Silk City Dragon Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Dragon

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJCPdS6hYoY

Note: This sauce appears to be have been re-launched as "Dragon Slayer."

I remember when this sauce initially came out, with different labels and the word "Dragon" scrawled on the side in what looked like Sharpie (I believe this exact picture is on the Silk City webpage. As you can see, the label has changed, but now, like then, there is still not a back ingredient label...or a listing online. I emailed Jeff at Silk City, who told me there were no banned ingredients (mainly onions and/or onion derivatives) for me, so I threw down on a bottle. It was me not being able to confirm or deny that existence that initially stopped me from first picking it up when I saw it on Roger's shelves and I think it's kind of a bad practice to send bottles out in that way. 

Anyway, despite this being called "Dragon," there is precious little heat. From what I can taste and understand, there is a 7-pepper blend (at least one of those peppers is almost certainly Habanero, maybe a few different types), maple syrup, and vinegar, but there also seem to be some other elements, maybe a bit of salt and some other things. It's not an easy thing to pick out, precisely, particularly with that many related elements occupying a lot of the same or similar taste space. It is unquestionably a very unique sauce.

Maple syrup in hot sauce is, for me, a bit of a mixed bag. I find the taste to be very distinctive and not necessarily one that is flexible enough to carry a wide array of foods. Here, I found this to work reasonably well on pork and pork items, such as breakfast sausage, and particularly as a grill sauce, but didn't find it especially enjoyable on things like pizza or chicken. Obviously, there is some of my own personal preference at play here, I suppose, and those who like maple flavoring more than I do may wind up liking this better than I did in those settings. 

There are a lot of good pepper bits in the sauce, which itself looks a lot like you'd expect from fire-roasting, with a brownish hue to it, no doubt accented by the maple syrup as well. It is mostly smooth, but there are bits and pieces that one hits here and there. I personally don't mind those, depending on the sauce. Heat-wise, as mentioned, this is very, very moderate.

Bottom line: This is a very intriguing sauce, but like some others of that categorization, I found the flexibility to be a bit narrow. Flavor is solid by itself, but doesn't always interact well. Maple-lovers may like this more.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3