Hellfire First Blood Hot Sauce Review

Hellfire First Blood Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video available here:  https://youtu.be/sx2t-x0BPPE

After a sustained layoff, finally back to the Superhots and it's one I've been waiting to do for a while. The thing with sauces featuring Superhots is that often, such as in the case of Torchbearer, they will straddle a kind of weird line where they're not crazily flavorful but are full of the piquancy that the Superhot peppers seem to exude, a sort of quasi-bitterness, all while bringing the full mouth fury they're known for. As regular readers know, I'm all about the flavor first and the sauces that load up on Superhots seem to kind of miss this equation. It doesn't make the sauces necessarily bad-tasting, just not as good as other stuff I'd more regularly want to have and so they don't get eaten, unless I'm in the mood for that unique flavor profile.

This one brings some hitters, Trinidad Scorpions, Bhut Jolokias, 7-Pot Primos, Red Savina Habaneros, all pushing near the top of the current record holding SHU levels, two, maybe three of them were previous record-holders, if memory serves. So, this is not going to be a mild sauce. Hellfire confusingly puts it at a 9/10, but their rating scale is meaningless compared to a lot of the other offerings, such as one sauce that seems to share multiple labels and is billed the hottest non-extract sauce. Without drifting too far astream, the hottest non-extract sauce I've had to date is Torchbearer's Rapture, checking in at over a million SHU, which is the only sauce I can recall I've given a 10 for heat. That will be my 10 here, but I don't know where that other sauce from Hellfire falls and perhaps I will get to that in the near future.

Regardless, this one is tempered by an interesting combination of sun-dried tomatoes and a few other extraneous things. The sauce itself almost looks like a mash in terms of flow. It comes out a bit chunky, but the brilliant of using flavor-concentrated items, such as the sun-dried tomato kicks up accessibility quite a bit. I've used this in a variety of settings and it is wonderfully flexible. It doesn't work well in all cases, Mexican food and ramen noodles being two examples where I would not attempt it again, but it is not restricted to the range of chicken fingers, the way a lot of the other Superhot based sauces can be. Indeed, I would put it probably in the same range as Pure Death, one of my all-time highest rated sauces, for flexibility.

Flavor-wise, it is not up that vaunted territory. The flavor is quite good, despite having all of those Superhots in there, but this is not a lip-smacking yummy sort of sauce. This is one that will not let you forget you can easily oversauce something and wind up regretting it. Mouth heat can be strong if a lot is used, but it does not seem to hang in there for a great amount of time. I would put this one at somewhere between 350,000 and maybe a half million SHU, but I believe it is more varietal pepper-driven so other bottles and editions may compromise having an definite reading. There is not any information to this on the Hellfire site, unfortunately, aside from that odd 9/10 heat rating.

Bottom line: One of the more accessible Superhot sauces out there and one of the more flavorful. This is a great starting point for someone wanting to start reaching upwards a bit in their SHU progression with hot sauces and, it should bear noting, a definite SOTY candidate.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 6
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 9
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 8

Akita Sweet Chili Sauce Review

Akita Sweet Chili Sauce

UPDATE: Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ybo-SMNons

This one is one of the later ones I'm getting to. For one reason or another, I thought I'd already posted this and discovered that was decidedly not the case, coming across it as I was going through the door of my refrigerator prior to determining what remained that needed video support content. I got this some time ago, hoping it would be similar to the Zenso, which is an excellently flavored sauce, but this one treads a weird middle ground between a sauce to use after the fact and one apparently to use in something, as the label indicates a stir fry sauce.

Flavor-wise, this comes across as a sweetened version of a concentrated garlic sauce, which is just as appetizing as it sounds. It has little sparks of heat in there and there are substantial chunks of chilis in this gloppy sauce, but they contribute very little to the flavor. My guess is possibly some sort of Thai chili, though an astonishingly mild version of those.

This has honestly been a pretty hard sauce to use, as the garlic is both not a pleasant one and is very aggressive in the taste. Using this sauce after the fact has tended to detract from the flavor of the dish and using it actually in stuff has worked slightly better, but it almost amounts to building a dish around the sauce, which is the inverse of how it should work. All in all, this justifiably wound up as a forgotten sauce and it is slated to be permanently binned.

Bottom line: Sweet chili should be a pretty easy target, but this one managed to mangle the job pretty thoroughly. Not quite sure where they were going with this, but better ingredients would have helped.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1

Motherlode Provisions Rocky Mountain Hot Sauce Review

Motherlode Provisions Rocky Mountain Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ndnk-tUTjXI

I did their Wildfire review some time back and remember it somewhat favorably, but evidently forgot the actual name of the sauce and thought it was named Motherlode. Hence, when I saw this smallish bottle of Motherlode in the store, I connected the two as the same and bought it for the purpose of making a support video for the earlier Wildfire review. However, this is a different sauce, the much more tame version.

The best way to think of this is liquefied chili powder. You've got the classic Arbol, along with some Gaujillo, some Aji, and some Piquin, but no Pepins, as in the Wildfire. The Wildfire was much too tame by my reckoning to have a name like that, but this one is pretty straightforward, just Rocky Mountain Hot Sauce. If the other one was pointed squarely at Cholula, this one moves nearly neck and neck. It will work well in a much wider variety of foods, Mexican, obviously, but also eggs and pizza and ramen and could even possibly do passably as a dipping sauce.

The reason that chili powder does so well, to the point that even people who don't like spicy foods particularly, will keep it at hand is because not only is it readily available, but it has a nice warmth to it, a good sort of earthy feel. This sauce doesn't quite get to that point, but it is very similar. Flavor is very solid, doing well to accent things, but the sauce itself does not really add any heat to speak of. Chileheads will be gravely disappointed in this, but I would call this a great starter hot sauce, maybe along the lines of the Taco Bell Mild or La Victoria or the aforementioned Cholula or regular Valentina, in that it serves as a great introduction to chili flavor without adding any kind of mouth burn to the equation.

Bottom line: If you need a starter sauce, this is definitely one to consider. I'm a bit beyond this kind of thing and will probably finish the bottle, but not replace once it is gone.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Johnny's Firecracker Bold Sauce Review

Johnny's Firecracker Bold Sauce

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYp9yrpk8lc

There is a restaurant in the city in which I live that serves a dish which, at one time, was one of my very most favorite things to have and it was called Firecracker Shrimp, though you could also get it with chicken. Often, if I find something I really like in a restaurant, I will be moved to try to get - or recreate - an element of it I like a lot. In this case, I didn't think the noodles and vegetables and shrimp separately were anything too challenging but rather the firecracker sauce itself, which had notes of the garlic, along with a discernible chili heat and flavor, all in a nicely sweet sauce that was easily balanced with a splash of soy. As things turn out, the set I ran with (there was, at that time, a group of 4 of us (all scattered to the winds now, with respective families) that ate and hung out together regularly) were often in that proximity and that contributed much to us going there. As the group eventually went our separate ways, I have not been back in some time, yet, as with any particularly striking food, that dish has never left my mind entirely.

Prior to the happy discovery that BYT was back and blazing (see notes from 2019), I was scrounging for sauce candidates. I had ordered from a number of sources online prior to discovering BYT in the first place, but had found all of them wanting, in one way or another. One of my other brick-and-mortar sources had also cut down their shelf space considerably and there was nothing there I had either not already tried (and reviewed) or was interested in. The last one I honestly kind of forgot about, but they tend more towards the much hotter side of the spectrum and that means extract and even if not, I don't always want something where the aggressive nature of it creates an instant challenge with taste. Sometimes, I want a bit of peace and a nice embellishment to the flavor, rather than a competition...probably most of the time, if I'm being honest.

By now, you've probably noticed I've not gotten to this sauce yet, but I will now. I saw this thing on the shelf one day when I was scrounging and thought I would give it a go. Heat is pretty minor and the taste approaches the overly sweet red sauce you can get at the Chinese mall food places, a bit too close for my comfort. The sauce itself sticks well, but is not especially flavorful and needs to go with something else to balance it out. It will work well in things with a variety of flavors, but performs poorly when there is not a fairly substantial amount of flavors, as a dipping sauce, for instance. For quite a while, I debated not reviewing it at all, but I have it and decided I may as well, as it is arguably closer to a hot sauce than not, as there is at least an intention of having some spicy element. Alas, I have not, as of this writing, attempted the firecracker dish I mentioned earlier, mostly due to me not having a wok, but I may be coming to that sooner rather than later.

Bottom line: Despite the label banter, this is a sauce that really needs to be combined as part of a dish, rather than a standalone. As a standalone, it suffers considerably in both the flavor and heat regards.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

CaJohn's Tiki Bar Torch Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's Tiki Bar Torch Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support now available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=til4pLGb6Hk

Not quite a couple years ago to the date, I wrote a review of the original Tiki Bar Hotter Hot Sauce, which I strongly suggest you read, if you haven't already, for reference. In it, I somewhat lamented that the heat was a bit minimal. I've since done a support video for it, where I found it to be very fruit-forward and my thoughts on it have changed a bit. I'm not going to go back and downrate it, but I will say that I like it a bit less than now. I found a bottle of this on the shelf the same time I picked up another bottle of the Tiki Bar (it occurs to me that there may have been a formulation change possibly also) prior to making that discovery, with the thought that as long as they weren't cheating with extract, an increase in heat could only be to the good.

This sauce is both lighter in color and far less fruit-heavy. Side by side, it both tastes better and packs a slightly hotter punch, despite being listed as X-Hot. The ingredient profiles are identical. Skip ahead to the next paragraph if you want to see commentary exclusive to the sauce, but this points up a larger problem for me and may significantly diminish my interest in CaJohn's sauces. When the company was sold last year to the Hot Shots Distributing Company, I was concerned, as it seemed founder John Hard would no longer be involved. Normally, Hard was very specific about what kinds of peppers were being used in the sauces, but here, that is over. When Hard listed something as hot, it was usually on a chilehead scale. I don't know who this sauce would be X-Hot for, but they would have to have a pretty sensitive palate for that to be the case. Seeing those things take place, though the sauces are still pretty strong entries, seems to be bolstering those ideas for me...

This one is much closer to a teriyaki sauce than the other, though it would need to have a greater soy sauce influence to truly get there. Like the other one, this one performs well in a variety of settings where you'd want more of a fruit-based or teriyaki sauce, so lighter meats, fried foods, Asian foods, Hawaiian foods, etc. I have not gotten around to testing it with musubi yet, but may do that for the support video for this when I film it, as I intend on doing a direct comparison.

Bottom line: This is more or less an upgrade to the linked sauce above and is its superior in every way. Probably my favorite all-around fruit-based sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor:8

Overall: 7