Fresco Ghost Berry Hot Sauce Review

Fresco Sauce Ghost Berry Hot Sauce

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.

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyS62nOB2-M

So, I have a little Thanksgiving-time tradition. I know we all have our various takes on this, from changing the type of pie to different sides served with turkey, to different ways of preparing the central bird, different stuffings, different methods of cooking said stuffings, etc. For me, mine is more chilehead-oriented and it came around shortly after I started this blog, with the Grapes Of Wrath sauce from High River (reviewed elsewhere here), which I was having a hard time figuring out where to use it. But, somewhere in there, I stumbled on using it for turkey and voila! The sauce worked well there and it got me on the train of thinking in terms of hot sauces for that special meal. 

Over the years, I kicked around the idea of different fruit-based sauces, ranging from tropic fruit-Habanero to more general sweet hots, but I always kept half an eye out for a berry-oriented sweet fruit-based sauce, as I've always loved the combination of cranberry with my turkey and anything that can keep in that lane is exactly what I want. So, for quite some time, that has been my guiding light around this time.

Enter this, which is one of the two berry sauces I happened to have at hand (the other one is coming, but probably won't appear until 2022 sometime). Of all the berry types I rarely see blackberry and seldom cranberry, but this is the first sauce that featured both...and black pepper to boot. It was set up to be very intriguing and came with the featured pepper my beloved Ghost, which is probably in my top 5 easily, of favorite peppers. Shaping up to be very nice indeed, but for all that, I was shocked when I had it on some nice air-fried chicken strips.  I definitely didn't expect the sauce I had, but it was a happy surprise. It's quite a lot lighter on the berry side of things than I anticipated, and I was anticipating something much sweeter, truth be told, but the combination of flavors works well together into a more or less cohesive whole. This is another stellar sauce from Fresco, who is a quite impressive maker. 

Heat-wise, this is moderate, again surprisingly given how high Ghosts feature in the ingredient list. There are also Habaneros in the mix and even a bit of cumin, which somehow manages to not only read through, but to do so in a less offensive manner than normally. I didn't expect the combination of flavors to work together as well as it does and the sauce is indeed like nothing else I've had. Obviously, I was well happy with it on turkey as well as chicken, but I'd be inclined to give it a go on a burger as well. There is a slight propensity for this sauce to read as too salty, depending on what it's going on, so word to the wise there. Still, just another fabulous entry from the maker who produces my current favorite sauce from The Hot Ones show, their Chipotle-Habanero, also reviewed elsewhere here. While this one is not quite SOTY material, it was a very welcome addition to my refrigerator door.

Bottom line: Quite flavorful, unique, and fascinating sauce that would do well, particularly for those who are fans of any of the following: black pepper, berries, fruit-based sauces.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6