Hatari Acid Rain Ghost
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjCSR_O0LAI
I've seen this sauce just hanging out on the shelf for years and I kept passing it by, passing it over in favor of other bottles that looked more appealing, for whatever reason, at the time. Possibly it is the odd yellow on brown color scheme, which is certainly unique, with a stylized ghost somewhat reminiscent of Casper looking on in dismay at what appeared to be nuclear bomb mushroom clouds. Whatever the reason, I've seen it around for a long time and only recently got around to picking it up. Upon doing so, I now realize that what I thought were explosion clouds are actually a single cloud hovering over two trees, which seems to be a reference to the African influence of both the founder of the company and of the sauce itself.
"Acid Rain" is a label that is applied to a number of products, including snacks, salsa, BBQ sauce, dried spices, even a seasoning mix. It also comes in Scorpion, Habanero, and a Reaper + extract variations. I didn't see many of those other ones and it was only after looking into this a bit further that I discovered all of this, but Hatari has seemingly a fairly solid stable of sauces and related goodies. I don't quite understand the naming convention here, of the acid rain, as that doesn't seem hugely endemic to Africa and is pretty far from a positive designation, but I presume them to refer to the proverbial burn of such polluted waterfall.
One of the things I found most intriguing was the list of peppers in it. With this one sauce, you can cover quite a number of them. In this sauce, we have Ghost Peppers, Hatari, Habanero, Piquin, Ring of Fire, Peri-Peri, Tepin, and Jalapeno, many of which also show up in the other sauces. Habanero, Piquin, Tepin, and Jalapeno show up a lot in Mexican cuisine, though Habanero and Jalapeno are getting to be near ubiquitous. Peri-Peri is a more African pepper. Ring Of Fire is a new one for me, but turns out to be a Cayenne offshoot, which one would also expect to be in a blend like this. Finally, we come down to the Hatari pepper, which is purported to be a proprietary pepper, but also evidently a highly secretive one, as I can find no real information on it.
The flavor of this immediately struck me as more or less a powdered pepper spice in a liquid delivery system. Highly skillfully done, as this sauce is quite pleasant, but that's the general tone of it. I find the label order confusion, as it's listing those peppers as the main ingredients, but none of them are an actual liquid. Vinegar, which seems to be mostly the base with this, is dead last on the list, though lemon, lime, and orange juice also show up, before the vinegar, so I suppose it could be some combination. The nebulous generic "spices" are also listed, along with garlic and ginger, though neither of those are especially prominent. The smaller text, which is also done in yellow on brown, is somewhat blurry for the ingredient panel, but I also think this ingredient list is wrong, at least in terms of proportion, and is probably meant to dissuade people trying to suss out their "secret" blend or whatever.
Making a sauce by liquefying dried ingredients is not a bad idea, if done well (though, to be clear, there are enough seeds and bits in there, not to mention flavor-wise, that I suspect this is a combination of both pods and powders). If executed correctly, you can have a sauce that will happily meld with nearly anything, as this sauce is (although I don't believe I would care for it much on something as specific as Asian foods). I could not find an application where I didn't enjoy it and, whatever the actual percentages of ingredients, I found it quite tasty and enjoyable, and possibly as close to universal as anything I've ever had. Heat-wise, even with the Ghost, it is fairly minimal, right on the border where I would say it's probably better received by chileheads. It also does tend to separate quite a bit and needs fairly regular agitation.
Bottom line: Yet another sauce I find myself kicking myself for not trying sooner. Highly enjoyable across many different food settings and a sauce company whose offerings I will probably find myself digging into deeper.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 3
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 10
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10
Overall: 8
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