Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlf0Yc_uJcw
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.
Quite a mouthful to say the full name of this sauce, but digging into it, quite a mouthful in each bite as well. It always amazes me that certain saucemakers are able to pack so much flavor in such a scant few ingredients. This is yet another one, something that takes great skill and which I am here to applaud. I notice also on the black neck wrap of the bottle a sticker with "WINNER 2018 Fiery Food Challenge". This refers to the Zest Fest of that year, but in looking through the list, I see this came in 3rd in the Louisiana-style category, which suggests the #1 and #2 respectively must have been some kind of fantastic.I will get to the sauce shortly, but I can't leave without addressing a minor issue I have, which is not really helped by entities who know better perpetuating things. Take, for example, the Zest Fest itself. This was put in the Louisiana-style category, which is fine, if that's the closest you can get, but the full list for 2018 was 3 pages, just for the contests and top 3 finishers. If you can have a Louisiana style, you can have a Cajun (categories for any festival I might be deciding, incidentally, would be quite a bit more extensive) as well. Less so online, but when I talk to people about this whole hot sauce thing, which happens frequently, once they find out that I'm one of those weirdos who likes to light their mouth on fire, there is a lot of confusion about Cajun vs. Louisiana-style. I think this can largely be summed up in one ingredient: garlic. A good Louisiana-style sauce needs 3 things: Cayenne, vinegar, salt. Any other flavor components will tend to detract from the glory of the Cayenne, which should stand alone to better shine. With Cajun, there is a much wider range of potential ingredients, but every good Cajun sauce will have garlic. I realize I sound like a hot sauce sommelier, but one of the fun things about having a blog is that I can just redirect people here rather than explaining all of this to them when they equate Cajun to Louisiana-style. Similarities, sure, but identical. Nay, I say. Nay.
That aside, despite all the turmoil of 2020, I have to observe, from a purely chilehead perspective, that I've happily had experienced, for me, the best sweet Asian-style sauce (Mikey V's Sweet Ghost) and now, to my mind (and tongue) the best Cajun sauce. Most Cajun sauces tend to pound one half to death with garlic. I love garlic and have been known to roast several bulbs in the oven (with a little olive oil and kosher salt, natch - I'm no savage), to eat the cloves as another might candy, but with granulated, a little goes a very long way and too much and it will wind up stepping all over everything else. Here, the very delicate tightrope is handled very deftly, in that it is still present, but is not the overriding characteristic, but another supporting player. Exceedingly well-blended and crafted, this is by far the best example of a Cajun sauce I can think of.
So, I hear some of you saying, where and why do I use that in place of Louisiana-style, which is a valid question or maybe questions? Again, we look at the garlic. Where would we be without garlic in the sauce of a pizza? Nowhere. So, in places where garlic is a natural fit, pizza, nearly all pasta dishes, garlic burgers, maybe in a pinch Mexican food, and so on. Where it fails is in heavy cream sauces or cheese sauces, such as mac & cheese or a ham & cheese sandwich. To me, the Cayenne winds up fading a bit and I'm left with much more garlic than I would prefer. In the past, I would not consider keeping both sauces at hand, but I will say this one has opened my eyes a bit, rather than making Louisiana-style do full duty on nearly everything.
If there is a slightly shortcoming, heat, as is usual for this and the Louisiana-style, is a bit on the light side, meaning there is precious little of it. If you're a chilehead looking for your heat fix, this isn't going to help much. If you're looking for flavor, though, you won't go wrong.
Bottom line: If you're not familiar with Cajun style sauce, start here. If you are familiar with the style, but have not had this particular one, also start here. A true stem to stern fundamentally great sauce.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 8
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9
Overall: 7
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