Saturday, January 11, 2025

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

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