Fat Cat Guajillo Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Fat Cat Surprisingly Mild Guajillo Ghost Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akgw4aW0Kao

Like most people online, I'm somewhat of a slave to all things feline, so yep, I love me the cat videos and the cat memes and all that stuff, so if some clever hot sauce decides to market a hot sauce right at me by putting a cat on the label, I'm at least interested. It is meaningless? Sure and maybe not a great reason to initially be interested, but labeling is part of selling and selling is a big part of keeping your hot sauce brand alive and flowing.

Still, for all that, the sauce has to be good. Flavor has to be there or just as quickly, that mnemonic nifty name you came up incorporating the word "cat" will be a double-edged sword and it will just as easily be memorable in the context of a brand to avoid. I think the sauces in the line-up are named well and cleverly, with this particular one being the least cutesy and, if I recall correctly, the least picante.

I'm not strictly familiar with what a Guajillo pepper was...or wasn't prior to starting this review, but it appears to be something along the lines of an Ancho. The famed Ghost pepper, of course, I'm well familiar with and the idea behind this sauce seemed more mole-ish to me. Indeed, seeing the sauce as it came out, dark and somewhat reminiscent of chocolate, seemed much more like a runny mole than an actual hot sauce. It lists out a number of foods it should pair with, but I found it worked best (and maybe only) with Mexican food and not at all well, for instance, as a chicken strip dipping sauce or on the BBQ grill.

Heat is very moderate here, as expected, but the sauce is a nicely flowing thicker sauce that does a really good job sticking to wherever you try to put it, generally. It's not really my idea of what an ideal Mexican style sauce should be, though that appears to be mostly where they're aiming, but it is a kind of nice change of pace and one that I'll finish out, but probably not replace.

Bottom line: Still mostly a hot sauce, there are some strong leanings towards mole with this. I don't eat moles enough to know if this bridges the gap successfully, but it was an interesting, if largely one-off, diversion from the regular Mexican style sauces. Will not be in regular rotation for me, but definitely worth trying out.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4