Zia Chile Traders Sauce 25
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_YoQx9Bs4w
Another from the current incarnation of John Hard's sauce-making passion, the idea here being a commemoration of John's debut into the fiery food world, at least when the sauce came out last year. This year would mark 26 years, which is a considerable sustained run, especially considering the generally high quality level he's been at for at least as long as I've been aware of him, which was shortly before this blog began, 11 years ago now.
As to the sauce, we have pretty low heat, with the main peppers being red Jalapeno and red Hatch Chile. They also make a note this sauce represents things to come, which is interesting. This is a pretty heavily-leaning sauce towards Asian flavors, such as soy sauce, but also infused with perhaps some of John's more favorite recent ingredients of bourbon and black garlic. The end result is pretty interesting, but like both the BICH sauces (reviewed elsewhere here) under the CaJohn's line, I find it works much better either warmed up or especially grilled. When cold, I find the bourbon notes to be a bit overly prominent, which changes somewhat with the temperature of this sauce. And, of course, bourbon when grilled to the point of carmelization, leaves some rather intricate and flavorful notes.
While I have tried this in other settings, Asian-type dishes seem to be where this shines the best, particularly on pork, though it also does nicely on chicken. I've used it both in rice and noodle dishes and once it's warm, it imparts a quite lovely flavor through the sweet soy and heavily umami notes of the garlic. This is not intended to be a blazing sauce and the peppers make a pretty flawless accompaniment. I'd be curious to see how this would be if the Jalapenos were subbed out in favor of Fresnos and would abandon the apple cider vinegar in favor of rice vinegar, to more lean into the Asian side of things, and probably drastically reduce the bourbon, but that might be more personal preference.
I usually remark negatively when a sauce tends to position itself in a fairly narrow food range, but I don't mind if it is well done and this, like many other sauces John is responsible for creating, is very well done. Do I think it's a sauce so great it lives up to the 25 years in the making? Not more than any other sauce he put out in 2022, which could make the same claim. While I think it's a good, lively, dynamic sauce, I don't find it mind-blowing to the extent expected from all that verbiage. It definitely is a welcome entry into the Asian-style sauce list, however.
If you're not familiar with the Zia Chile Traders, in which John Hard puts the Hatch chile through its paces, definitely take a look. He's doing, as is expected, a lot of pretty innovative and intriguing stuff. You can get bottles of your own of much of the lineup by clicking to the BYT site by clicking on the logo on the main page of this blog (to the right).
Bottom line: A wonderfully, often complex, sauce that changes a bit depending on the temperature you experience it at. While I find it best as a grill sauce, it can also work quite well in various Asian dishes, once it has warmed up to temperature a bit.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 1
Flavor: 8
Flexibility: 2
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8
Overall: 5
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