Silk City Erotic Fever
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=REM_qryEG44
Going back to back entries from the same sauce maker, a bit unusual, but like blue moons, wont to happen from time to time. Silk City is a company I've had my eyes on for a while and I find their sauces to always be interesting, and often delicious. I won't be surprised if they find their way into my running list of favorite hot sauce companies (current list available in the SOTY list to the right). I really admire both the switch to flasks, as well as the flat pricing of $10/bottle for those. This nearly always puts their stuff towards the highest possible marks for enjoyment to dollar.
Like many, many other sauces, I don't really understanding the labeling of this one (and the confused text on the back label doesn't help much). Importing Eros into zombie-ism, which is rooted in rot and decay, is an odd choice, but one we've seen in comics, movies, and tv shows, so even if I find the concept outlandish, there is certainly precedence. Here, the reference is apparently to Toking With The Dead, which is, from my understanding, a comic book, so another pop culture reference by Silk City, which overall, the calling of attention to their various tributes and influences, I find a very cool thing of them to do.
This is a sauce I've had on the hot list (which is a list I keep of sauces I want to get to on a future haul shopping trip) for quite some time and once I got it, was eagerly anticipating getting into it. I tried to hold off, so as not to have too many open bottles at once, but once I got into this one, it quickly vaulted to another of my favorite sauces for this year. It is a dynamic combination of some of my favorite flavors and elements and creates a beautiful, yet original, sauce.
It starts with roasted red peppers, one of my very favorite things, then goes to fire-roasted Habaneros and I'm sold immediately. From there, we have carrots, garlic, maple syrup, and salt. I get leery when I see maple syrup, as it's a pretty distinctive taste and not always a welcome one for me in sauces, but here, in combination with the carrots and red peppers, it imparts a more general overall sweetness and roundness of tone rather than the breakfast syrup aspect. Garlic doesn't really show up here, other than as an element of umami, as this sauce comes together as more a cohesive whole greater than the sum of its parts. It is a quite brilliant trick as if you want to isolate the carrots and can focus your taste enough, they're there, but unless you intentionally try to pick them out, it does a beautiful job of just incorporating them in the overall flavor.
The heat here is pretty moderate, given the Habanero, but it is definitely present and has a very nice build to it. The selection of ingredients here is also quite clever. In the choices made, we have here a sauce that is incredibly flexible. I've eaten it in a number of cuisine styles and, aside from maybe beef tacos and burritos, it has done exceedingly well. If you like sweet-hots, this is absolutely one to have on the radar.
Bottom line: Yet another entry in an increasingly long line of excellent sauces from one of the more interesting companies out there. Maybe pushing the limits of non-chileheads a bit, but is an excellent sweet-hot.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 2
Flavor: 10
Flexibility: 10
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 8
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