Knee Deep Blends Tropical Storm Hot Sauce Review

Knee Deep Blends Tropical Storm Pineapple Habanero

Yet another sauce from the hallowed shelves of BYT of another sauce company I didn’t know existed until I saw it there...which also describes a great many sauces here in these annals. This one, with some nifty, though kind of pushing the bounds of legibility for these old eyes, graphics on the labels, is a product I think is ultimately labeled incorrectly. As has been stated repeatedly, I like a little sweet with my hot and sweet-hots, particularly fruit-based sweet hots, will always have my interest. In the trip whereupon I picked this up, I also picked up at least a half dozen more of just that type.

I think this one sort of pushes the line of where does a hot sauce end and where does a different category begin. It is a very, very watery sauce, heavily sweet and looking at the ingredients, with the first two being cane sugar and canned pineapple in light syrup, it’s not difficult to understand why. Habanero is the very last ingredient and only appears here in powder form, so it does not play heavily into the flavor and is there mainly for what scant heat there is. There is also some soy sauce and vinegar in there, presumably to cut the sweetness a touch, along with some citric acid, but even with heavy agitation, that is a hard task to bear.

This one reads more as either a mixer component, as in making mixed drinks, a sort of elixir, perhaps or, better yet, as a marinade. It is so very loose and watery that it requires quite regular agitation and tends to spill off of everything it is put on, as well as running down the threads at the top of the bottle, as this does not come with restrictor cap. In many ways, it’s almost like this is still in development rather than a refined and tested product, but perhaps this is what they want and are just marketing it as something other than what it is. It will, of course, eventually soak into the breading on fried foods, but not quickly, and as hopeful as I was for this on pizza, that was pretty much a nonstarter. Finding the good niche pointed me in the two directions I mentioned where I think it works best and not especially too much else. Heat-wise, as it is Habanero powder and dead last on the ingredient list, as mentioned, this is a pretty tame sauce overall.

Bottom line: While the consistency is the main issue for me here, in terms of actually using it, I did find this a bit sweeter than I liked, with overall pretty minimal heat. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Hot Sauce Review

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Secret Weapon

This is not a hot sauce, at least in my estimation. This is basically something I made a few times, albeit in a much smoother form, when I mixed a yellow mustard with the Dillanero (FOH video available, if interested). I don’t know that they used a relish, but this is essentially what it’s named after, mustard pickle or pickle mustard. This is not to say it’s a bad product. On the contrary, I am absolutely enjoying this and it’s easily my favorite product so far that I’ve gotten from Maritime Madness. I just don’t consider it a hot sauce, but a mustard or mustard-adjacent product.

Still, if the manufacturer wants to market it as a hot sauce, I’m not going to argue (much). Instead, we will just view this as a hot sauce. One of the reasons I have not included mustards in these pages is because I don’t think it’s fair. I like mustards if fairly narrow applications, mostly on phallic-shaped meats or burgers or certain deli sandwiches or on in specific salads. Sometimes on oven-baked pork chops as well, but as I rarely make those, I’m not really counting that. I don’t find that mustard is particularly flexible outside of that, discounting perhaps sweet mustards, which can be ok on fried chicken type foods. The other side is that mustards tend to have their heat from allyl isothiocyanate rather than capsaicin and it’s just another category entirely. There can be some bridging, sure, but at heart, it is truly a mustard and thus, does not really fit into a hot sauce blog.

That aside, heat here is rather low. The bottle calls it a 6, I call it a 1. I believe the peppers used here are Habanero, but they don’t really interact with the flavor much. Instead, we have the yellow mustard, heavily sweetened by sugar, and with a healthy dose of (probably) sweet pickles, the end result being heavenly...at least where you’d normally use yellow mustard and/or pickles.

Bottom line: This is a failure as a hot sauce (which is reflected in the individual rating numbers), but as a pickle mustard, it is absolutely fantastic, particularly if you like sweeter mustards or relishes.  

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 0
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 5

Cry Baby Craig's Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Cry Baby Craig’s Habanero & Garlic

Hailing out of Faribault, MN, which is...somewhere, perhaps even relatively close to the place where I found it, we have here a sauce which is very clearly meant to be an everyday table sauce. Those are great and there is always a place in any rotation for an excellent-flavored sauce, which this surely is. For those to be successful, they have to be good in near ubiquitous usage, which means that a lot of sauces would really like to be that, but few pull it off well. This one is close to doing just that very thing, but doesn’t quite make it all the way.

To be sure, this is because it is fairly thin and bordering on watery. For me, it seems to be trying to delicately skirt a cross between a Mexican style sauce, which this one has strong flavor references toward, and a Cajun style sauce, with more the looseness and somewhat vinegar forward nature of the latter. Trying to do those two styles at once is kind of an interesting proposition, as I don’t find Mexican food with heavy shots of vinegar to be particularly pleasant, and conversely, do not want primarily Mexican flavors like cumin anywhere near where I might use a Cajun style, but this one manages the balancing act deftly, with a foot planted firmly in each style, but not so much that it is exclusive to the other. That this is also done with fresh ingredients is an especially neat trick.

The flavor here is quite embracing, easily accessible, and with some pretty nice flavor dynamics that develops as you get further into it on whatever you’re eating that will also take some vinegar. For instance, where this falls a bit short, for me, is on something like pizza, because watery sauces and pizza do not go well together. Watery sauces in general need to have a place where they can be somewhat absorbed or you run the risk of creating a saucy mess and that is definitely the case here as well. I did find it quite nice not only on all the Mexican foods I tried with it, but additionally where I might use a Louisiana-style or Cajun, so fried foods, creamy dishes, and the like. Heat-wise, it is a bit reminiscent of the El Yucatecos, where the punch is generally up front and whatever that initial hit is as hot as the sauce ever winds up getting.

Bottom line: While not quite meeting what I would consider a great or great table sauce overall, this one is fairly solid in terms of flexibility and is right there in terms of flavor. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 8
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6