Volcanic Peppers IO Thor's Hammer Hot Sauce Review

Volcanic Peppers IO Thor's Hammer

Note: This sauce appeared in Season 12 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDStNzWyl6s

So, the gorgeous front label of this is clearly hearkening to old Nordic tales and legends of yore, and the references and callbacks seem pretty pointed towards those epic stories and adventures of antiquity. Io was a maiden seduced by the ever-wandering loins of Zeus in the Greek mythology (or Jupiter in Roman mythology), so combining that with Mjolnir, the Norse god Thor's magic hammer, seems a bit...let's say incongruous. 

However, Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and orbiting it is a very volatile moon called Io, rife with volcanic activity. I imagine by now you're seeing the tie-ins and perhaps even a trend, which will become a lot more pointed as one of those volcanoes on Io is called Thor. The reference to Mjolnir I admittedly don't quite understand and find the full name a bit disjointed, but I love space and all those ancient myths in near equal measure, so the naming convention and lovely label hits a lot of favorable buttons for me. 

As to the sauce itself, well here we have a rather action-packed bundle. Starting with a couple variations of Ghosts, we have a veritable smorgasbord of superhots, including the mighty Reaper, Scorpion, and some 7-Pot Douglah, along with a pepper I admit no familiarity with, the Jigsaw, and even some Thais, to round out the list, because dammit why not? In for a penny, in for a pound, and all that. Now, with this many superhots all congregating in one sauce, this is definitely going be both molten and also for chileheads only and that is absolutely the case for at least the latter. It could also make for a very bitter sauce, if not handled correctly.

Along with all of that, we have some garlic, some sugar, vinegar, the rather general "spices," and, in what I find the oddest accompaniment, some chia seed. Now, I like chia seed, and celery seed, and poppy seed, but those things all tend to have a very specific bitterness to themselves. Given all the superhots I mentioned, this is already going to tend towards bitter, but adding in the very specific bitter of the chia seed not only reads through, but also is something I find somewhat distracting, to the point where I wish it was not there. I cannot fathom why it actually is in there, if I'm being honest, but it definitely cut down enjoyment for me.

With that pepper blend, there is also a richness and depth to the sauce, at least before the bitter elements become hugely pronounced. It reminds me a bit of cooking down beautiful, delicious red peppers in to a consistency similar to tomato sauce and there are a number of sauced I've had that sort of take on that quality a bit, even towards flavor. This one approaches that aspect, but doesn't quite make it all the way there, which I find a bit of a shame. For me, I think I'd like this one sans chia and with a touch more sweetness, but as it is, it's great on burgers, perhaps mixed into a spaghetti sauce or other tomato-based sauce, pizza, nearly anywhere you'd use a Louisiana-style, including creamier sauce foods, and it does respectably well on fried foods. Honestly, the more you can pair this with a complex flavor, unless you really like those bitter notes of the chia greatly, the better off this sauce will do.

Bottom line: One of the hotter entries in the Volcanic stable and overall quite enjoyable, if also slightly confusing. If you're a chilehead, I will definitely say this one is a must.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 9
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 7

Puckerbutt Payton's Hot Strawberry Hot Sauce

Puckerbutt Payton's Hot Strawberry

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZv_kjhxD7Y

Of note, this is my 500th overall hot sauce review on this blog, if you count the mini-reviews, which I most assuredly do. The irony of me doing a product that challenges the idea of what actually constitutes a hot sauce I find somewhat entertaining, but definitely is something unplanned.

So, what we have here is a very thin, as in nearly watery thin, sort of sauce wherein the attempt was to capture the idea of fresh strawberries from the field, so these are picked, washed, and kicked into a sauce, all on the same day, something I find very cool. In that mission, at minimum, they succeeded, as this tastes very vibrantly of fresh in-season strawberries, ripened on the vine.The sauce is simplistic with the only ingredients being vinegar, strawberries, and peppers. The peppers are non-specified, but the helpful folks at Puckerbutt thought they were likely to be either red Jalapenos and/or Cayenne, which sort of fit my expectations as well, as the heat here is quite low.

Most strawberry sauces opt to add in a bit of pectin and try to condense things down into a concentrated flavor, more like a syrup or very loose preserves you might put on an ice cream, as far as consistency. Part of that is because strawberries can be a quite subtle fruit, with a not particularly bold or dominating flavor. Here, Ed Currie has rather daringly left it in a very runny state, with the end result, for me, being that I found it slightly watery. The flavor, though, is fantastic, what there is of it. 

The looser the sauce, the harder I find it is to use it and with this one quite runny, it precludes things where you'd need a sauce to stick. I think it would make an interesting burger marinade, given how well burgers work with berries, but the best application I found for it was using it straight as a salad dressing, ala a vinaigrette, where the consistency works for it rather than against it. Indeed, I would go so far as to suggest that they re-think this one and bring it to market as more of a chilehead salad dressing, as we don't seem to have many of those and there's a natural alignment with this sauce. As a hot sauce, I find it fails for me a bit, despite me really liking the flavor, and that mostly comes down to the consistency issue...and maybe a bit with the low heat as well.

Bottom line: While this is delicious, you will need to be prepared to be creative in using it, if you get this one, unless you're getting it just to be a fantastic salad dressing. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 0
           Flavor: 9
           Flexibility: 2
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Silk City Mudshark Madness Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Mudshark Madness

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

I must admit to no small amount of excitement for this one, as I always love a good fruit-based sweet hot and especially love pineapple. This one combined pineapple and mango, two of fruits paired frequently with Habanero, with Habanero in this sauce also and I figured the sauce would be a victory lap. It took me a bit to figure out what was wrong with it, because the sauce I had here feel a bit below my expectation for the tried and true familiar taste profile, but I noticed that the last ingredient was a general "spices," which is probably the issue.

Certainly not roasted red peppers nor sugar nor salt nor white vinegar, which are the other components, but something in there was giving an off-flavor I just couldn't put my finger on exactly. I figure it was maybe a garlic or onion powder or something along those lines, and I suggest those two because there was an Adoboloco sauce that had similar ingredients that it also wrecked a bit by adding too many flavors, but, like that one, it's a shame, as it mars what is otherwise a quite vibrant and lovely, if slightly runnier than I'd like, sauce.

Heat-wise, it's Habanero, so we're on the pretty low end of things, but that off-flavor, along with the runniness, sort of dampened any hope I had for it on pizza, which I was greatly hoping for.  It does nicely on fried meats, but I really prefer it almost exclusively on chicken, where the combination of stuff seems to work best. On fish and shrimp, it's more just on the okayish side. It's by no means a bad sauce, but I wind up thinking what a shame it is that the great sauce that's hinted at in here is somewhat diluted by other elements.

Bottom line: In a way this is kind of a lesson, where one can take a great idea (combining two of the more common tropical fruits with Habanero) and wind up with diminishing results by getting a bit too fancy.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Hellfire Evil Bastard Hot Sauce Review

Hellfire Evil Bastard

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

I've had this on the list for a while, along with a few others, as the final sauces I intended to do from Hellfire, both because of coverage, as in I've generally done everything I've wanted to, which is all of the sauces without onions and/or extracts, and because the process of choosing products from them is tiring. I generally do a decent amount of research for this blog, which I've always done as I like to know what new stuff is (FOMO to a degree, I suppose), but it's also both interesting and fun to me. For Hellfire, though, with their tiny ingredient label text and a not much better website, it's generally not a particularly fast endeavor. So this one was one I picked up not so much because I saw the label or name and was burning with desire to try it, but more for coverage, a sort of last bit of punctuation, some light housekeeping before closing the door on Hellfire, sans some new entries.

Even though the others on that list have been less than stellar so far and this one had a lot of ingredients I don't particularly love, I kept an open mind and mouth and was pleasantly rewarded for taking the chance. This is a quite excellent sauce, altogether. It's another with a laundry list of stuff and definitely one shooting for the "whole is greater than the sum of its parts" vibe, but what is delivered here took me by surprise. Here, the superhots, the 7-Pot Primos, the Scorpions, and the Ghosties, both regular and in smoked form, come together nicely to form a solid superhot flame base, while the rest of the ingredients, including the cinnamon whiskey, do a nice job offsetting the standard superhot bitterness, while allowing some of that flavor to seep through as well. There is no one "main" flavor, but more a composite, but here and there you can catch hints of curry and the whiskey and a touch of garlic, along with some richness from the tomatoes. 

A lot of the peppers are arriving by way of mash, so this is a fairly vinegar-forward sauce. I found it worked best considering it more as a Lousiana-style, in terms of application, though I did try it in a variety of settings. I found it worked best with meats and with generally uncomplex flavors. I can't say it was outright bad on pizza, for instance, but it also was not an application I'd attempt again (I would not ever use Louisiana-style here), but neither would I attempt it on something like mac & cheese. With the curry sort of hovering about in the mix, I think this could be worth a stab on Asian foods, but again, with the vinegar forward nature here, this would definitely be a YMMV situation.

Bottom line: Very surprisingly solid entry with a complex, well-orchestrated flavor profile from Hellfire on this one, though definitely hot enough to be for chileheads only.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 6
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

My Favorite Pods

It occurs to me now, when it's too late, of course, that this would have been a good post for when this blog hit 500, but naturally, despite trying to think of something special and failing and just noting the milestone in a sauce review, I wouldn't post something I've been kicking around for literal years, but, much like the list of favorite sauce companies, I thought it might be fun to take a little peek at some of my favorite peppers and do a little write-up. I was considering doing this as a FOH Tier List video, but since I still don't know how to do that (at this point, I probably will wait until I upgrade my tech) and I like writing also, I figured may as well just do this now, on Valentine's Day, since all of this is a labor of love and to be a chilehead means one must, at some level, love the chiles and all what they offer us.

So, here we go, much like my Favorite Sauce Companies list (link in SOTY page at right), this is a work in progress and in no particular weighted order but alphabetically, my favorite pods:

7-Pot Primo - I've greatly enjoyed this pepper since I first encountered it, which was in a sauce, and I've since run across it, again, in other sauces, most of which I've enjoyed considerably. I really like the flavor of this, though I find it more bitter than the ghost and without any of the smokey element. There is often a nice bit of sweetness paired with this and it works quite well there. There is some suggestion this is maybe kinda sorta a Carolina Reaper, but the flavor is not identical and also Carolina Reapers are much, much harder on me, almost like I have to build up a tolerance specific to them. Not the case with the 7-Pot Primos, which I can generally enjoy with near-wild abandon. Currently my 2nd favorite superhot.

Arbol - An absolute staple of the Mexican/Southwestern food vibe, one of the tastiest out there, whether powdered (generally what's in chili powder, sometimes along with Ancho and/or Cayenne, which is coming up shortly), or dried or fresh, this is also one of the most accessible out there.

Banana - I'm never quite sure whether these are called Banana or Yellow Wax more correctly, but I see them generally sold (and listed on menus) as Banana, so I'm going with that.  This is another pepper that I've had both in pod form (not super-interesting) and pickled and in that latter form, it really comes alive. I have almost no interest in any "greens" salad that doesn't have pickled banana peppers as a component, as I find that one addition just tends to make the dish.

Bhut Jolokia - The famed "ghost pepper," this was my very first favorite superhot and is still at the top spot of my list, despite several other peppers succeeding it in heat. I like the smokiness and I find the flavor, with just a touch of the superhot bitter, accenting things, is more like a venerable and welcome old friend these days. Given my flavor-first motif, I don't ever see a time of this dropping off the list.

Calabrian - This little gem constantly vies for my overall favorite pepper, which is a pretty lofty goal, considering some of the entries on this list, particularly old favorites that have been there for years and years, were a formative part of me, to a degree, and have been with me nearly all the while, but I do so absolutely love the flavor of this, which strikes as classic and a bit fruity and sweet and maybe a touch smokey, but just stunningly delicious. These are another that weren't to this extent recently, but I am beyond thrilled that they're in my life now and those things, those rare and powerful things, don't come around too often, so one must cherish them, as I do these. 

Cayenne - Easily one of the most versatile and perhaps ubiquitous peppers out there (along with Jalapeno, Arbol & possibly Tabasco, I suppose), most of the times it's encountered, it will be either powder or in a sauce. This one is on my list to track down in the wild, as a whole pod, someday, but it makes one of my favorite types of sauces and one my fridge will never be without.

Cherry - This was my first favorite non-Bell pepper and I've had a lot of these over the year. I have to dial myself back a bit from buying jars of this because I will plow through an entire jar and won't mind if I do. These have one of the greatest flavor balances to me, but generally are low heat. They were one of my father's favorites, so there is probably a nostalgia bump at play here a bit, but Jersey Mike's just came out with a cherry pepper relish and even though I think their prices are a touch on the high side, damn if I'm not kicking around getting one, just so I can have more of that.

Chiltepin - Another that I've had mainly in sauces and another that is more in the Mexican/Southwest style, but one that I've consistently found makes a damn fine sauce. 

Fresno - I suppose one could think of these as red Jalapenos, but I find them both hotter and sweeter and considerably far more enjoyable than Jalapenos, particularly raw. I don't think I've yet had a sauce which had Fresno in it that I didn't like, which may hold a lesson here. 

Jalapeno - I mean, how could I not? This was probably the first actual spicy pepper pod for nearly every practicing chilehead or chilehead-curious on the planet, and with good reason. Not only is it a great-flavored pepper at a fairly moderate heat, but it lends itself well to a fairly wide variety of cuisines, particularly when pickled. I don't think it's quite as accessible as the Arbol, which has a nice warmth and earthiness to it, but it's a very close second. Also, we have Chipotle in the smoked version of this, which is a form I think is pretty fantastic and tends to have my interest pretty quickly.

Peppadew - I love these, with a fervor unmatched for nearly any other pepper, these delectable sweethearts. I don't know what the story is - one of my SOTYs used this pepper before the sauce vanished (and yes, I cleared a few bottles of it) and now I can only find them in the deli, usually in marinated form. Utterly spectacular pod and I'd love to see this in sauces more. 

Pequin - Again, another mostly I come across in sauces, though I have gotten the powder and dried pods and used them quite successfully in cooking. Excellent flavor, good amount of heat, particularly when Arbol is not enough, but this strikes me ultimately as more of an accent flavoring pepper than a main star. 

Scotch Bonnet - This was the first pepper to advance beyond the heat of the Jalapenos that I really enjoyed, unlike its cousin, the Habanero (at least until the Red Savina variant). Imagine a fruitier-tasting Habanero that might approach one of those in heat, but had much better flavor and far less bitterness, as well as movement away from the flavor distinct to the Habs, which I don't mind in the chocolate or Red Savina version, but tend to dislike in the much more popular orange and green versions...unless they're fire-roasted, of course.

Shishito - This is the first in this list where I don't think it works at all well in sauces, being far too thin-walled, but, properly blistered with a touch of oil and some nice salt, this is one of the better-flavored peppers to just eat and enjoy. There is also the "hot lottery" thing, where 1 in 20 holds some heat, but realistically, it's still largely on the mild side, as are most of the peppers on this list. 

Sweet Pepper - I'm including Bell in this, but I'm more thinking of those smaller tri-colored ones, that look like smaller versions of Jalapenos, that are just utterly delicious. I will quite happily mow through a bag of those, savoring the differences between the yellows, oranges, and my favorites, the reds. I don't love green peppers generally, even in Bell form, though I can't honestly say I dislike them, but really, this is not a list about peppers where I'm ambivalent in feeling. Definitely the ranking for me is red, orange, yellow, in that order, but do yourself a favor and pick up a sack of these, if you're not familiar.

So, there we are. Currently 15 on the list, with a number I either haven't tried at all or enough yet, stuff like Chocolate Primotalli or Infinity or Dragon's Breath or Omega and both Bhutlah and Douglah, or that I've tried and I'm quite neutral about ultimately, which would include Pepper X, Apollo, the Carolina Reaper, most of the Habaneros, Serranos, Ajis, Datil, Thai/Bird's Eye, and Piri Piri. Naturally, there are a few I actively dislike, which I won't bother naming here, but will just observe that I have little interest in the more floral ones out there and leave it there.

Silk City Aztek Attack Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Aztek Attack

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2wDRR2cm_I

Silk City is one of my favorite hot sauce companies and it's always a delight to see what's cooking up over that way. That is not to say that I think all of the sauces are great. There are a few here and there that I wind up liking less and fewer still that come through as what I feel are missteps. While there are a greater number that I find myself liking quite a bit (this company seems to always have good odds they will be in SOTY contention, sadly, I must report that this sauce is among that latter group, that of missteps.

It is not because of the flavor. Indeed, the combination of Jalapeno, Habanero, Cherry, and Serrano, along with an undercurrent of garlic, is a good one. The heat, I will say, is a bit on the lower side, but that doesn't tend to ruin my overall enjoyment of a sauce. No, it is, like the Ram Skull (reviewed elsewhere here) before it, an issue more with consistency that sort of ruins the enjoyment for me and with both of them, they are quite watery. In this case, I suspect the liquid is a combination of water and vinegar, but it makes the sauce a bit difficult to use.

I am probably understating things a bit. When sauces are this loose, it's like adding water to something, which means it can run everywhere, of course. When it has the additional effect of diluting the flavor, as it does here, you have the dilemma of trying to add enough to get the flavor, but without also making a soup of the whole proceedings. This would probably work pretty well in drinks, but it's a shame as I find the flavor to be quite good...when I can get a grip on it. There is a very light and subtle sort of pepper flavor that I find pretty enticing, but unfortunately, there is not a lot of depth to it. It's like a whisper on the air, there for a moment and then gone.

Bottom line: Most green sauces tend to have a more medium body, which helps to stick to food, and this sauce would have benefited greatly from following that lead. Despite an excellent flavor, this one is overly challenging to use.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 2
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4

Torchbearer Mushroom Mayhem Hot Sauce Review

Torchbearer Mushroom Mayhem

Note: This sauce appears on Season 20 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bUi-s-VfeAI

I really like the ethos of Torchbearer, going with an all-natural motif, shooting for some healthy aspects to the sauce, and coming up with some really inventive stuff along the way. For some of the sauces I've had from them, I find them more interesting than good, which is not meant to be an insult in any way, but more a reflection of the dynamic and wonderfully creative aspects of the sauces overshadowing the flavors a bit...for me, anyway. All of the reviews on this blog and the all of the FOH videos on YouTube are a reflection of my own personal and distinct palate, which may (and hopefully does) match readers and viewers to an extent, but my enjoyment is specifically derivative of that palate. 

I don't think I've ever had a sauce from Torchbearer that I think is outright bad, but there are definitely some I've enjoyed a lot more than others. This one fell solidly in the "ok" category for me. I certainly didn't hate it, but didn't love it or especially like it much for the earlier testing I'd done, but found it solid enough to want to finish out the bottle...until, that is, I put it on a fast food burger, which got me thinking...

One of my all-time favorite menu items at any restaurant was the old Mushroom N Swiss burger from Hardee's back in the 80s and early 90s. I worked at Hardee's and consequently had steady access and so I had a lot of those, often even when not working. Once the changeover with Hardee's and Carl's Jr. came about, actually, even well before that, I think they deleted the menu items and other places would do weird crap with theirs, like add mayo (having built a lot of those myself, that was verboten). This sauce made me immediately think of the mushroom sauce that came on those, which it is nowhere near, to be sure, but the flavors here seem to point a bit at a steak sauce and indeed, on red meat, this stuff is nothing short of fantastic, where you get an amplification of both the mushroom flavor and the general umami.

I tried it on a few different foods and generally didn't like it. It would often strike me as overly astringent or the floral notes of the Scorpion would be too forward and overshadow the more subtle flavors in there, but in the right setting, all of that goes away and you get a nice solid heat, along with the sauce substantially adding to the flavor dynamic.  The molasses-Mandarin orange combination I find an intriguing one, to be sure, but with that substantial of a depth of flavor, it needs a strong foil to counter it a touch. When this sauce is the main flavor, I find it a bit off-putting, still not bad, per se, just not what I'm after. Heat-wise, both Scorpions and Habaneros here put this at a steady 2. 

Bottom line: This is another one I find kind of puzzling for a wing sauce, given its inclusion on the Hot Ones show, but on red meat, it is near magical...assuming you like mushrooms, of course.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Heat Hot Sauce Shop x Dawson's Sunny Citrus Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Heat Hot Sauce Shop x Dawson's Sunny Citrus Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykIRMFmtBV4

I think I stumbled on this sauce a year or so ago and made a note of it at the time for something to look out for. To my mind, Dawson's makes some interesting sauces and this seemed to be definitely more of a crossover than a straight across re-label. By the time I got to actually being ready to plunk down and get it, the label, while still looking like a Dawson's label, had changed a bit. The signature red wax, that I rather loathe, over the cap and neck of the bottle is also still intact as well, of course. 

I think the idea of Habanero and citrus sort of intrigued me and when I skimmed the ingredients, I noted the blood orange and figured that was the citrus. It is and isn't. Grapefruit is also in there as well, which is kind of a fascinating choice to me, as neither of those citrus types are particularly sweet. There is the addition of some maple syrup in there as well and the cumulative effect is to play up the fruitness of the Habanero, which is frankly a remarkably brilliant idea.

Rounding this out is a bit of garlic and it's all smoothed by the EVOO circulating amidst things. There is also goji berry in there as well, but I didn't find that really impact the flavor so much as the other things. The grapefruit and blood orange, to be sure, can't really be picked out distinctively, but combine to make an overall sort of general citrusy aspect, though, again not on the sweet side. What it really comes down to is a rather intricate combination of a delicate balance of flavors that really wants to be the star of whatever you're adding it to. For stronger flavored foods, the results can be a bit clashy. Sticking to lighter fried meats with a more neutral breading is probably the better way to go here, but it could be interesting on vegetable versions of that. Even if it doesn't work, this is light and lively enough to be fun trying.

Heat-wise, despite the label listing as an 8, this is a pretty tame sauce. We have both the oil and the citrus working against this reading as a hot sauce and despite Habanero being the first ingredient, this is definitely a much more flavor-first type sauce. 

Bottom line: Another sauce that winds up being on the fascinating sauce, quite well designed, but definitely doesn't play well enough with other flavors to be hugely flexible.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5