Angry Goat Heatonist No. 7 Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Heatonist No. 7

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xdaONfzMQY

I have reviewed a lot of stuff, beyond just the 400+ hot sauces (as of this writing) on this blog. It's covered everything from wine to beer to whiskey to restaurants to music to movies to books to cars to bikes to fitness supplements and beyond. One of the tendencies in any given area when one does this a lot is there starts to become a certain commonality, wherein things wind up being more the same than not. So it is a rare treat when something comes along both unexpected and fantastic. That is this sauce.

This will probably be my favorite sauce of the year, possibly the best-tasting sauce I will have in 2023, but it will not be Sauce Of The Year [if you're wondering why, I've mentioned it many times over the year, but it's by design that one specific criteria cannot skew the overall rating - also noting now that the final rating was entirely coincidental to the name of this sauce]. It's a delicious, wild, often surprising ride, pulling in elements of pickled peppers, pickled beets, pistachio, and pomegranate into this wonderful miasma that defies easy encapsulation. It is a near-transcendent experience, unique to not only the hot sauce world, but perhaps to sauces in general. At the risk of overstating things, I've had nothing quite like it before.

Does it work on everything? No. While I found it greatly entertaining and novel on pizza, I also find that one needs to have a food where a pickled pepper (banana or cherry, preferably) would be at home for its best suiting. So, sub sandwiches, salads (with a creamy dressing), the aforementioned pizza, chicken, fish, all are excellent with this sauce. Things that are heavy and rich, such as Alfredos and mac & cheese leave much to be desired when paired with this. You wouldn't want to do that anyway, as this wonderful lightness allows things like the subtlety of the beets to shine through and it will be killed and stomped to death by that heavy of a sauce. I included pizza, which also does this a bit, but which lends itself well to pickled peppers...for me, anyway. I will note that pizza can be a bit of a challenge, though, as this sauce tends to separate fairly readily.

Heat-wise, this is very moderate. We're talking Serrano here, which is another pepper I'd consider more as candy for chileheads. Using it here really allows that pepper to shine, though, another bit of brilliance from whoever came up with this outstanding concoction. This won't be a challenge to anyone on the heat side, but this is a sauce that is meant to give you several difference grace notes. It's a sauce on a mission and it fulfills it wonderfully, all the way down to the very well-designed label. 

Bottom line: Very rarely do I say a sauce is genius, but here, nothing else typifies it so much. You need not necessarily be a fan of beets or pistachios to experience this wonder, which is quite unlike any other. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7