CaJohn's Dread Hot Sauce Review

CaJohn's The Formidable Dread Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA-GBob1dPg

Caribbean sauces are always kind of fun to me, treading an interesting line between Louisiana-style and a somewhat complex fruit-based sauce. They are almost always hotter than their bayou cousin sauces and inevitably a lot more complicated, much like the rich history of the cuisine there, which tries to utilize nearly everything available (see various Jerked chicken recipes). Often that propensity can pigeon-hole the sauces a bit, as intense heat and varying sweetness won't always work well in the various settings.

Indeed, that is the case here. It works well with lighter meats, but creates some dilemmas elsewhere, often to the detriment of whatever it's being used on. The lines become a lot more topsy-turvy. For most foods, when we use hot sauce, we want flavor amplified. This sauce likes to run it through a kaleidoscope lens and then set everything on fire. With the ample Moruga Scorpions playing havoc, this is also not a sauce to be taken lightly. I wound up with the full brunt of it trying to chase the complexities of the flavor profile. We have vanilla and lime and rum and a host of other Caribbean (and maybe pirate) staples and I caught fleeting glimpses of the flavor, but never all at once, thanks to the steady flavor profile of the peppers, and ate quite a bit of sauce trying. This is initially a bit low key, but the build gets nice fairly rapidly and I'd put it at a solid 6, maybe edging up a bit towards a 7 at full burn. The label lists it for experienced chileheads and in terms of heat, I'd agree, but also finding those subtle nuances of flavor. Most people would be distracted by the heat, I think.

Bottom line: This is a sauce that I find more of a special occasion sauce. Like the vast majority of CaJohn's sauces, this is extremely well-done, but its distinctness removes it from a lot of foods or even everyday use as a table sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 7
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 6