On Hot Sauce Styles...

On Hot Sauce Styles

Yesterday, I watched a video from Brian Ambs titled “Hot Sauces From Beginner To Expert” or something along those lines.  I’m not going to link it in these pages, but I urge you to check it and his channel out. Mikey V also has a very lengthy page on his website about this, which goes into far greater depth, which I am going to link. He bases his on geographical regions, which I also do to an extent, as you will see below, but here is the page of Mikey’s: https://www.mikeyvsfoods.com/post/the-ultimate-guide-to-types-of-hot-sauces?srsltid=AfmBOooqCId5fvbQ5PNFDhh3pxfp3qXQTvMriv9zDUWWEl-mnfe9eNQO. I can't say I'm in full agreement on this matter with either of these fine gentlemen, who are also not directly in agreement with each other's positions, but believe both are worthy of consideration to see where you fall on this topic.

Since Brian's video was the one which prompted this post, I will address it a bit further. I found the video a touch inconsistent in its approach, given that one of his criteria seemed based on availability, which is so wildly erratic that for me, for the most part, it’s essentially a non-consideration. I make no claims to know about what things are like in Ohio, where Brian is, but for me, my first impulse is to get something off of a brick and mortar shelf. I am very spoiled, in that I have Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue busily scouring the globe for new stuff to bring in and stock in his 3 separate locations, but there are also 3 additional other outlets, not counting grocery stores, that I can think of off the top of my head that warrant at least a casual glance for sauces and if I include grocery stores, it’s probably closer to a dozen. I would be remiss not to mention that grocery store chains will often not stock things identically from store to store, so there is a good amount of variety.

I think before I get much further into this, which I again thank Brian for inspiring and which I should have done long ago (I mentally did some of this when I developed my ranking criteria all those years ago and admittedly made the mistake of assuming everyone was on a similar wavelength), we need to take a step back and take a look at this, as is frequently the case with me, scientifically. We do this by first reviewing where hot sauces fit in, with regard to the general framework of the food world, so we can better understand the context. To do this, we need to discard both words “hot,” which is a colloquialism at best, and “sauce,” which is so generic as to be meaningless, and instead look at category. That larger category would be condiments (or if we want to do this in a taxonomy phrasing, it would be Order or possibly Class), those semi-solid food additives which are meant to be paired with something. So, things like mayonnaise/aioli (if you want to be fancy), ranch dressing, mustard, barbeque sauce, etc. would all conceivably be part of this. The reason I call back to the taxonomy stuff is because words matter, or they should matter.

I spend a lot of time in these pages bemoaning that makers are inclined to call everything they put in a bottle “hot sauce” because that is one of the hottest (*ahem*) sectors of the market and the thinking is that they are more likely to sell product by labeling this way. For the entirety of this blog, I’ve resisted adding ambiguous products, unless the manufacturer specifically insists and in those cases, I will note that something is more properly a mustard, for example, and not really a hot sauce and me scaling it as if it were a hot sauce will be to its distinct disadvantage, sort of like if one rated dogs based on how well they operate a bicycle through an obstacle course.

Anyway, given that hot sauce is a condiment, we can move to specificity and for me, it comes in a singular way, just as with all other condiments, and that is to application, specifically when, where, and how you use it, or if you prefer, to the actual food pairings. So, when I think of styles or types, words which I use interchangeably to refer to this facet because we do not yet have an actual taxonomy-like system, it is in direct reference to those questions. You can have literally any heat scale you want within the various sauce types, so we also take that out of consideration, the same as availability earlier.

With all that in mind, here is how I categorize the different hot sauce styles, which is listed alphabetically, though I will point out that, just as with music genres, the categories are not necessarily exclusive to each other and this list is meant to be more a broad overview, as in most sauces will fit into these style (or sub-styles), rather than encompassing:

Asian-Style: This is one where filtering them regionally, as Mikey V does, would be useful, but I don't encounter them enough to parse in that way and this sort of broad stroke I do in the name of expedience, while recognizing that the flavors of China, South Korea, Thailand, and Japan, to name just a few, are distinct to themselves. The sauces here, accordingly, run a somewhat diverse gamut from sweeter sauces, to ones with greater emphasis on certain flavors, like soy sauce or teriyaki, to the near-ubiquitous sriracha style and even within this style, the sauces are very dependent on food pairings. This is perhaps the least flexible of all of the styles, where the sauces are fairly food-locked into the respective dishes they’re meant to be paired with.

Boutique - These are sauces that are meant to highlight a specific component or characteristic in the creation of the sauce moreso than pairing. In the case of Brian, where his crossover sauce with High Desert contains a very expensive spice called saffron, that would be an example. Another would be the vast majority of the Torchbearer line, where they have a very distinct approach to making sauce and they are set apart from the rest of the market as a result.

Caribbean - Like the Asian style, this type typically references an entire region and various produce grown there, so things like Scotch Bonnets and Trinidad Scorpions and mustards and tropical fruits, made into a lively and vibrant sauce that echoes that very distinctive cuisine style. These sauces are often very complex (like jerk flavoring or blackened chicken both can be) and I often find this moves away from what I’m looking for in a sauce, as I don’t typically eat that kind of food, but it does serve as a very nice change of pace and a good introduction to approach that rich island flavor.

Everyday (Table): This is a style of sauce that is meant to have a general and delicious enough flavor to be paired suitably with all comers, whatever food you may care to throw in front of it. Actual practice doesn’t quite reach the lofty aspirations of that concept, however, as it’s hard for any sauce to do that, particularly at a high level. This is a relatively new type and for many years, you’d see either various Mexican-style sauces or Louisiana-Style sauces (those two being considered the most room temperature stable and universal in flavor) employed in this fashion before makers started looking harder at this as its own distinctive style. This is one of the more flexible sauce types overall in terms of reach.

Kitchen Sink: This style tends to list many, many, many ingredients, to the point where the result can easily and readily experience flavor cancellation when attempting to pair it and is almost a destination unto itself. This is another type that tends to be quite narrow in terms of where it works with food  and is one I will normally look past because of that facet.

Louisiana-Style - This style of sauce is usually one of simplicity, which is: (highly strained) chile (usually Cayenne), vinegar, salt. Often water and/or xanthan gum will be additionally added, but the idea is to have a thin, watery, very chile-forward sauce with a hard vinegar hit. For this style, texture plays a fairly prominent and specific role and these are the most likely to come (appropriately) with a restrictor cap. Sauces in this style are useful for cutting through rich foods and is probably the most common type, at least in the United States, especially when noting that many, many wing sauces (this is its own category and not strictly a hot sauce, per se) are based on it. This is the one type of sauce I will not be without. If additional elements, such as garlic, etc. are added to it, I refer to it as a sub-style, that of Cajun, and sauces there also tend to run a bit thicker.

Mexican-style - This is another more distinctive style, meant to pair with the various foods of that country. This one also probably has the least variation within entries into this type. While some of these sauces, such as Cholula, can be used equally well outside of those various dishes, most of them will find diminishing returns under that circumstance. Like the Asian-style sauces, these are generally locked into food pairings of those typical regional flavors.

Novelty - This style and one of its spinoff sub-types, the Challenge/Stunt sauce variant, are not really meant to be used with food, and in the case of Novelty, possibly not used at all or even opened. This also includes the vast majority of holiday samplers, a number of which I’ve reviewed in these pages. For many of them, you are purchasing a label referencing a state or vitriol for a specific political candidate or party or an over-exuberant fondness for firearms or some graphically described or suggested destruction of various parts of the intestinal tract, just to name a few I’ve seen. It doesn’t matter what’s in the bottle, at all, because you are essentially buying a display piece.

Pepper - In a lot of ways, this is similar to the Louisiana-Style, in that it is very chile-forward and may only have 2 or 3 other ingredients, but sauces of this type are generally a lot thicker and usually without the hard vinegar hit. One could also think of it as the difference between being a sauce rather than a straight across puree. The last two Hot Ones Last Dabs would fit into this category, to give you an idea.

Sweet-Hot - This is one of my favorite styles and one I usually keep on hand and generally use the fastest. It is as you would expect, a hot sauce with an emphasis on a sweet element. I will usually divide it further by source of the sweetness, such as Fruit-based Sweet-Hot, for instance, in the reviews, but the fundamental idea is still the same. There may be an emphasis towards a specific fruit, for instance, but generally, the underlying chile sauce is not usually particularly complex and meant to serve as a base, with the sweet element being much more to the fore. The uses here will depend greatly on the sweetness source, with the less pointed the ingredient, the broader the use.

Smokin' Ed's Hot Goji Berry Pineapple Hot Sauce Review

Smokin’ Ed’s Hot Goji Berry Pineapple 

When I first saw this sauce, it struck me as curious. I’m not super familiar with the goji berry, other than peripherally, acai as well, but the visual of the sauce made me think that pineapple was playing a fairly moderate role here. If not, the idea of the berries I was familiar with, raspberry, blueberry, blackberry, strawberry, cranberry, did not lend themselves at all well to the idea of being blended with any tropical fruit. So, I was curious and added it to the backburner list, figuring I’d get it once Ed put out one of his trademark storewide sales.

I wound up getting it last year (2024), where it joined a few others, just sitting on the shelf, minding their own business, being put off and forgotten for far longer than intended, like so many others, with the main problem being that now that I had it, I had no idea quite where to use it. Pineapple suggests many things to me, but berry suggests many others, often contradictory. Additionally, my unfamiliarity with the goji was not helping. Was it a nice, sweet berry in its natural form, like the first four I mentioned above, or something far tarter, like the cranberry? After getting into it, I would say more like the latter, but as all those berries are distinct from each other flavor-wise, so too is the goji.

After opening the sauce, it became pretty clear that I was going to have a little bit of a challenge on my hands finding a place where it could fit. The flavor is definitely on the tart side and I will just say that this sauce is for sure in need of some sugar. Perhaps that was the role of the pineapple, but if so, it was not nearly enough, particularly not with the addition of vinegar to boot. We have a tart berry merged with the superhot bitterness of the Reapers and those are the two main flavors. This sort of brings up another consideration in that I have no real idea what is behind the design of the sauce. Usually, I can guess where someone was trying to go, but here...despite my best efforts, still no idea. Goji is considered a superfood and like many of those, one of the major uses seems to be in drinks, smoothies, etc. I don’t think that was the idea here, but I suppose it could be. I found it worked okayish on ice cream and on fried foods, but not to the point it would be my first choice. Interestingly, I didn’t like it on either burgers or roast beef at all, but I suppose this is probably closer to a cranberry on the sweetness scale and I would not ever considering combining either of those foods with that.

The texture here is also a bit on the grainy side. I understand goji berries are generally consumed in a sort of dried out form, closer to a raisin, sometimes chewier, and dried goji were used here. Using a dried fruit I think will always give you a bit of that, given there is no real way to re-hydrate the cells fully once desiccated. In this case, it makes it a bit clumpy. As mentioned, the Reapers are here and are a bit forward, so you can get a sense of the flavor. Heat-wise, it probably won’t challenge chileheads much, but I can definitely see it pushing some normies.

Bottom line: Props to Ed Currie for using a unique ingredient (I don’t recall seeing goji used elsewhere before this), but this is another sauce that I don’t find fits in particularly well.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4

Butterfly Bakery Vienna Lager Mustard Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Vienna Lager Mustard

I don’t often think of Vermont, but when I do, it’s usually in the context of one of the two sauce companies in my favored nations list (see SOTY page, link at right), namely Silk City and Angry Goat, and if I’m not careful, I might just up and add this to that list as well. This is my introductory sauce to Butterfly Bakery (of Vermont, not to be confused with Lincoln, NE, as if anyone ever would) and to say I’m blown away would be a vast understatement.

I think we need to discuss, at this point, or rather I will discuss, the concept of “sweet spot.” It does not have anything to do with sugary flavors, but rather, a sort of advantageous zone or set of circumstances in which to arrive at an optimal result. It was frequently used in terms of what area to strike an approaching baseball with a baseball bat, but here, we are applying it to flavor. I think everyone has one, that one (or more) food or type of foods that are always an instant hit, that one never seems to tire of, that is just immediate and instant flavor gratification.

Now, the reason I bring this up is because I have a number of them. There are a few restaurants where I will inevitably order the same exact order (which is kind of a rarity for me) because it is just so magnificent and the bar set too high for anything to compete (often, I will note this after testing). I think there is some commonality to my palate, certain flavor combinations I greatly admire in a hot sauce, and this one, while not entirely similar to other previous SOTY winners, does echo a few a bit. It also strongly brings to mind cherry peppers, one of my all-time favorite things, yet this sauce is definitely more than just a version of a cherry pepper relish.

Indeed, there are none of those peppers, but red Serranos, which I was kind of shocked by how much I liked. Heat is minimal, to be sure, given the Serranos, but the flavor is outstanding. Add to that a high quality vinegar and one of my favorite beer types and round it out with some salt and mustard and you’ve got a definitely world-beater here. I’ve long said that if a sauce is good enough, flexibility ceases to be much of a factor or even consideration, because it will be good on anything. This sauce bears that out as everything I’ve tried it on has been excellent. Just truly a remarkable sauce and in many ways, this kind of watershed sauce is exactly what I want for the SOTY candidates, of which this is the first for 2025, and the actual winners.

Bottom line: Absolutely brilliant sauce, combining flavors spectacularly, and culminating in a cohesive whole far greater than the sum of its parts. Absolutely a must.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Blues Brothers Blues Mobile Hot Sauce Review

Blues Brothers Blues Mobile

I suspect that with most vanity sauces, what happened here was more the rule than the exception. To wit, I have already sort of reviewed this sauce, as it strikes me as a pretty direct 1:1 rebottling and relabeling (or, I suppose it could be a clone also) of the CaJohn’s Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero sauce, which is one I reviewed in the first year of doing this blog, back when the BICH came in a flask (follow the TOC link at right, if you want to check that out). It was a sauce I found worked much better as a grill sauce than an actual hot sauce. Interestingly, for this one, the Blues Brothers line seems to be trying to have its own identity like the Alice Cooper and Motley Crue lines, but still also reference CaJohn’s, as that company is name-checked on the bottle.

Now I say “sort of” reviewed in the paragraph above, because as noted in the video for the BICH sauce, the formula has changed a bit from back when the sauce came in that flask (and I bought several bottles to give as Xmas gifts that year) and John Hard was still that company. This new version, with the 5 oz. standard bottles we normally see, was a somewhat muted version, flavor-wise. The ingredient listing here is the same as the revamped version of the BICH, with some slight shuffling of ingredients, powders being used instead of the chiles, etc. While a bit of the harsh edge of the liquor has been sanded off, in its place is a sort of artificiality that I’m not so much a fan of.

While I think the overall flavor combination is still pretty strong and more or less carries the day and makes this an overall enjoyable sauce, I also think it’s important to note when this happens...and that I’ve already reviewed this sauce and eaten and enjoyed it many, many times under a different name.

Bottom line: If you can’t find either of the BICH sauce iterations (both reviewed on this blog - see TOC), you can pick up a bottle of this. Despite the tinkering, it remains a pretty strong sauce overall, though still more to my preference as a grill sauce, where it brings the Maillard reaction to great effect.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Smokin' Ed's (Hot) Chocolate Strawberry Hot Sauce Review

Smokin' Ed's (Hot) Chocolate Strawberry

I'm not entirely sure if the Smokin' Ed branded line is meant to be a sub-line of Puckerbutt or an entire rebrand, but it strikes me that these are somewhat experimental, but mostly boutique concoctions of Ed stretching out as hot sauce chef. I've gotten a few sauces from this line that will be coming down the pike, including both versions of his wing sauces that use the same "Wing Thing" name as I use for my quarterly FOH video homage to The Hot Ones. They are so far perhaps a bit more interesting than anything else, with this being a really good example of that concept. I opened this bottle in September 2024, so it has taken nearly 5 months to get to this point, which is fairly unusual.

Part of this was because I was trying to figure out what to put in the video with it. I do not typically make videos (in fact, I don't think I ever have) wherein I just eat the hot sauce itself, but sometimes I get a little stumped, such as with this one. I played around with it a while and then finally decided to lean into the cocoa of this sauce (you'll see in the video, which, by the by, if you count run time, is probably the longest video to date I've done, and if you count filming and editing time, is definitely the longest, and if you count the many weeks of pre-production, once I settled on the accompanying food, easily the longest there probably will be). I do really like the interplay of the cocoa and strawberry here, which is, of course, a great combination, but there is a big problem. 

That big problem goes by the name of vinegar. This is an exceedingly sour sauce, to the point where I couldn't use it on ice cream or any other desserts. I don't find cocoa to be something I want to put with savory foods, generally, so I had to wrack my brain to find a place for it. I did also like the pretty solid heat of the mighty mighty Reapers at play (non-chileheads may be pushed a touch with this one), but I honestly was more confused with this than anything. I am not sure, at all, what Ed was going for here and was going to shoot the video and bin the sauce, but something extraordinary happened during the filming and I found the place where it is most fitting and intend to use it fully. Normally, I would tell you what that particular food thing is, but instead, I am going to say watch the video (which will be coming in early February 2025). I will say that the sauce does work well with chocolate-type stuff, so long as you can cook it with whatever that stuff is and try to knock off some or all of the astringency. 

Bottom line: As is, this is a very pungent sauce, to the point where it doesn't really mix and match in its raw form. Use it in the right place, though, and it is pure bottled magic.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 1
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 3

Ginger Goat Harvest Heat Hot Sauce Review

Ginger Goat Harvest Heat

Yet another very intriguing entry from another company I’m finding increasingly creative, this one hailing from north of the border in Canada. Canada, as a country, digging hot sauce makes quite a bit of sense, particularly in the colder months, but I wonder if they are growing the pods up there directly or if they are bringing them in. I’d think the former, but have no idea what the growing seasons are up there. It seems likely that certain segments regionally of the lower southeastern United States would lend themselves better to this, but I’m not a pod grower nor do I have plants of any kind, truth be told, so perhaps it’s just idle speculation on my part.

Regardless, what they have done with this sauce is to sort of incorporate an almost more historical collection of harvest time goodies into a sauce, with roasted squash and cranberries. I find this a pretty neat idea, though I will also say that the squash seems to contribute moreso to texture than to flavor. This is very definitely a cranberry sauce first, with perhaps slight notes and what very moderate heat there is from the Ghosties, and little side grace notes here and there from the other elements. It is not exclusively cranberry, though that is the most forward flavor.

One of the larger disadvantages of using this particular ingredient is that cranberries tend to get locked fairly tightly into one mostly annual meal, that of the “traditional” American Thanksgiving feast of roast turkey and all the attendant trimmings. That is not to say it’s not eaten outside of that, but cranberry and turkey tend to be thought of hand-in-hand, when people think of cranberries at all, to which I don’t think there is a lot of thought to them outside of that...maybe cranberry juice, for a mixed drink or a change of pace here or there, but by and large, they tend to be more time-locked to that specific time of year and setting.

As good as this sauce is, it is not going to change that and to that end, the flexibility of sauces that use this ingredient tend to take a dip. What this does, it does very capably and effectively and the results are absolutely delicious, without question. I quite enjoy this sauce in that setting and it would probably be equally good in the any of the myriad tv dinner spinoffs (though I don’t usually partake of those) or in sandwiches with say turkey and maybe a bit of cream cheese, but for me, I don’t particularly like cranberry with chicken or fish or anywhere outside of that.

Bottom line: This is a sauce where the application will largely dictate enjoyment, but what it does there, it does remarkably well. Huge gateway potential with this one. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Dirty Dick's Caribbean Dream Hot Sauce Review

Dirty Dick’s Caribbean Dream

So, recently, I went out a’shoppin’ for some mustards that might be calling themselves hot sauces, seeing as how I tore through the last actual mustard I had along those lines, the Maritime Mustard Pickle (reviewed elsewhere here). I was plumb out of mustard, you see, and while I don’t use a lot of it all the time, it is one of those things I like to keep on hand and if I could avoid getting one of the pedestrian national brand ones, I would surely do that. Anyway, after making a short list of lines to go look at, I headed off to the hallowed shelves of BYT once more to see what I could see. This was one of those sauces.

While it did not fit that particular bill, what I found was a highly enjoyable entry into a type it had been a good long while since I’d had last, a more or less true dyed-in-the-wool Caribbean sauce, with mustard, all manner of dried spices and a flotilla of different tropical type fruits and even some non-tropical ones to boot. All of this came together in that weird sort of magical combination only Caribbean sauces (and some dishes) can seem to do and I was certainly not unhappy to make this discovery, though it did nothing for my mustard dilemma.

With that type of cuisine, dried spices in particular play a very prominent role and that is certainly the case here. Like many blackened dishes, there is no side-stepping that dried ingredients are used, but rather than trying to downplay it, here, like in the cuisine style, it is embraced vigorously. For me, it works wonderfully and I have yet to find a meat that I did not find this sauce utterly delicious on. It is, to be sure, a very vibrant flavor, but also a very distinctive one. When I find sauces where that is the case, those also tend to be a lot less flexible, as I think food flavors need to almost come to them, rather than the inverse. So, outside of meats, I’m not entirely sure where this would really work particularly well, but it does touch lightly on some mustard applications to a degree as well, such as sandwiches.

Being that Habanero is the heat source here, this is not a particularly blazing sauce. At its peak, after the build, it was slightly over a 1 for me, but nowhere near enough to get the bump. For the most part, I was left with overall a very nice, solid, slightly robust pleasant mouth blaze once I was done using it. Best of all, this is one of the more moderately priced sauces out there.

Bottom line: If you’re not familiar with either Caribbean style sauce or the flavors, you would do well to get a bottle of this, as it covers an awful lot of ground at once, and deliciously.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Hot Ones Buffalo Hot Sauce Review

Hot Ones Buffalo

Note: This sauce appeared on Seasons 22 & 23 of The Hot Ones.

I'm half-tempted, perhaps more than half, to be my less than flowing, eloquent self with this review. We'll see how that plays out, but there are a couple of things I do want to note. First, this should be properly labeled as a wing sauce, not a hot sauce. They are calling it a hot sauce and I will be judging it based on that, but those will be somewhat distorted, as this is another I don't think is actually a hot sauce. Second, how much you enjoy this as a sauce will be directly predicated by how much you like your wing sauces to be of the "all in one" variety. I personally tend to dislike that, as I prefer to mix and match to my own suiting rather than have it all decided for me, but different strokes and all that.

So, with that out of the way, what we have here is a very, let's call it "comprehensive," sort of sauce, starting with platform of a Cayenne sauce and then building on top of it. Next comes the creaminess by way of butter and this calls up the first of my reservations with this. Adding dairy to a hot sauce, in addition to being somewhat contradictory (this also is reflected in the lack of heat for this sauce), also means that when chilled it will tend to thicken and solidify, as this one does. The end result is a certain gloppiness to the proceedings and it will definitely not help to cut down richness. If anything, in fact, it will just add to it. Additionally, because there is dairy in it, leaving it out and not refrigerating after use is not a great plan. From there, there is a bevy of different items, ranging from celery and chia seed, to garlic powder, red pepper, smoked paprika, and a Habanero powder, which I imagine is there to increase the heat level to an at least detectable level, but if so, it failed pretty considerably by my estimation. 

So, flavor-wise, I don't dislike this sauce. As I mentioned, I am not really a fan of having all that stuff thrown into one sauce and prefer to be assaulted by the vinegar hit of a good solid Cayenne punch to the kisser and then I can tinker around with dipping into either a bleu cheese or, if I'm slumming it, a ranch, to achieve whatever balance I find necessary. All that said, the flavor is quite good and I don't mind it, but it is definitely a composite that really wants to be the main and/or only flavor and so it doesn't work particularly well with dishes featuring a combination of flavors. Again, this doesn't matter if it is marketed (correctly) as a wing sauce, as those are meant to be the main and/or only flavor with a specific meat. In that context, I imagine it will work well enough, or on something like a rotisserie chicken, where there is not a whole ton of other competing flavors. I understand why Hot Ones wanted to do that, as they do not have wing sauces on their wing show, but hot sauces, and the marketing machine must be sated above all, but this, like nearly all wing sauces, is only minimally functional as a hot sauce, which will be reflected in the rating being lower than my overall favorability towards the sauce.

Bottom line: This is low-to-no heat wing sauce labeled as a hot sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Hot Paper Lantern Roasted Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Hot Paper Lantern Roasted Habanero & Garlic

This is the third iteration of what is kind of a signature sauce for Heat Hot Sauce Shop. I have reviewed both of the other two for this blog (check TOC on the right) and while I found them generally favorable, by the end of both of them, the apple cider vinegar was getting to me a bit. For this one, third time is perhaps the charm as the Paper Lantern Habaneros are quite a marvel. I’ve not had them before and have...well, I’d say more tolerated Habaneros over the years than actually liked them, excepting the Red Savinas, but these are very nice, bring way more of a fruity aspect and a very nice roundness to the flavor profile, almost a smoothness. Habaneros can frequently come across as what I would call abrasive a bit, but that is definitely not the case with these.

Here, we have a very nice base for the tanginess of the vinegar to play off of the brown sugar. Under this kind of backdrop, the peppers and roasted garlic comes across very well and make this the best version of this kind of sauce it can be. A lot of the verbiage from the other reviews still applies, as the sauces overall are more alike than not (I still find it slightly too sweet and wish a different vinegar entirely was used), but this is definitely my favorite variation of those three and by far the tastiest. Heat-wise, it sort of falls between them, as slightly hotter than the original version, but not as much as the Limited Edition from before. I’d almost call this a slightly more tamed version of Habaneros and am certainly glad I got this bottle when I did, as I’d not experienced the Paper Lanterns before and they were way more impressive here than expected. This is an impressively flavored pepper as the star here, not quite enough to change my mind about Habaneros overall, but definitely up there, in my estimation, with the Red Savinas.

Bottom line: This is by far the best (and probably most accessible) version of this sauce to get, if you’re curious and want to get one yourself before they’re gone.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

Ginger Goat Tropic Star Hot Sauce Review

Ginger Goat Tropic Star

Note: This sauce appears on Season 22 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVY3Rotxpzc

This sauce is probably the best use of an oil in any hot sauce, including wing sauces, ever. It imparts a touch of flavor, but a very nice silkiness to the mouth feel, without feeling slick or greasy. It is not at all sludgy, as sometimes sauces with that component will tend to be, but quite pleasant. The pastel yellow is also a part I get a tremendous kick out of and it all lends itself to the greater whole that this sauce is unlike anything else out there.

The flavor is quite distinctive. Sometimes we can glean hints from the sauce names and other times, it is a vague at best reference and this one seems more the latter. Certainly the presence of mangoes will lend to a tropical vibe, but they don’t play into the flavor as much as the garlic and the superhot peach blend (whatever it is - it is not defined in the ingredients) and the lemongrass and some of the spices. Those more contribute to a sort of Asian-y flavor vibe, which is perhaps why rice vinegar was used. I’m not quite sure the need for two vinegars, but the apple cider vinegar does not show up particularly forcefully, so fine.

When sauces tend to be this unique, they also tend not to mesh well with a great variety of food and I think that is also the case here. The more you can have foods that will move out of the way a bit and let the sauce shine, the better the results. The sauce seems to have a delicate balance and can be a bit prone to flavor cancellation, but despite that, it is never anything less than utterly tasty. This is a sauce that you may have to tinker with a bit to find where it works best (I liked it on breaded meats and suspect it would be wonderful in a salad), but it is well worth that effort. Heat-wise, there is definitely the superhot bitterness, but no accompanying floral, so if I had to guess, I’d imagine maybe a peach Ghostie and peach Reaper. This will probably push some non-chileheads a bit, but is far from overbearing.

Bottom line: Definitely one of the more unique and delightful flavor experiences from the show and generally. Absolutely well worth grabbing a bottle if you’re a foodie and a very impressive outing from Ginger Goat.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5