Silk City Somewhere In Vermont
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_x5v8RNMjWM
Getting close to the end of the complement of Silk City sauces I picked up earlier in the year (I see there are a few new sauces, so may need to re-up soon), with this one being lower on the radar for a couple of reasons. The first is that I couldn't quite determine exactly which peppers are in this "mild" blend, but obvious guesses would be Habanero (given the carrots), Jalapeno, maybe Serrano or Cayenne also. I've had a lot of milder sauces this year, so the other sauces were of greater interest. I do kind of find an ingredient listing with "pepper blend" to be a bit of a cheat, though. Much as I like this company and many of its sauces, I would be remiss not to note that their labels are decided not great in terms of ingredient listings and the website is badly in need of revamping.
As to this, I figured it was another of the Habanero-carrot variants that were all the rage several years ago, but still crop up from time to time. The prevailing thought was that carrots were sweet enough to add that note to the flavoring, beyond complementing the Habanero, but while there may be some residual sweetness to carrots generally, I did not find that to be the case most of the time in the sauces. Root vegetables tends to have a very specific mouth feel, a slight graininess, when used in sauces and this is no exception. The pulpiness here is highly reminiscent of pureed carrot. Wisely, apples were chosen to add some sweetness, but I could have used a bit more of that. There is at least a nod to the Habanero-carrot flavor combination, which is a nice touch, but the head is, as noted, very moderate here and it reinforces the carrot puree idea (this would be outstanding baked into a carrot cake, btw. I'm not a baker and won't be trying this, but any of you who are...).
Back in another life, when I was a juicer (as in making juices with a Juiceman juice-extracting device), carrot and apple were two of the main ingredients in my case (the other being celery), so that combination is certainly a tried and true one. When the sauce kept separating, and the juice moved away from the pulpier material, I was somewhat brought back to that time. This is not a sauce that will hold together, even with endless agitation, so separation is going to be part of the bargain. There is also a very "fresh" feel to this sauce, which is an aspect of these sauces generally. It's a bit hard to call this an actual hot sauce, though, for all that, which is also another part of this year on the blog, coming across things that are really pushing the line of being legitimate hot sauce, but there is both enough pepper flavor and heat to work. That is perhaps another factor leading me to think there are probably Habaneros at work here -- the heat, though never more than low, will build up a bit in time, with the delayed mechanism famous to that pepper.
Bottom line: A sauce I wanted to like more than I did, it is still quite good-tasting and refreshing, but also a bit too far removed from what I would like to have in a hot sauce.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 4
Flexibility: 4
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5
Overall: 4
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