Big Red's Prickly Pear Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Prickly Pear Sweet & Spicy Hot Sauce

Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQYQ28eBXEk

I have not, if I'm being honest, had a particularly good relationship with the sweet emanations of the prickly pear, or cactus or succulents in general, including agave. I find them frequently to be cloying, and with prickly pear, there seems to be an off-taste, a sort of chemical-y aspect to it, which I find jarring. This has never not been the case, but it has also not prevented me from attempting new concoctions featuring this ingredient. I must be missing something, as often this particular element is listed as a focal point, which I have yet to find appropriate.Then again, I am sort of in the desert, or if not in the desert outright, at least on the edge of it, the fringes, perhaps, and I should probably have a strong familiarity with this type of thing than I do. Perhaps were I to live in the desert proper, it would seem more normal. Alas... 

This entry features a lot of ingredients, which, as I've noted in FOH videos, seems to have somewhat of a commonality with various other products in the line-up. Here, thing like chia seed, don't seem to have a particular impact on things, as this is mostly a very sweet sauce, with the attributes I mentioned. It does have a very nice Habanero element, as well as a nice unami element, but when you get hit with that sweet of the prickly pear. I'm coming to believe that it is a really a love/hate sort of taste element. I like this sauce a lot more when I don't run across it. This requires whatever you're putting this one to really be able to stand up against that sweet and I haven't run across a lot of foods where that has been the case. They call it the "wing sauce," so it definitely will be in one of my quarterly round-ups, but I'm not expecting a lot out of this one. Most things I've tried it with were a one-and-out proposition.

It is not particularly punchy, in terms of heat. The Habanero here is almost used as much for flavor as heat, but heat is very, very moderate. I half wonder how this would do in baking, to replace some of the sugars in various treats, but I don't have other chileheads, or even food adventurers, at hand, especially now, in the age of COVID-19, to try this out with, and I am not a natural baker (more of cook/chef), so that might be a ship that I just let sail.

Bottom line: If you like prickly pear, that particular kind of sweet, as well as sweet-hot sauces, this is well worth your while. Heat is pretty far from overbearing, and this might serve well as an introductory sauce.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3