Hot N' Saucy Beets N' Fresno Hot Sauce Review

Hot N' Saucy Beet N' Fresno

This is pretty close to what I had in mind when I initially picked up a hot sauce with beets as an ingredient. Beets are very forward in the mix, though oddly, they can run into pretty substantial flavor cancellation in the one area I really wanted this sauce for...namely, salads, and by that, I mean the green ones with lettuce and so on, not the mayo ones. I have a hard time with salads and if it doesn’t have eggs or beets, I struggle with being interested. I think beets generally are pretty undersung and the idea of using them in a hot sauce tickled me.

So, when I saw this on vaca, with its lovely fluorescent pink label, despite not being especially impressed by the other sauce I’d had from them, the one from the Hot Ones with Pepperoncini (see playlist at right), I didn’t hesitate at all. Not only did this feature one of my favorite pods, the Fresno, it additionally had beets first and seemed pretty straightforward with relatively few ingredients.

Indeed, this is almost a beet puree in terms of texture (so make sure to agitate thoroughly) and, perhaps to a degree, color, and everywhere that beets could go and would be good, so too for this sauce. I particularly enjoyed it on fried foods and, to a degree, on the salads, but I tried multiple salads with multiple dressings and oddly, only on the Caesar did the beets read through to any degree. Fortunately, the Fresnos did a very nice job, as they always do, on the flavor end...although, as they are also the only heat driver, this is a fairly tame sauce. Still, this bottle was the sauce I emptied by far the fastest this year and I definitely will be picking up more. 

Bottom line: If you are a beet enjoyer, you will find much to love about this sauce, as I did, but if you don’t, you can probably safely skip this one. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6