Sauce Leopard Bird Blood Hot Sauce Review

Sauce Leopard The Bird Blood

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.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGRUb5I68eI

This is another company that's been on the radar for a while, and another hailing from Colorado. I keep thinking I should do a state by state breakdown of the sauces I've reviewed...maybe someday. Colorado seems to be popping up a lot, though, which suggests a good chilehead scene. I love the name of this company and, of course, cats at all, but definitely big cats, is a surefire way of getting some attention. The literal idea of an actual sauce leopard I also find enormously amusing.

This sauce takes me back to the first time I ever had cranberry compote stuff with orange mixed in. The person did it went way, way too heavy on the orange (most of them are like this) and I took one bite and stared at my fork. I managed to hold my young tongue from letting loose with a "what the fuck is this," but I was definitely thinking it. It was a jarring shock to the system that I, in all my culinary innocence at the time, would never have conceived of someone doing to poor, unassuming, delicious-on-their-own cranberries. Travesty. I spent a lot of time being suspicious any time I had cranberries not out of a can for quite a while. I still prefer just straight cranberries, to this day.

This sauce recalled a bit of that, but more what was possible with the flavor and probably what that clumsy cook of the time (I forget who now, probably an aunt or something) was attempting. Here, it is mostly cranberry flavoring with some very subtle orange notes, enough to be noticed but not to be overpowering, and a creeping bit of Habanero. The interesting thing here is that despite telling you to chuck Granny's cranberries, there is yet another callback to olden times in a texture with more than a passing resemblance to the apple butter my Grandmother used to make (crabapple trees in the backyard and it was all she could do to keep up). This is definitely smooth and silky along the lines of a sauce, but with that definitely tongue feel of apple butter. 

I find the flavor here, while quite nice and lovely, to be also somewhat subtle and delicate, to the point where the sauce flavor notes will get lost in the food I'm having it with. The mouth feel still remains and there may be a slight heat charge, but the cranberry notes, that I want a lot more of, seem to vanish. This definitely reduces the flexibility somewhat notably. Really, though, when we think cranberries, we're thinking turkey and it is absolutely delicious with turkey, which itself is not a particularly hugely flavorful meat. The more neutral or subtle the flavor of the food you're using this with, honestly, the better..just be prepared to use a lot. Heat-wise, since it's Habanero and kind of back in the ingredient list, the heat here is mostly mild, so using a lot is not really going to be a problem for anyone, chilehead or not.

Bottom line: A very intriguing proposition for a sauce and one that, while I find it delicious, I don't know that it's completely, entirely successful. Definitely love the experimentalism.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5