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