Gindo's Blood Orange Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Gindo's Blood Orange Ghost Hot Sauce

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pekIb1pwqh8

I said, in a somewhat recent review to this, that I thought if there is such a thing as a "sure thing" among sauce manufacturer's, it would be John Hard of CaJohn's, which I still hold to be true, but I now will add a second, that being Chris Ginder of Gindo's. Everything I've had so far, like CaJohn's, a small smattering of what's available, has been excellent, this sauce no less, but in the case of Gindo's, the model is far more intriguing. Embracing the boutique aesthetic, there appear to be three main sauces that are regularly available and everything else is Limited Edition, a concept I find alternately fascinating and infuriating, as the website also lists nicely everything I missed (this one is already a vault sauce, meaning it is out of rotation). Given how delicious these sauces are, I feel the loss somewhat more acutely, though I just found out about this company last year. They have also adopted a subscription service, which the Limited Edition sauces feed into, I suspect, so from a business perspective, a nice tie-in there...if I ever decide to do one of those, this will be atop my list. 

That aside, what we have here is a most intriguing sauce. Blood orange (or regular orange) and Habanero seems to be a combination I've run across here and there, but this one ups the ante considerably with the brilliant usage of Ancient peppers (a pepper, like Peppadew, I wish a lot more sauce makers would utilize). The Ghost appears to be here for heat, but it is difficult to pick out one particular flavor as there is quite a number of them, which makes a beautifully fantastic whole. The main note is citrus-y, with a definite orange lean, but cantaloupe and pineapple also figure heavily into the equation, with grace notes of peppercorn rounding things out. All of this is laced within vinegar that treads the line into over-astringent but is careful to never quite step across. This is one of the more stunning examples of a truly gourmet hot sauce I can think, which fits into the motif of Gindo's perfectly.

This is not a blazing sauce, but there is enough heat here to both keep chileheads interested and non-chileheads somewhat at bay. It is a sauce that is so delicious, one could happily oversauce with (it is a bit chunky but flows fairly smoothly and quickly), but the citrus notes tend to steer it from the creamier dishes or anything with tomato sauce in it. One of my favorite things about Gindo's is that there is always a fairly lengthy list of dishes to pair the sauce with, yet another aspect I wish more manufacturer's would adopt, and indeed there are many items there that I hadn't thought of directly for this sauce, but might need to take for a spin. For me, I found it best on things involving non-red meat, so fish, pork, and chicken, maybe especially chicken. 

Bottom line: Yet another winner from the kitchen of Ginder and which now cements Gindo's for me as another manufacturer making sauces that could potentially always be in contention for SOTY, though this particular one is not.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7