend to be fairly forceful notes, with the latter of the two borderline unpalatable in its raw form. There is quite a bit of bitterness to be had with those as well, so I was greatly curious of the direction this sauce would take. It is one of the more intriguing combinations I’ve had, in that you have the pod flavors, as noted, then grace notes of the mustard and a not-exactly-but-close sort of berry quality from the cranberries. Altogether, it sort of defies categorization.

I will be frank here. The enjoyment of this sauce rather greatly depends on where you put it. I don’t find it an overly flexible sauce, as there are definitely some strong flavors going on here. Pairing notes suggest German food, which I think is definitely the good call. Some nice smoked ham, some outstanding cervelat, maybe some brats are all on the money. Rye bread is also a suggestion and I do think sandwiches are one of the places it excels. If you happen to be making a sandwich where you would want both mayo and mustard, for instance, making up a spicy mayo with this and using that as a sandwich spread, especially if you’re pairing it with a nice creamy cheese, like a high quality Havarti, is going to put this is fantastic territory. In terms of pairing, just think of a food where you’d want a fairly strong mustard to go and you’d about have it. 

Bottom line: One of the more unique sauces (I can think of nothing quite like it) out there, but a bit narrow in terms of application scope. While the heat level isn’t overbearing, some familiarity with the bite of Ghosties would definitely be in order before stepping in.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Lauren Urban Farms Pink Panther Hot Sauce Review

Lauren Urban Farms Pink Panther

The naming convention of this sauce I find a little curious. There is no connection with the motion picture franchise, nor to Peter Sellers, nor to Henry Mancini, not even to the animated series from United Artists. The color of this sauce is decidedly not pink. Panthers were not a part of the creation of this sauce, which is understandable, given that they don’t actually exist and the word itself translates to leopard and/or jaguars. There is a genus of panthera, but that doesn’t refer to any specific big cat...all very curious indeed.

It is here that I will do that rare thing and directly refer you to the sauce makers website, where we can see pictures of this saucing, utilizing some nifty peppers, in creation and can at least understand the pink part of things. There are a couple of pods here that I don’t think I’ve ever run across before, certainly not in a sauce. They are the purple heirloom Bells, which I may have had in the past in another setting, though I don’t recall specifically now, and the buena mulata pepper, which is an offshoot of the Cayenne. The name is kind of fascinating as it refers in direct translation to a “good,” which is the buena part, though in this context it appears to often mean merry as well, female person of mixed African and European heritage, the “mulata” part. How this got applied to an ornamental pepper pod seems like it would be a fascinating story.

In any case, as far as its usage in a sauce, I found it to be very curious. There are definitely shades of Cayenne, but almost more like Cayenne-lite or maybe a more tamed version of Cayenne. It seems closest to a Lousiana-style or Cajun, given how extremely loose and watery the sauce itself is and this is another that probably needed to come with a restrictor cap. There were a lot of subtleties that were strongly reminiscent of home-canned pickles and the juice thereof, but not overtly...just subtly. I find the flavor here to be fascinating and somewhat light and delicate on the palate. Regrettably, in my experience, it also meant that it would wind up getting lost with various foods and after flavor cancellation, I’d be left with a vaguely peppery vinegar aspect. This is a shame, as the sauce is quite lovely in tone, but also means pairing must needs be judicious. There more you can get out of its way and let it shine, the better, so think some nice roast chicken, but I do believe it will also be exquisite in some vinaigrettes and dressings as well. 

Bottom line: I love coming across new pods and quite enjoyed my experience with this. It perhaps resembles most a Lousiana-style Cayenne or Cajun sauce, though a far more delicate one.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Savir Foods Churro Ancho Dessert Hot Sauce Review

Savir Foods Churro Ancho

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

Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRIWsYDAx7M

This is a sauce I was not expecting to like and wasn’t aware it existed until very recently. I’d seen other Savir Foods hot sauces here and there, but I noted their lineup seemed a bit light and a lot of them had onions, which was kind of the end of things...or so I thought. I really like this idea of dessert sauces, which is a relatively new kind of thing or direction, if you like, for the hot sauce world. Certainly, I have covered a few others on this blog, but most hot sauces are not really intended for that and usage there winds up being more incidental than anything else. 

The main reason I didn’t expect to like this was the idea of the cinnamon. I’m not a huge fan of that and a little goes a long, long way for me. I’m not a fan of cinnamon things, particularly, and find that cinnamon gets used as a hammer too frequently for my taste. I don’t keep any cinnamon powders or sticks at all at hand and if I come across them in a recipe, will usually just delete that part. When checking this one out, I noted it also had Ghosties, Cayenne, and dates, the last of which is fairly unusual for sauces, though I’ve run into it twice already this year (the other one being the Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost hot sauce, which may or may not be posted by the time you read this - check TOC at right). This is not a particularly hot sauce, though, just has a nice comforting bit of warmth in the velvety mouth feel it delivers. 

This sauce uses the dates better. The label describes the cinnamon as a warm cinnamon and I have no idea what that means, but it does seem gentler than in other things I’ve had it in. I think the cinnamon is used very nicely here and it melds with the the sugar and fruit and the avocado oil and possibly the nutritional yeast in a very lovely and smooth way. I found this, to my great surprise, quite enjoyable and tried it on a number of pastries. I also tried it on ice cream, which was a bust, but if you stick to using it anywhere you might normally use or want cinnamon, this should work the trick quite nicely indeed. Obviously, this precludes savory foods, but by calling this as a dessert hot sauce out of the gate, a reduced flexibility comes more or less built in.

Bottom line: This is an amazingly lovely dessert sauce, in addition to being one of the happier surprises I’ve come across in recent memory. If you like or love cinnamon, you will probably get more out of this sauce, but I did find it astonishingly pleasant.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Monoloco Matasanos Hot Sauce Review

Monoloco Matasanos

Note: This sauce appears on Season 23 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFpzH0lw2M 

It’s hard to think of a flavor profile that would be more contrary to my palate, excluding things that actively make me physically ill, like onions. As I’ve noted, I’m not generally a fan of Indian flavorings or food, and the more forceful those particular spice blends tend to be in things, the less I find it palatable. Here, it is quite prominent and it is backed by one of the more bitter aspects I’ve run across in a sauce. This could be the superhot bitter of the Reapers, but I strongly suspect it might also be at least partly due to a mix of dry spices at play. Whatever the cause, I find great difficulty in locating enjoyment when using it.

It is immediately blazing, quite beyond what any non-chilehead will likely find either tolerable or enjoyable, so definite chilehead only territory. It was in the 9 slot on the show, which is sometimes meaningful and sometimes not, but here it is pretty reflective of the punchiness this sauce delivers. Heat-wise I found it rather pleasant, but accompanied by that bitter, that bit of enjoyment dissipated almost immediately. I half wonder if them using oil, which should create a smoothing effect, might be interfering with the integration of the dried spices somewhat, but in any case, there is a slight graininess to the sauce as well, which further doesn’t help matters. 

Where I think this would be in best use would be to add it to a sauce in the Indian style of food. I think it would work exceedingly well there blending in with the other spices and with its quite hot nature, one would not need to use a great amount of it. Obviously, that is very much not my thing, so I’m not the one to try this out, but for other chileheads who may like Indian cuisine more than me, I think they could find much to enjoy here and presumably, that would also temper the highly bitter nature of this sauce.

Bottom line: This is the second sauce from Monoloco that is very much not for me. While I found it slightly more enjoyable than the XXX (reviewed elsewhere here), it is going to be getting gone as soon as I film the Q2 2026 Wing Thing.  

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 0
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Earthquake Spices Biohazard Hot Sauce Review

Earthquake Spices Biohazard

I think this review might be more random thoughts in nature, as I don’t find this works particularly well as an actual hot sauce. It is very loose, quite watery, needs a restrictor cap it doesn’t come with, is very vinegar forward, and is a fruit sauce that has no discernible sweetness, which is a big-time no-no in my book. Happily, even though it lists apple cider vinegar, the stinky foot aspect of that particular vinegar doesn’t read at all, but that is kind of where my happiness ends. If you have this sauce solo, you can definitely get a nice blast of salt, with grace notes of a sort of amalgamation of the berries, and an undercurrent of the superhot bitter of the  mighty mighty Reapers, which also make this sauce punchy enough to be better reserved for chileheads. I’m going to stop well short of suggesting it is a salt or berry or Reaper flavored vinegar, but vinegar is quite forward in the flavor profile. That flavor profile is not bad, per se, as much as I find it confusing. There is enough fruit flavor,especially if you hit one of the fruit chunks that underlines the potential and what could have been, that it needs to be accounted for and combined with the runniness of the sauce, I found it fairly challenging to use, though definitely it worked best on fried foods, like chicken tendies. To be sure, though, I vastly preferred other sauces there as well. I will definitely be using it as a chilehead vinegar, however, in composite recipes going forward and I think it will be very interesting in something like a quinoa salad dressing or possibly as part of cole slaw dressing.

I find a lot of amusement with the label, which lists the sauce as “Bioharzard,” which is not a word. I looked up the website, where it is listed and pictured correctly as “Biohazard,” so this is probably a typo. Another typo is in the ingredient list, which spells raspberry as “rasberries.” The scale has at the highest level, a mushroom cloud, on a scale trying to reference piquancy, but titled using a word that references to measurements of planetary vibrations. Obviously, that has nothing to do with heat, so the entire thing reads with a bit of dissonance. Then there is the “CONSUME AT YOUR OWN RISK” tag, which is probably meant to indicate that the sauce will contain some good heat, but in light of other elements, has some additional connotations. Finally, it is stated that this sauce will be “great on everything,” and I usually don’t get too much into label copy, but this particular one is bringing me a good deal of merriment. I can’t imagine anyone wanting something along these lines on a pizza or a bagel and lox. 

Bottom line: This one needs a lot more refinement. I can’t imagine what was in the bottle I had was what they envisioned when they set out to make this. There is conceptually some good stuff here, and if they re-ordered the ingredients, such as putting the berries first, then the vinegar, then sugar, and then the rest of the stuff, they would probably be on to something...as well as having a sauce with more appropriate body. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2