Friday, May 5, 2023

High Desert Reaper's Fuzzy Navel Hot Sauce Review

High Desert Reaper's Fuzzy Navel

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=db9b__rWl5s

Story time, a bit...skip ahead to the third paragraph if you want just the discussion on the sauce and not extraneous elements such as my shopping habits and label design. Ok, for years, like many, many folks first entering the arena of buying hot sauces that are beyond whatever happens to inhabit the shelves of either a grocery store or mass market retailer, I looked at sauces more or less as impulse buys, meaning that I would peruse the labels and whatever grabbed me would be what I'd reach for and start checking it out (I also did this, for a while, with records and CDs) for purchase. However, after having to bin more than a few sauces unopened because they had onions (I formerly had a couple pals who did not have a similar intolerance that would wind up getting those sauces but one I lost track of when my cell crashed and the other has bowed out because he finds it aggravates his stomach too much), which is, at minimum, a waste of money (though this was/is preferable to being sick from ingesting that ingredient). So, I made sure to read the labels before buying, which worked for a while, until my eyesight began to slide a bit with age. Rather than standing in the store with my phone trying to use the onboard camera to blow up the ingredient panel, which only worked some of the time, I started researching hot sauces for a buy list, a list which was safe from that dreaded component, which I would make prior to heading out.

I saw High Desert on the hallowed shelves of Roger's more than a few times, knew they were somewhat local (Arizona, but it's at least regional...the states touch, after all), but the label design is such that all of them looked identical to one another, with the only differentiation being the sauce name on the banner towards the bottom of the bottle. At times, I couldn't quite make out the ingredients entirely, but it seemed that I saw onions a few times too many and backburnered the company to research at some later point. Then, as usual with me, I got excited by other stuff and forgot about returning to that burner entirely. So, this is the long and short of why I'm overdue to the party for this company.

With this my first introduction to their sauces, I wasn't quite sure what to expect. There seemed a bit of chunkiness to the sauce and I could see through the glass of the bottle, quite a few black specks. This could be ground black pepper, I guessed, though that did not appear on the ingredient label. A mystery abounded and once I finally cracked this open, expecting somewhat of the usual peach forward fruit-based sweet-hot style sauce I've had a number of times on this blog (see TOC for more of those), I was quite shocked at the actual flavor profile. It was so profound, in fact, that I hopped online to try to get more information.

The black flecks, as it were, came from the fire-roasted yellow bell peppers (and maybe carrots, hard to tell from the wording), which were leading the charge on the ingredient panel, and which contributed to a very vegetable-forward and utterly delicious end result. The sauce name is somewhat of a misnomer. While there are peaches in this, they appear only as slight grace notes, shouted down by the much more fervent choir of the aforementioned vegetables, the Reapers, and the orange zest also in this. They do contribute a general sweetness, along with the agave, but are not at all prominent. The fuzzy navel drink is equal parts peach schnapps and orange juice and if you're expecting that flavor combination here, with a side of burning Reaper, which you might from the name, you'd be sorely mistaken.

This is quite a unique and dare I say, innovative, flavor for a sauce and it's one that I've quite enjoyed trying to plumb the depths of on different foods. It works extremely well with most meats, but because it is a composite of many different flavors to create a somewhat unified whole, I don't find it meshes well with food generally. The more this sauce can be the star, the better, and when certain flavors are nullified, it gets into diminishing flavor returns a bit, on the sauce side, anyway. 

The company calls the heat level the "mild-ish side of hot" and I think that's about right. It will definitely push non-chileheads and comes on with an intense blast endemic of the Reapers, but it peaks at a fairly low level. It's encased in such a tasty sauce that those who are inclined to become future chileheads may wind up happily continuing on because of the flavor notes and thus find themselves also enmeshed with the burn...and who knows, perhaps may even seek more, bigger and brighter. 

Bottom line: Utterly fantastic sauce, with an outstanding lightness, yet containing a fairly complex flavor. I can think of no other sauce quite like it and this is definitely one which I have no reservation calling a must.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

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