Chile Lengua De Fuego Turmeric Bomb Hot Sauce Review

Chile Lengua De Fuego Turmeric Bomb

Note: This sauce appears on Season 19 of The Hot Ones.

This is, to my knowledge, the first Honduran hot sauce I've ever had and actually probably the first Honduran food of any type I've ever had. Honduras is a country I admitted don't have cross my mind often, but it seemed unusual to me for a Central American country to use both ginger root and turmeric into their different food types. So, as is often what happens, I got curious and looked further into things and discovered a lot of interesting aspects of that cuisine...this, indeed, is one of the happier side effects of the Hot Ones show and of hot sauce in general for me, the discovery of new and previously unsuspected culinary items of interest.

This is also a sauce I put off for a while, because I couldn't really determine where to place it. I think there is a degree of similarity in Central American foods, with the most familiar to us in the United States being largely, if not predominantly, of the Mexican variety, but there are certainly regional differences and it is pretty fun to compare and contrast. Still, I couldn't place what food from any of those places might involve turmeric and ginger root. Garlic? Sure. Hot chiles? Definitely. But turmeric always seemed to my mind more associated with Mediterranean or Middle Eastern foods...or mustard, while ginger root inevitably leads me hard to Asian foods. 

Getting into this, while it did remind me a lot of the Last Dab sauces that involve an array of spices, the Honduran hard liquor that is part of this makes a huge difference. It is at once slightly bracing and warming, but gives a general sense of roundness to the sauce, which does tend a bit towards the bitter, thanks not only to the superhots kicking around, but probably the turmeric as well. That spice is one for me where a little tends to go a pretty long way. There are some flavor complexities at play here, but this sauce is also a touch susceptible to flavor cancellation, depending on where you use it.

As mentioned, there are superhots abound. We have Ghosties and Trinidad Scorpions and Reapers, so this is definitely a chilehead only sauce. It is also a sauce that really breathes more and comes to life when warm, although I think ultimately this is another with a flavor more intriguing and interesting than actually good. It is very smooth and has a nice, almost delicate mouth feel, which I also found enjoyable. It is almost one of those sauces that is kind of its own thing and works well until itself, but I did find it worked pretty well on the Honduran food I was lucky enough to find, and was pretty solid on fried foods also...though admittedly, it would not be my first choice. There are definitely some flexibility challenges with the flavor here.

Bottom line: If you're a chilehead with a taste more for the exotic, this will probably be right up your alley, but if you're not food adventurous, it might be more a mystery than desired to find a place for this.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Hillside Harvest Pineapple Fresno Hot Sauce Review

Hillside Harvest Pineapple Fresno

As I may have mentioned in the past, Fresnos are one of my favorite pepper types. I don’t really love eating raw pods particularly, but that is not the case with Fresnos, where I will generally get those when they are available and keep getting them until they’re not. Discovering my fondness for them was something for which I’m eternally happy and after discovering that glory, I no longer look past those bottles on the shelf, even though I know the heat charge is going to be relatively tame, at best, unless there are other, hotter, pods at play in the mix.

Here, we have basically 4 ingredients total. Pineapple (probably juice), vinegar, Fresnos, salt. I can admire a sauce that is pure and simple, as long as it is also flavorful. This sauce is a gorgeous slightly reddish orange, and the flavor is as lively and vibrant as the color. It is, however, a touch more astringent than I would like, as I always inevitably feel that fruit-based sweet hots should be sweet. This is not a sweet sauce (definitely could have used a hit of sugar) and is a bit thinner than others in that category. The way it holds to the side of the bottle, along with those factors, makes me think this is probably pineapple juice as the main ingredient, though it is listed as pineapple. I also wish the Fresnos were a bit more forward in the mix, as in before the vinegar, but the flavor of pineapple and Fresno is a great combination.

As with most sauces that use pineapple, this works nicely with fried foods. I think it is a strong testament to the power of the Fresnos that even as astringent as this is, I still think it works fairly well on pizza as well, but flexibility overall is a bit low for this, as the food is generally going to need to be able to accommodate both fruit and heavy vinegar aspects. Heat-wise, Fresnos are not ever going to deliver much in the way there, so the challenge here will not be from heat. Had the vinegar been dialed back and/or some sugar added and the Fresnos been a bit more forward in the flavor, this would have been among the best in this category. As it is, I’d still put it in the top third, though towards the bottom of that third.

Bottom line: A solid addition to the pineapple hot sauces out there, using one of the best-tasting pods, though delivering precious little in the way of heat.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Frye Provisions Hot Sauce Review

Frye Provisions

Note: This sauce was provided by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, hot sauce emporium of legend. Check him out on Facebook & Instagram.

So, what we have here is a sauce designed by a chef, a sauce that actually feels and tastes like what you might expect a sauce designed by a chef to feel and taste. This is definitely a quite gourmet sauce, with unusual elements, such as raisins and dates, as well as achiote paste, that last which I don’t think I’ve encountered in a hot sauce before...and probably not dates, either. It is a fascinating experience, delicate, and extraordinarily well-balanced, with various subtleties emerging as you get further into the flavor notes.

The leadoff pepper is Fresno, which is a great choice, as this is one of the tastiest peppers out there, in my book. There is Habanero for heat, but only at the tail end of the ingredients, so heat is clearly not a focus and I don’t imagine too many will find this challenging in that regard. I suspect this sauce will appeal more to people who are foodies before chileheads, such as yours truly.

I think the idea here is an everyday sauce, an idea which holds appeal to a lot of sauce makers. With that type of sauce, there are two main paths that can be taken. While all sauces in that category have to have a good flavor to function, the first path is to make a sauce that is so delicious that one will still enjoy eating a delicious sauce, whether it pairs directly with the food or not. The second is to have a more non-distinct approach, so that it will potentially work with more categories than keying a sauce to one cuisine type. For this sauce, it strikes me that it has foot in both worlds, where it is both delicious and entirely mutable in terms of where it might be good. Indeed, even with extensive testing, while I have found that I prefer other sauces in specific settings, I’ve not found a single instance where I thought it didn’t work at all or was bad. Obviously, with everyday sauces, flexibility has to necessarily be high and I think this sauce succeeds there. It also comes in a 9 fl. oz. bottle, which leaves lots of sauce to play around with.

Bottom line: This is a very refined, even elegant sauce, that has quite a bit to offer and is perhaps the most gourmet hot sauce I’ve had to date. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7