Tabasco Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Tabasco Habanero Hot Sauce

I don't think I especially owe Tabasco anything. They probably were my introduction to hot sauce, but I recall being very turned off the first time I had the watery vinegary stuff. I'm not a huge fan of the Tabasco pepper in general and were it not for some coupons, I probably wouldn't have gotten it at all. Still, I like to try new foods and the last thing I had from Tabasco prior to the Chipotle I reviewed recently was the Jalapeno, which I thought tasted ok, but didn't have any heat and thus made there little point in me getting it again.

Much like the Blazin' Saddles Tabasco/Habanero sauce I also reviewed in this blog, this one comes in a dropper bottle, in this case the traditional Tabasco brand "cologne" bottles. Most times I dislike that, but in this case, I think it works well to control the sauce, certainly much better than the Blazin' Saddles. Aside from that, there is little to add to that review. In comparison, it is a little less harsh, a lot less hot and costs about double. Aside from that, the two sauces are more like brothers than distant cousins. The ingredients are very similar, though the Tabasco lists onions, though, as well all know, with how thin Tabasco likes to run their sauces, this means onion powder (which I can tolerate considerably better than actual onions...at least in small doses).

Bottom line: Much like the Blazin' Saddles, I don't mind having this on hand, but it certainly is no replacement for anything. This is the hottest of Tabasco's line and there is precious little heat to be had there at all and the taste, while tolerable and better than the Original, is nothing spectacular. Basically a take it or leave it sauce.

Breakdown:

      Heat level: 2
      Flavor: 6
      Flexibility: 7
      Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Wrath Of The Tiger Hot Sauce Review

Wicked Cactus Head Hunter's Paradise Hot Sauce

If anyone out there has been reading along, you may have noted that I've been on the search for a while now for a vaunted Asian style sweet chili sauce that I had a number of years ago, loved and couldn't find again. I've gone through several sweet garlic chili sauces and sweet chili sauces in the hopes, maybe not so much that one of them was it, but that one of them was close or along the same level. After miss after miss after miss, I finally have something worthy.

This sauce is by far the closest, with lovely chunks of the Thai peppers, dried, of course and some additional items like ginger and horseradish (which appears very little) to round out things. It is a good balance of sweet and sort of hot. This is another sauce from Wicked Cactus that has very different levels of heat in the beginning stages as it does the rest of the bottle, despite heavy agitation. This is not enough to make me not buy this, but it is prevalent enough for me to note.

I've found this to work very well across a fairly wide variety of dishes, Asian, of course, but some others I didn't expect. It is a very good tasting sauce and I'm nearing the end of the bottle already. This is the first entry in their line I would consider buying again and after the dismal performance of the earlier two bottles I opened and reviewed from them, it's good to see.

Bottom line: While this is not an exact replica of that earlier mystery sauce, I think this may be the closest I'm going to get and I'm thrilled to death to find it. There are a number of things that I could think of to improve, but nothing else is even in the running.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7

Head Hunter's Paradise Hot Sauce Review

Wicked Cactus Head Hunter's Paradise Hot Sauce

In another in an increasingly long line of sauces I acquired as a result of the Ultimate Hot Sauce competition going now at www.scottrobertsweb.com, we see a return to the fruit-based sauces. I admit that I was somewhat excited after reading Scott's review of it. Scott makes it sound positively glorious and perhaps it was when he reviewed it in 2010. Fast forward 3 years to now, though and we have a different story.

Gone is that vibrant sort of orangey color of the sauce in his pictures. Replaced instead is a sort of dingy brown with flecks of dark bits, which I presume is the roasted red bell pepper. There is no dropper cap, which is good because it would be largely impossible to get this out otherwise. The texture of the sauce is also considerably different than it appears in the spoon in his picture. Instead, it comes out largely in glops of stringy pineapple fibers. Habanero, instead of being the third ingredient, as it was on his bottle, is now gone entirely, though I presume it was a label misprint as the last ingredient on mine simply reads "Smoked" and I'm assuming that is to be smoked habanero. The text is also in a slightly different font as well. I know sauce manufacturers like to refine things for various reasons, a motivation I would hope is improvement, but I can't help but think that I would rather have had the sauce Scott had.

Regardless of those differences, this is not a bad sauce by any means. It seems very flexible and winds up making a nice compliment, especially in heat, to a variety of foods that I had little hope for. That the bottle is nearly gone as I write this should be some testament to its tastiness and versatility. The sweetness, while present, is far from overbearing, yet it sometimes will make things taste "off", especially in conjunction with the apple cider vinegar. The smokiness aspect and the nice degree of heat, again, far from scorching, are enough to offset some of the less appealing aspects of this. By itself, it is a somewhat strange conglomeration of the oranges, vinegar, pineapple and smoked habaneros, but when added to food, it does tend to blend well and add to the flavor and enjoyment, which is what a good hot sauce should do. It is not good enough to stand alone, however, to use as a dipping sauce, for instance...

Bottom line: When this bottle is gone, I don't know that I will get another. I do not enjoy the neck of the bottle being clotted constantly, no matter how well the sauce is agitated and the gloppiness makes it more of a challenge to get a desired amount than I would like. The taste is not spectacular but nor is it sub par. It is another sauce that I would label overall as just ok.

Breakdown:

        Heat level: 4
        Flavor: 5
        Flexibility: 6
        Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Rogue Hot Sauce Review

High River Sauces Rogue Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appeared in Season Two of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-7zgMqNKPA

This is the last of the High River line I bought for the occasion of the Ultimate Hot Sauce Tournament brewing at Scott Robert's website (www.scottrobertsweb.com) and admittedly, I have been putting this review off for a while. Part of it is because I keep finding new and (more) exciting stuff but part of it is because I'm not quite sure what to make of this.

Like the Grapes Of Wrath and Tears Of The Sun from this company (both reviewed in this blog), my feelings are a bit less than glowing. Possibly fruit-based sauces, though I dearly love sweet-hot, is not going to be something I'm going to be a good audience for. Rogue is intriguing in the blend of Scorpion peppers and blood oranges, which I wouldn't have anticipated being chosen, but I think the combination works. Maybe it doesn't work well for me, but it does work to an extent.

The sauce has an odd taste to it that I quickly tire of. It's not bad, per se, more that I just don't want to have it repeatedly or to a great extent. It's not bad enough that I want to pitch the bottle, yet not good enough to use very often or buy again. It does not mesh fantastically with too many foods, which makes it a bit hard to use. It does work well for a chicken nuggets or strips dipping sauce but doesn't have enough complexity to handle some of the other fare I run across. The sweetness frequently becomes too distracting.

It reminds me a lot of the Asian sweet-chili garlic sauces, in a lot of ways, in that while not gloppy, it has some of that same "feel" and a bit of that kind of taste. I think an attempt was made to cut that down with the vinegar, but a higher quality vinegar would have been better here, I think, perhaps a nice red wine vinegar. The Scorpion peppers don't take long to kick in and smash that comparison, but the relation to the Asian sweet sauce is still present to an extent.

The Scorpion peppers are really the highlight here and those are very nice. It takes a while before those to start roaring, which is nicely done. You can get into a decent amount of the sauce before you begin to get really lit up yet there is plenty of heat, heat enough to let you know loud and clear that it's present and accounted for.

Bottom line: There are some highs and lows here and overall, balancing those aspects, this is sort of an average sauce. I wouldn't turn it down but nor would I seek it out and if there was something better, I wouldn't give it a second look. Still, not a ton of people using the Scorpions and this is another very nicely done and well-crafted sauce, even if I find it underwhelming.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Firehouse Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's Firehouse Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1kHG6bq-Kqs

This is one I had really high hopes for and was greatly anticipating. I haven't had anything from CaJohn's that I thought was less than good to great and haven't even heard of anyone else finding anything from them much different than me. Add to this the awards this particular sauce has won, some of them recently and the fact that it seems like a Louisiana-style sauce and I start thinking that this could be a contender to dethrone the mighty heavyweight champ, Red Devil. Maybe?

No.

McCormick's (the nation-wide dry spice seller) makes a product called Hot Shot!. I've gone through countless bottles of it and find it one step from essential for a lot of things that I cook, especially crockpot chili. It is nothing you would ever want to use by itself, because it has a very distinct and bitter taste, but it imparts a decent heat and a very nice flavor, if used in moderation, again because of that characteristic bitter hallmark. Despite having cracked pepper, it doesn't have a lot of that freshly ground oily pepper flavor that we all know and love as much as it has something else...McCormick's describes the dominant flavor profiles as "Heat" and "Woody." Firehouse tastes a lot to me like liquified Hot Shot!.

It doesn't really have that degree of heat, paltry as I may find that now, but it does have that flavor...looking at the CaJohn's website, it states that this has something called Fire Dust in it, which is evidently a proprietary blend of dry peppers similar to the Hot Shot!. That explains that part nicely.

While a lot of people seem to really like the taste of this sauce, to me, it quickly becomes a distraction I would rather not have. It has ranged mostly to being ok on whatever I put it on, as long as I'm very judicious about the amount, but I nearly always reach for something else. Given that my refrigerator shelves are getting full again, it's hard to see where this will find a place. Also, it really does not have the vinegary "bite" that is expected and anticipated (and desired, on my part) in a good Louisiana sauce.

Bottom line: With very moderate heat and a flavor that to me seems to be better served as passenger rather than driver, this sauce is a big miss in my book. It's a pretty far cry from Red Devil, yet not quite bad enough to toss out entirely. I imagine it will take me a few months to finish the one bottle I will ever have, though...

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 2
       Flavor: 4
       Flexibility: 4
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 3

Smokin' Gun Hot Sauce Review

Wicked Cactus Smokin' Gun

We may as well just get right into it. Despite me having high hopes for the Wicked Cactus line going in (I bought almost the entire line), this particularly entry is one of the most disappointing things I've had. If you're like me, chipotle is on your list. I've got powdered chipotle, dried chipotles and more than a passing familiarity with Embasa or La Costena or Herdez, in a pinch or even San Marcos, if they can be found, canned chipotles. Most of them come in something called adobo sauce, which features vinegar, spices and sometimes ancho chiles.

To be blunt, this product could have begun and ended with its first ingredient, "Chipotle Peppers in Adobe,", assuming they mean adobo as in sauce rather than actual adobe as in building material. Listing water and vinegar as ingredients is a bit redundant as those are already in adobo sauce and while the lime juice and roasted garlic that make up the rest of the ingredient lists may or may not be present already, the amount here is so miniscule as to escape detection, particularly in the context of the smokiness of the chipotles and the prominence of the adobo sauce.

Again, assuming you're familiar with canned chipotles, you're already aware that the adobo sauce can add a flavorful addition to something, but is not very good by itself. What we have here strikes me as someone pouring off the adobo from the canned chipotles, possibly blending or pureeing the chipotle peppers in the sauce and then re-bottling it, probably with the additional vinegar and water and possibly the lime juice as thinning agents. As with the adobo sauce, there is little to no heat here and I'm hard pressed to give this much credence as a hot sauce at all. It certainly isn't hot and is no more flavorful than the adobo sauce from any of those brands of canned chipotles I mentioned.

Bottom line: It's difficult to the point of impossible for me to see the function of this sauce. Canned chipotles are not exactly expensive and you could as easily make this sauce at home. I'm rating this sauce taken by itself, but, again, like the adobo, it will probably work well with something else, rather than standalone. As a standalone, however, it is not really worth bothering with.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 0
       Flavor: 2
       Flexibility: 2
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Tabasco Chipotle Hot Sauce Review

Tabasco Chipotle Hot Sauce

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

Despite finding the Tabasco original mostly dreadful and the Green Jalapeno of a good flavor but woefully underpowered, I happened across a coupon for Tabasco and used it to take a shot at the Chipotle, since I like that flavor a lot and heard great things about this variation. The bottle didn't stay on my shelf long before I cracked it open and tried it out with some fried chicken. So far so good there, but it fell pretty flat with homemade chicken tamales.

With this sauce being arguably closer to a BBQ sauce than a hot sauce or maybe as close as hot sauce comes to a BBQ sauce before it crosses the line (and McIlhenny is definitely pushing hard in that direction with this), it works better on richer and denser flavors. It's a very good-tasting sauce, unquestionably, with none of the goofy overbearing vinegary taste of the Original, yet cutting down the chipotle, which can itself become very quickly overpowering as well. It is a fantastic blend, sort of the "best of both worlds," which also does nicely in harmonizing the Tabasco pepper flavoring system.

What it doesn't have is heat, but then again, nothing in the entire Tabasco line does. For most people, Original Tabasco is as hot as it gets and this is in that area, though according to their fantastic website (arguably the best of any sauce vendor), Chipotle rates much less than the Original. 

Bottom line: This is a sauce that works best with food that can stand the smokiness. It doesn't have enough vinegar to really "cut" creamy sauces, though it does add a nice flavor aspect. There is not much here in the way of heat, either, so if you're coming to this bottle for that, you're in the wrong place. For around $4/bottle for a 5 oz., you could do worse...but you could also do a lot better.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 1
       Flavor: 7
       Flexibility: 6
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5

Lynchburg Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Historic Lynchburg Tennessee Whiskey Habanero Hot Sauce

In looking around at some of the other reviews online, a few reviewers have indicated that the label of this sauce bears an identical ingredient list to the Jalapeno sauce from this same company. My bottle has the same, but upon tasting it, this is notably hotter than the Jalapeno. I would put it at slightly over 10K, maybe 12K or so, though not "HOTT" with the double "T"s as the label indicates.

Very clearly, this is the same base as the other sauce and I'm guessing the flavoring and the heat come from the addition of habanero powder. The consistency is the same as the other and there is the same aspect of it being somewhat ketchup-reminiscent. The taste is a bit less pleasant than the other one, mostly due to the bitterness of what I'm assuming is the habanero powder, though the Jack Daniels still comes through and really makes a nice impact.

I encourage checking out the other review for the Jalapeno sauce, since aside from the heat and Habanero flavoring (again, probably from powder, given the little light colored speckles in this), everything else there would apply also. There are no chunks of habanero seeds or bits of flesh, but instead a very smooth consistency. This is not a sauce that works well enough by itself to be used as say a dipping sauce, though.

Bottom line: For $7 bottle, this isn't a good enough sauce to order again. The heat is somewhat moderate and while in some ways it is an improvement over the Jalapeno sauce, simply adding a bunch of powder for heat and flavoring seems a cheat to me. This is another "will do in a pinch" type sauces.

Breakdown:

       Heat level: 4
       Flavor: 6
       Flexibility: 6
       Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 4