Jersey Barnfire Smoked Ghost Taco Hot Sauce Review

Jersey Barnfire Smoke Ghost Taco Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://youtu.be/r5NxVwLp_JM

I like smoked peppers quite a lot. So, if I see something smoked, I'm usually immediately interested and have found those sauces to be rarely disappointing. In this case, again on the search for a good Mexican style sauce, I came across this. By the point I found it, I had pretty much reached my quota of the crazy hot sauces and wanted a few "normals" to kind of round things out. I look for sauce for flavor first, so I was pretty excited to try it, unfamiliar as I was with the brand.

The first thing I noticed, though, was the cap. It has a metal cap, which is pretty unusual for a hot sauce and I'm struggling to recall ever seeing one before. I'm sure I must have had a hot sauce like that somewhere, sometime, but it is not in memory, if I did. That part was a bit striking, if only for its rarity, I suppose. Inside, the sauce came out exactly how I think a good Mexican style sauce should, which is to say along the lines of either El Paso or La Victoria, those being the only things even remotely towards hot around the time I was growing up and something I accordingly came to associate with taco sauce, which this was listing itself as.

This sauce has all the normal flavorings of taco sauce, but with that smoked ghost in there, punches much harder. I wouldn't call it overly hot, but you can somewhat readily oversauce, which makes it drift away from what I would consider more of a table sauce, which the two I mentioned definitely are. The flavor here is quite good, very happily along the lines of what I was hoping and with that nice smoky addition, also does well moving a bit outside of the frame, such as usage as a dipping sauce. Naturally, the way the spices typically work, it is much better on Mexican style food, but it can step outside the bounds a bit, if need be, as well, which is a nice touch of flexibility.

Bottom line: This is one of my early favorite from the last haul I got and so far, of the new sauces, the only one I would really consider keeping at hand. I wouldn't say I love it, but it definitely is a nice change of pace and a good change-up to the usual entries in this segment.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5