Angry Goat Blistered Shishito & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Angry Goat Blistered Shishito & Garlic

Note: This sauce appears on Season 22 of The Hot Ones.

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

*Sigh* [Heavy sigh] Ok, well, no getting around it. As much as I hate to be the bearer of this kind of commentary, especially when it hits one of my darling sauce companies, it does bolster the point I’ve said in the past that anyone can make a bad sauce. I don’t know that I would necessarily quantify this as a bad sauce so much as it being a bad hot sauce, more specifically, or, even more narrowly, not particularly a “hot” sauce at all, but I can’t say it’s good. I suppose charitably I will just say that it missed the mark pretty widely.

Of all the pods I’ve eaten over the last decade or so, discounting Sweet, Cherry, and Bell peppers, it probably has been Shishitos, almost exclusively at restaurants, as if I see them at all on a menu, at any time, I will always, but always, order them. The higher end Japanese restaurants, particularly those at the top as far as sushi goes, invariably have the best one and it is largely just 3 ingredients: Shishitos (blistered, of course), sesame oil, kosher salt. As it is mostly a dish featuring balance and umami, nothing else is needed and there those peppers shine.

I admit to no small degree of nervousness when I saw that they were being used in a sauce, as I can’t imagine them doing well there. They are quite thin-walled peppers, without much density of flavor, and not particularly versatile nor hot. Indeed, only out of twenty or so has any heat at all to them. Jalapenos are added here to bolster the pepper flavor (and I suppose, if you can call it that, the heat), but it is still quite minimal, largely drowned out by a huge misstep of inclusion to the ingredient list, that of dried minced garlic. A little of that goes a very long way and despite it being the second-to-last ingredient here, it is, far and away, the most prominent. If you like the flavor of the jarred garlic, this will be better to you, but for me, the concentration and the additional flavor element where it departs considerably from fresh or, most preferably, roasted and carmelized garlic, is a bit of harshness I would rather not have in dishes generally, let alone when you’re trying to play with a subtly-flavored pepper, such as the Shishito.

So, we have here no heat and a rather harsh and strong garlic flavor, along with a bit of green rawness when there is pepper flavor. Naturally, this makes this somewhat abrasive concoction a bit of a challenge to use and I found it best when it was either pared with something uncomplicated but of equal strength flavor that already has garlic, such as chicken tendies, or where that unwelcome garlic note can be cooked out of it. Flavor-wise, given that I like garlic, I don’t find it overly offensive, but it definitely needs to be in the right setting. Also, like all sauces with oil in them, the warmer the sauce when you consume, the better off you’ll be.

Bottom line: If you don’t like garlic quite a lot, or you love the purity of Shishitos, or you want some actual heat in your hot sauce, you can skip this one and save yourself the disappointment. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 2