Merf's Fool's Paradise Hot Sauce Review

Merf's Fool's Paradise

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSKzCGttwq4

I picked this up initially to be a pizza sauce. My idea when I was looking about was for something along the lines of pineapple Habanero, if possible, one I hadn't had, but just a classic sauce, more or less, that I've had on pizza many, many times and loved. That wasn't in the cards for my trip, but I had this on the list after the other two sauces Roger bumped to me and I reviewed this year (see TOC). It wasn't exact, but I love Ghosties and I couldn't remember if I've tried a mango fruit-based sweet-hot on pizza before (I'm sure I have, but memory didn't deliver up the answer definitively), so I figured I'd give it a go. It wasn't exact and it turned out to not be ideal. Not to say it wasn't bad, but I still had an itch that needed scratching, that sort of splinter in your brain that drives you closer to insanity, not that I need much help there, I suppose.

Anyway, I started playing around with this sauce, this thick, sort of vaguely like mushed carrots, baby food, if I had to describe the texture, and it frankly is a lot of fun and quite unique. I kept thinking it had carrots in it, given the pulpiness from (I presume) the mangoes, though mango as a flavor is not especially present. It's more a kinda sorta vaguely semi-sweet sauce with traces of the roasted part from the roasted red peppers and more an amalgamation of flavors than anything else. The Ghost is set far enough back that it delivers a very pleasant glowing heat, but nothing particularly challenging and not much, if any, on the flavor end. I certainly can't say I've had a sauce quite like it before.

With fruit-based sweet-hots, there's always a sort of truncation of flexibility, in that it will tend to have a lot of food types cut out entirely as far as application. With this one, it is more restricted to the lighter meats. It was great on roast turkey, chicken tendies (probably where I liked it best) and I didn't quite get it it, but I'd bet would be very nice on pork as well. Given the texture, I think you could make a very interesting carrot or banana cake using this, without changing the recipe much as the monkfruit sweetener doesn't really add a lot of sweet to things. I had it on pizza once, because I find myself getting particular about those kinds of things, and while it didn't ruin it or anything, once was plenty for me. All in all, I find this a quite original take on a mango hot sauce (and I've had many), which is fairly rare to come by and there is much to like here, if you can work with the texture.

Bottom line: Another very interesting entry from Merf's and if fruit-based sweet-hots are your jam, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5