HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood Hot Sauce Review

HAB Sauce Smoked Habanero Cherrywood

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz at Burn Your Tongue, the greatest of hot sauce emporiums. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

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

This may be the most literal-named sauce I've come across. While the first ingredient maybe tomatillo, everything, from the smell on down to the flavor, is more dominantly that of the second, and for which this sauced is named. I wasn't quite sure what to expect, largely imagining a more run-of-the-mill tomatillo sauce, which tends to lend a bit towards tomatillo, of course, as well as a green chile like an Anaheim, maybe a bit of lime, and some cilantro, with just a touch of garlic and that's mostly where the ingredients here lead...other than no lime or green chiles...or cilantro. Instead, we have the much more prominent note of the smoke, followed by the green Habaneros.

I'm not quite sure what they intended for this sauce, but with most of those ingredients, I'm thinking it's a tomatillo sauce, which means Mexican style foods, like chimichangas or carnitas or enchiladas or perhaps a nice tamale, maybe a nice fish taco, or perhaps in a marinade potentially for some nice flank steak. In all of those things, I think this would be pretty wonderful, as those all have fairly strong and prominent flavors that this can bounce off of and play with, as well as temper the intensity of the smoke flavor a bit. By itself, it does come across very forcefully as maybe not one note exactly, but by far the majority of the flavor is in that. Also, like most Mexican style sauces, and particularly green sauces of that style, it does not tend to do well outside of that food format.

That said, I do like this sauce a lot and think it fits very well with the more complex dishes. The more there is something there to compliment this, the better, and indeed, it proves often a very nice and welcome addition. I don't typically eat a lot of green sauces, as a rule, so I don't come across these frequently, but the last time I remember one being this favorable was probably Danny Cash's Salvation Garlic-Serrano Sauce (reviewed elsewhere here) or maybe the El Yucateco green (also reviewed elsewhere here). Color is much better here than in the latter, though this one does come across with the flashy heat in a similar manner. It is mostly that, though, just a flash, as this is a fairly tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: A very smoke-forward sauce, with some very nice background notes of green Habanero and tomatillo, followed by a slight grace note of garlic, all with very moderate heat. Definitely plays well with others and in my mind, sort of requires complimentary stronger flavors for best results.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Brick & Mortar Hot Sauce Spots In Utah Update

Update 2024

I am seriously bad at doing this...I, once upon a when, had designs on doing this annually and now, with this post, is nearly the first time I've updated it since November 2020...naturally, things have changed a lot since then and I figured, with the newest location of Burn Your Tongue (celebrating 15 years in July 2024!) in Park City, which is an absolute showstopper (more on that forthcoming), now is a good time to re-up it.

Gone from last time are Pepper Palace in Park City, which is not really much of a loss, and both the Draper and Logan locations of Burn Your Tongue, which might not have been around in 2020. Also, FYE, various local grocery outlets, and World Market, have all done a bit of upgrading to their hot and spicy offerings. I try to keep tabs on all of that, either noting in the written reviews here on this very blog or, if it's not a hot sauce, doing an FOH video on it, which you can check out by following the links at right to my YouTube page. Additionally, all of this locations (as well as some others not in Utah) are covered on my Yelp page, which has a link, also at right. Finally, I also encourage you to check out the previous entries into this less than constantly attended Brick & Mortar series.

Now then, the list:

Burn Your Tongue - inside Quilted Bear - Newgate Mall, Ogden, UT

800+ sauces. I might not need to add anything else to this, actually. This selection is intense and covers every spectrum of hot sauce you might think of, including some mustards and syrups. If you combined ALL of the shelf offerings of everyone else on this list, you’d maybe hit 200 - 250, but not much more. All of them. Combined. Roger, in addition to being the ambassador to spiciness, particularly with his support of the chilehead community, is also an all-around good guy and if you happen to catch him there, you’ll be treated to a great conversation about peppers, the industry, and exactly which sauce you should be taking with you, and maybe even a discount. 

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - University Mall, Orem, UT

This one is a sort of truncated version of Ogden, with maybe half of the selection, 350 - 500 sauces or so, with a bunch of snacky stuff and different powdered mixes and popcorn, among other things. Even with the lower shelf space, this location is still more than all of the other spots combined and is super convenient. This is the location I haunt perhaps more than the others, so if you ever want to catch me in the wild, it will probably be here...or would have been, if not for the next entry.

Burn Your Tongue - inside Locals - Upper Level Outlets - Park City, UT

Has even more selection than the granddaddy location up in Ogden, with several sauces there that I did not see in Ogden, including an entire Hot Ones sauce, including their entire branded line, by far the largest I've seen on anyone's shelves. As usual, there was quite a lot of stuff I hadn't heard of on the shelves and encountering the shelves for the first time, I was blown away, which is pretty hard to do for me, at this point. This is easily the biggest selection not only in Utah, but in at least a 500 mile radius, possibly more.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

This is what it sounds like, a small market servicing a deli counter that makes some of the tastiest sandwiches known to man. Everything there is in service to that, from the fresh desserts to the substantial drink selection to the snacks and so on. There is one neck-high shelving unit that is dedicated to the sauces, but in that area is probably a good 50 or 60 different types, some of which I’ve seen nowhere else. Selection here is a pretty far cry from any of the BYT locations, but still probably second most. It battles back and forth a bit with Pirate O's for that honor at various times, but both of those are more like semi-annual trips for me these days.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

Speaking of, this is more of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else. The owner seems somewhat of a chilehead, and is also another good guy that I’ve enjoyed chatting with about sauces, but a couple of shelving units along the back wall means he’s deferring to other stuff that probably sells better and is more profitable, though selection waxes and wanes a bit. Although the last few visits have yielded zero sauces for me to walk out with, since I've covered the entirety of the hot sauce area, with maybe 1 or 2 exceptions that are way more in the "rainy day" category,  I do enjoy the visits here a lot, just something warm and comfortable about it, that so-called je ne sais quoi.

While my overall favorite, and the place that by far gets the majority of my purchases, is Burn Your Tongue, I do have a soft spot for both Grove, for lunches and for being the OG hot sauce location, where I've spent many good hours in conversation with the owner, as well as Pirate O's, just because there is so much cool stuff to see and even after multiple visits, I still find new stuff that wasn't there the time before. I appreciate that kind of relentlessness. To sum up, for the last major ones standing, three very different approaches, with BYT definitely covering the gamut of the "chilehead" experience, from chile-curious, all the way to hardcore firehead, with Grove additionally offering some outstanding sandwiches and novelties, and with Pirate O's being just an overall fascinating experience, with lots of imported delectables.