Diablo (Jalapeno) Pepper Sauce Review

Cactus Candy Company Diablo (Jalapeno) Pepper Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxzfN1dVGDw

I always get kind of excited when I see the word "Diablo" or "Diabla" or the related variations in association with foods. Shrimp Fra Diavolo (Italy) is one of my very favorite dishes to make and eat. Same with Shrimp Diablo (Mexico) when I'm eating out. Both are reliable standbys when I'm at a restaurant for the first time and don't know to what extent, if any, I can trust the kitchen. Both are dishes that when done right border on art, but even if done not so great, like Thai food generally, they're still pretty hard to screw up.

So this, with the idea of a hot sauce calling itself Diablo, perked my attention when I saw it there, hanging out on the shelf. I originally got this during an impromptu COVID shopping spree, when I figured that places were going to start being shut down and I wanted to make sure I had a backlog at hand, just in case. I would not normally be motivated to get a Jalapeno sauce, as I'm finding those rather universally disappointing these days. Sadly, this will not be a sauce to break that streak.

Indeed this one, coming out of Arizona from a candy company, is going to be binned, once the video is shot.  The label is an absolute mess, as you can see, and it should have perhaps given me my first clue, though I don't automatically reject sauces based on labels.

Imagine, if you will, someone going to the trouble of make an apple cider reduction, then dumping a bunch of taco seasoning spices into it and bottling it. That is, in effect, what we have here and it is rather noxious, immediately ruining whatever it is put on. Not to put too fine a point on it, but there is little craft here and this is easily the worst sauce I've had this year. I am calling it Jalapeno, based on the website description. Despite it being the only pepper listed in the ingredient panel, there is, however, no actual Jalapeno flavor to be found. This is really a shame as a solid Jalapeno flavoring would have really helped out here.

Bottom line: This is fundamentally not a good sauce, unless what you really want is heavily cider-flavored vinegar-based sauce with some random spices thrown in.

Breakdown:

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


Overall: 0

Private Selection Calabrian Chile Hot Sauce Review

Private Selection Calabrian Chile Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C6uCtnbfSMo

It occurs to me that all of the Private Selection line of stuff is limited edition. Perhaps Kroger just commissions whoever is making this for an x-volume batch and just calls it good. I don't know but Calabria, that delicious bit of Italy, is responsible for a number of Private Selection items, including salami. I was unaware, until I found this sauce, there is also something called a Calabrian Chile Pepper. There are also some Greek chilis (Puglia) and even a sweet red Italian varietal (Campagna). If this is not sounding hot, it is with good reason. This is not a particularly piquant hot sauce, though it does throw in Habanero, for good measure, at the very end.

It lists as being an excellent choice for things like pizza, pasta and other Italian-ish delectables, and indeed, it does do a fair job on every one of those I tried it on. In fact, this is one of the most tested sauces I think I've had, including an application I almost never use (see the video of this sauce). It did not work amazingly well on the staples of fried chicken fingers or fish sticks, but worked well on every other application, including tacos, which should give you some type of idea how overall incredibly flexible it is.

The taste, though, doesn't strike me as something so much meant for the foods listed on it, but aimed much more at Mexican or Spanish cuisine. Despite having a veritable laundry list of stuff, the flavor profile reminds me an awful lot of something specific to the Upper Midwest, a "hot sauce" that comes in a round plastic tub. Called Village Hot sauce and coming out of Grand Forks, North Dakota, it is a fairly bland, sort of one-note concoction relying heavily on tomatoes, which meld well with what spices (they also claim Jalapeno) they add in there. This sauce is very reminiscent of that (people in MN & ND) will know what I mean, although this one is slightly more bitter than the Village Hot Sauce, which is overly one-dimensional to the point where I find it boring. It does serve as a great entry point, however, into hot sauce in general.

Bottom line: This is the first sauce I've had that is this mild get anywhere near SOTY territory, but yet, here we are, another candidate for 2020. This is also an outstanding hot sauce, like the one I mentioned in the preceding paragraph, to use to introduce neophytes to the wonders of hot sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 9
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10


Overall: 8

Pain 100% Hot Sauce Review

Spicin' Foods Pain 100% Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WA4S-DwrqkE

Note: This sauce appeared in Seasons 1 and 2 of The Hot Ones.

I happened to be poking around a specialty store not too long after I worked out which sauces from The Hot Ones show I had not done and would consider doing in the future and came across a couple of entries form the various line-ups. I have not really been a fan of the various "Pain" entries, either the Pain Is Good line or the Pain X% line, but in the interests of moving forward with the various show sauces, picked it up, happily in the smallest bottle I could find, a sort of mini-flask. I know flasks are probably a waste of glass comparatively, but I like them and any sauce that comes in one I will at least give a look. No, I don't know why and yes, I know that several of the lines I just mentioned come in flasks, but chalk it up to a general preference and leave it at that.

I got this one back and though this one has a very small neck, the sauce had discolored in it. After ridding myself of that, I gave it a quick smell and taste and was somewhat reminded of Blair's Pure Death. Now the last time I said that (last year), the sauce that reminded me of that also wound up being my Sauce Of The Year. So I was semi-excited at the prospect of another SOTY candidate this early in the year after several years of it being much deeper in the year. My excitement was quickly tampered as I got into this sauce, though...

I have some issues with this sauce. The first is the SHU rating they've attached to it. They list it on the website as 40K, which is woefully inadequate, sort of like Samyang listing their hot chicken noodles as having less heat than a jalapeno. Like those, this is off considerably, as far as rating, and is much hotter than 40K. They also call it 100% natural, which is an assertion largely dependent on how natural you consider extract. They have buried it in the "Natural Pepper Flavor" listing, but there is unquestionably extract in this. Pure Death itself, I believe, is rated somewhere around 40K and this is notably hotter. It also does not act like something relying solely on Habanero, nor is the flavor consistent with that, given the metallicy taste that sooner or later makes its presence known when extract is used. This also makes this sauce a bit of a chore to use, as that aspect tends to be overpowering with extended use.

Flavor-wise, in the beginning, the flavor sensation that first make me think of the Pure Death is very nice. It tends a bit more to the bitter, but it retains enough to keep that alive...that is until the extract comes roaring in, both accelerating the heat and wrecking the flavor. The label actually notes this idea, the hotter something is, the less flavorful, which is somewhat generally true, but if you click on the Table Of Contents or look at the last posts of any of the years this blog has been running, you can find quite a number of sauces that are able to do both without relying on artificial, chemical means. Unlike the Pure Death, this one has to be tempered in its usage or it can easily ruin whatever you're using it on, which is rather a pity, but the same applications of nearly everything still apply.

Bottom line: This is a great example of why I tend to eschew extract sauces. We have an otherwise solid sauce that is easily ruined with extract, which reduces its usefulness and value considerably.

Breakdown:

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


Overall: 6

Samfuego Habitual Hinkelhatch Hot Sauce Review

Samfuego Habitual Hinkelhatch Red Pepper & Roasted Garlic Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hU6CLROmZ6s

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

To this point, I will say the Samfuego sauces have been pretty interesting to me. The approach to hot sauces is unlike anyone else's and the flavors are definitely unique. I'm all about the spirit of experimentation. For me, this has been somewhat of a mixed bag with these sauces to this pint, though, as they often seem not to fit the food I'm pairing them with in a manner I would desire. This sauce also seemed like it would be following that pattern.

For starters, calling this a hot sauce seems to me to be a stretch. In the video series, I refer to a phenomenon as a "1 by default," a rating which means it is hotter than nothing, but is not what I would call a "true" one, meaning that as a chilehead, I find some degree of disappointment with the piquancy of it. This would definitely apply to this sauce and "1 by default" is not a rating I use on this blog, so I will have to give it a zero for heat. Taste-wise, it leans a lot towards apple cider vinegar without any being in there, kind of a neat trick, if you like that flavor, and assuming that the ingredient panel is correct.

These sauces also heavily utilize prickly pear, which is a cactus fruit. Like the other desert fruit we're pretty familiar with, agave, there is a very distinctive taste to that kind of sweetness. In here is also dark chocolate and basil, just to make sure things don't ever get too mundane. The sauce in the bottle had separated by the time I got to this, but no wonder, as heavier ingredients like roasted garlic and red pepper wouldn't stay suspended too long, I don't imagine. This is indeed a sauce you have to agitate every time.

As for usage...I'm not a huge fan of this sauce straight. It definitely comes across as a taste more than the sum of its respective parts, but it is not a flavor especially resonant with me. I tried it on chicken strips, which was a bust, then on a burrito, figuring maybe the hatch chile might meld with that, another definite no-go. Eventually, I tried it, almost at random on a Ham & Cheese Hot Pocket and it struck me, even with the nasty dreck that is their cheese sauce. This is a sauce strongly in need of a cream base of some sort. To test this further, I also put it on a pizza and it was much better, melding pretty well, better even than the Hot Pocket. So, this definitely is something you will want to use on a food with cheese (preferably directly on it) or at minimum, with a cream base. That does, however, significantly limit the flexibility.

Bottom line: A very flavorful, though somewhat astringent, sauce that is very distinctive and forceful.Works best with either a cream base or something involving cheese and very limited to not at all outside of that.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3


Overall: 2