Hellfire Hellboy Legendary AF
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYlVRUzFkKE
This is one I mentioned in my Q1 2K22 update as being from 2020 that I had not yet gotten around to doing. The movie (and I believe the sauce itself) came out in 2019, but this sauce still has a page on the Hellfire website, so I presume it is still being produced. To be honest, if it isn't, it's definitely a shame.
I think I might have come across this on one of Roger's clearance shelves and though I've found Hellfire's stuff to be a bit hit and miss overall, as a non-extract, non-onion sauce, this one definitely had my attention, especially at that price, and no way I wasn't going to pull the trigger. I think there may have been a couple bottles and I now wish I would have gotten both. It wasn't, however, high on my list of sauces of excitement (which is what I sort of call my loose shopping list that I keep pretty regularly updated and from which I use when I get ready to do one of my hauls, which are usually somewhere between 1 dozen to 2 dozen sauces), so I put it on the shelf and it slowly got cycled towards the back and I honestly kind of forgot I had it.
So, I wound up waiting a bit longer for something that is both truly enjoyable and truly remarkable. The pepper mix here starts with Red Habanero mash, which is my favorite form of those, then Ghost mash, then Scorpion mash, then 7 Pot Primo mash, which is then aided and abetted by sun-dried tomatoes, garlic, and cumin. This winds up as a fairly unami-heavy sauce, with a depth and richness that is simply stunning. This is easily one of the tastier sauces I've had in recent years and clearly, I was doing myself a disservice not getting to it sooner.
Adding in sun-dried tomatoes or tomato paste, any of that more concentrated tomato form, is something that very nicely moves any sauce into a much higher versatility range. This one I tested on Ukrainian, Italian, Mexican, and American foods of various types and it worked well in all of them, meshing and blending in nicely and adding in a most wonderful little sunburst of heat. The heat, obviously with all the superhots, is definitely present, but this has a solid up-front punch and then builds, but is not a punch you in the mush type heat. I will say that it is probably best left to chileheads, though.
I get a bit nervous with what I call vanity sauces, either celebrity-endorsed, or, in this case, a movie tie-in (in retrospect, this sauce seems to have been more successful than the movie), as often those are junk with more time and care spent on the label than what's inside the bottle, but definitely not the case here. This is an absolute marvel of a sauce and not only one of the better vanity sauces I've had, but also, by far, the sauce I would say is the best I've had from Hellfire and it now takes the frontrunner status for Sauce Of The Year 2022.
Bottom line: If you can still find this anywhere, get it. It is one of those rare beautiful concoctions that comes along, where you love it from the start and only love it more as you progress.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 4
Flavor: 10
Flexibility: 10
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 9
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