Rising Smoke It Hot Sauce Review

Rising Smoke It

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2EoAwl7Pu8

I must admit to some confusion with the naming of this sauce, as "It." Specifically, I can't quite determine if it's in the sense like Coca-Cola formerly used the "Coke is it!" slogan or if they mean as more of a monster, a beast, ala the creature in the infamous Stephen King novel. I suspect it is probably more the former, as the meaning seems for this to be a more ubiquitous sauce. It is both mild in heat and running along the lines of a Cajun style, with heavy Cayenne and garlic notes. I will say I intensely dislike the label. I get what they're going for with the peppers forming the name, but it looks so clumsy, it would school kids learning graphic design would be ashamed.. I know this is more my own personal area of complaint and most people do not have sufficient interest or caring about label design, but when you have a particularly nasty food intolerance, such as I do, you find yourself spending a lot of time with labels. 

Ok, so what do we have here? As noted earlier, this is a not particularly hot Cajun style sauce, so the main flavors are Cayenne with heavy notes of garlic. The garlic is indeed quite prominent, possibly due to both garlic, bits of which are visible in the sauce, and the addition of garlic powder, which can get dangerous pretty quickly. Concentrated forms like that tend to really amp up those notes and this is perhaps a bit beyond my preference, which is another reason why I make the distinction between Cajun and Louisiana-style and usually opt for the latter. What separates this from other Cajun style sauces is the use of the roasted red bell pepper mash, which adds a nice bit of sweetness from those peppers and a robust flavoring you can only get by fire-roasting things. This is the second sauce I've had from this company which has had no real smoke aspect to speak of, but fire-roasting obviously involves fire and fire tends to involve smoke at some point, so it does fit the motif there, I suppose.

Heat-wise, again, we have the addition of a concentrate towards the end, in Cayenne powder, which serves a bit to amp things up, I suspect. Cayenne powder is not what I would consider an especially flavorful element and is almost always a part of things to add heat without much impact on flavor, a utility that makes it a fairly ubiquitous staple in many spice cabinets. I kind of wish I could have tasted this sauce without the garlic powder, as I suspect the fresh and lively flavors that are there, thanks mainly to the addition of the roasted red peppers, would have really come more to the fore.

Bottom line: Very solid sauce, nice, smooth and a bit rangier in flavor profile than most Cajun sauces, clearly intended to appeal to a broad spectrum. It's a bit garlic-heavy for me, but not enough to stop me finishing it.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4