Silk City Badass Jew Hot Sauce
I had another Silk City sauce, which I found favorable, the Mango Madness (reviewed elsewhere here) and so when I was last at Burn Your Tongue, in my random phase-- I should perhaps elucidate.
The first thing I do after I get back from hot sauce hauls is to update my list, that list which I keep of various sauces I would like to try and review. I keep it updated between hauls (usually trips there are anywhere from 10 - 20 different sauces) as it is not especially close to me. Anyway, during the actual shopping, I go through the list, to see what is there on the shelf (if a sauce is a really high priority, I may order it online if I don't find it on Rog's shelves) and usually accumulate a good number doing that. From there, I look at what's on sale, what's on clearance, and anything new. That will sometimes pick me up a few others. Then I do the randomizing sweep, which is more stem to stern, to see if there's anything that grabs my eye. This particular sauce was in that last phase I mentioned.
The name and graphic obviously immediately struck me, as I was not aware that Jewish cuisine was particularly known for picante. Looking at the ingredient list, I also saw Habaneros and Serranos, which does not strike me as particularly Jewish or even Israeli ingredients. Then I saw Long Hots, which are Italian, and thought maybe this was a sauce with a co-creator, probably from New York, where different cultures seem to mesh naturally in foods, or that it was one of those so-called vanity sauces that are sometimes really good and sometimes clearly just gimmicky. This one evidently is in reference to a podcast.
Silk City has also largely moved to flasks only, which I'm good with, really good with, actually. They also build the bottle price in the label graphics, which is interesting. This company is really high on my list now to whip through more of their sauces, so that will be a major focus my next haul trip.
Back to this sauce, it also contained, in addition to Long Hots, which I almost never see, some nice cherry peppers. Cherry peppers are one of my longest-running favorites. So, anything with them in it, I expect to be a wonderfully flavorful sauce. I'm all about flavor first, so this had a strong appeal to me. It also has apple cider vinegar, but way down in the list. There are 5 different peppers in this, with the hottest (and first listed) being Habanero, so I wasn't quite sure what to expect. Color looked great, though, and that ingredient panel led with tomato, so I didn't expect a lot of heat. Indeed, there is very little to be found here.
This definitely is skewed more heavily in favor of flavor. This is one of the better-tasting sauces I've had in recent memory, slightly reminiscent of the Gindo's Original (also reviewed here). One of my laments is that I went on a streak where there weren't a ton of sauces I really wanted to use, where I was really excited to eat them, where I'd find stuff to cook just so I could eat more of them. The Gindo's changed all of that and this is right along those lines. With the heavy tomato combination with the peppers, which is done quite skillfully to meld those flavors and to give it a nice sort of semi-chunky pour, we get an aspect that reminds me a bit of a very nice chile-based cocktail sauce, but this extends well beyond seafood. In fact, I have yet to find an application, including Mexican, where it does not work fantastically. It is a highly flexible sauce, though I should observe that I did not attempt Asian foods, but will be doing that in the coming weeks, if I don't run out first.
Bottom line: Just an absolute phenom of a sauce, amazing flavor, nice pour, but precious little heat. If you're a flavor-first chilehead, like yours truly, you will love it, and it can also serve as a safe gateway for friends and family chile-curious. In any case, yet another contender for Sauce Of The Year.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 10
Flexibility: 10
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 8
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