Q3 2025 Update

2025 Q3 Update

07.01.25: More FOH conversation...I’ve been kicking around the idea for a while, of posting an entire month of exclusively hot sauce reviews, however, the only month I have left in 2025 is December, which I started scheduling today, and there is other holiday-ish stuff I also want to post up, so that won’t happen this year. I should have a pretty good idea of how far into 2026 I will have non-sauce content once December is finished, but I will say that most of that month will be hot sauce content, in an effort for me to try to get closer to caught up. I’m so far behind currently, that I have also backburnered the Hot Ones project for the most part, going from usually at least 1 show sauce per month to 1 per quarter. I could go to posting an FOH video every single day for an entire month, I suppose, but often views don’t seem to start hitting until days after a video goes live, so that idea seems counter-productive. Last update, I talked about the concept of tracking how much sauce I’ve had in a given year and this particular year, there has been a lot of it, with much of it coming in bottles larger than 5 fl. oz. 

The rough plan for 2026 is to only post up non-sauce content on Wednesdays, so long as I have some to post, which will probably be at least the first quarter, maybe the first two quarters, with hot sauces on both Fridays and Sundays. Once I run out of the non-sauce content, hot sauces will go to Wednesdays also, until I’m closer to being out of backlog, in which case, hot sauces will become Wednesdays and Sundays, with Fridays free for other stuff. By the end of this quarter, I will be very close to 1000 videos in the FOH series posted up and by the end of the year, may catch up and pass the channel I mentioned last update that I do with my son that has been running 3 years longer and has already passed 1000 videos.
 

07.03.25: I decided on another playlist, in yet another attempt to balance them out a bit, and created that today. By the time you read this, it will have been around for basically the entire quarter. This time, the focus is on nuts and nut-related products. I’ve very thoroughly covered a pretty wide gamut of both different nut types, as well as flavor configurations, different pods, etc. When I started FOH content in 2019, I devised a Head To Head series, which was a sort of contest pitting two similar things against each other. For nuts, this morphed into a more  tournament setting with 3 - 6 different kinds of nuts and then would have a holdover winner for the next round. After 9 rounds of that, thanks to some broken ass teeth, I had to call it quits. Eventually I got those fixed, but didn’t return to the Head To Head series to any great extent. While I was doing it, it was a lot of fun and I always wish they would have drawn better. Possibly with a new playlist, they will get some new life. I have done other Head To Head Battles, which can all be seen in their own playlist and continue to do those sporadically, but it is far from a main focus. I try not to create a new list until there are at least 10 videos for it, and for nut-related videos, I have 18 of them to start. I may add another playlist at some point for cooking videos, maybe, and there’s still a lot of stuff in Everything Else, but I don’t see value currently in trying to break it out further. 

07.15.25: Another SOTY candidate today, which makes 4 for the year, and the blog finally ran past 100K views, two months ahead, give or take, of the 13 year anniversary I’ve been doing this, coming in September. Very pleased to see this milestone, as blogs haven’t been a thing for a while and it seems a more global audience. It was never really meant to be much more than a reference point to me that I put up in case other people might be interested or similarly inclined and it’s kind of wild the changes that happened over time with it. This is not really translating over to the FOH series on YouTube, which I find kind of interesting, but I don’t really understand the whims and whys of any of that, so I suppose that will be its own clawing upward. In any case, here’s on to 250K, which is the next milestone...

07.23.25: After repeatedly flirting with the idea of running daily FOH videos, something I’ve never done and don’t really want to do, for February 2026, I did some looking around and found a host of different holidays I hadn’t scheduled anything for to close out the year. The post listing those will go up first of August, though that won’t mean anything to you reading this at the end of the quarter, other than perhaps a reminder that if you are interested in the stuff I do for the FOH series, to also check the Community tab on my YouTube page. I’ve also decided to again cover the 12 Days Of Christmas for this year. I’m not particularly religious, as in not at all, but I like the idea, the concept, of days of extended celebration. Of course, we all know the song and I sometimes wonder if anyone ever did that - I’ve never met anyone who has - and if so, what that might have been like...probably not by posting chilehead-oriented video reviews. I almost, but not quite, have December fully scheduled, but do have at least one video scheduled right now for every month through the rest of 2025. If October wasn’t a theme month, that would be done, as November is, but I’m two sauce videos away from October being done. One of those is just waiting for me to write the review and film the content, once I decide what to use for the application, but the other is not even open yet and probably won’t be filmed at all until after Labor Day. 
 

08.02.25: I have 1 day left of content to film for September, one for October, and have 4 days left in December, which I’m trying to leave open for now, in case I need to bump any of the currently scheduled videos for something more pressing or timely, as in if I do a product that I’d want up while grill season is still ongoing, etc. After doing some quick napkin math, at some point in November, the FOH series will run past 1000 videos and by the end of the year, will be very close to overtaking the other channel I mentioned I do with my son, that is already over 1000. If it doesn’t in December, it will be for sure come January. Meanwhile, the gaming channel I also do content for doesn’t have enough runway to hit 1000 this year, but at the current rate, will do so by the end of quarter 2, if not running past both of the other channels well before the end of 2026. Obviously, this is dependent on a lot of things and right now, we’re seeing another huge censorship space in the entirety of the online space, so with that kind of turbulence, it’s pretty hard to predict for sure what will happen. It is probably too much to hope that people come to their collective senses, as the historical track record of humanity generally is to the contrary.
 

08.09.25: Still have the same amount left to film for September and October, but down to 2 in December now. I will be filming one or both of the earlier months probably around Labor Day weekend, with at least one of those in December being filmed probably before that and the final one for December tentatively planned for filming around Thanksgiving time. I have decided to hold off on scheduling anything for January currently, but probably will start that in October. I will definitely run past 1000 FOH series videos in November. 

I’ve noted this here and there, but we’re definitely off-cycle for the food world offering chilehead stuff, with little to no action at all on the superhot front. We may see something for October, like possibly the return of either Arby’s Diablo Dare or Burger King’s Ghost Whopper - Wendy’s still has the Ghost Chicken and I believe Popeye’s has theirs as well - but it’s been pretty slim pickings this year, with the main bevy of new products utilizing Habanero. If anything, 2025 has been the year of the Habanero, an idea which is reinforced by the last 4 videos I’ve filmed, all of which were over the last 2 days and all stuff new, as far as I can tell, for 2025, featuring that pepper, but even before that, I started to get that impression. It makes a lot of sense. Habanero is nowhere near the ferocity of the superhots, is fairly ubiquitous, and generally tends to be one of the less expensive pods out there with appreciable heat. 

The big question, for me, comes into whether or not the public appetite for chile-related stuff is down naturally and the industry is following suit, or whether the order is reversed and they are actually driving it...or possibly both. I am not alone in this, but views on the FOH series are definitely down. They have always been tied into the product, but for the sake of comparison, my gaming channel, which took a 2+ year hiatus of no new content at all, save for YT Community posts, is outdrawing the FOH series in a 28 day cycle. Now, it is not by a lot (yet) and the circumstances are dissimilar, as the gaming channel is a lot of streaming, as well as being live on Twitch here and there, but I find it kind of interesting. There have been no shortage of other chile-related channels that have expressed their viewership is also down...but then and again, this blog is outdrawing both of my two channels that I just mentioned combined, which makes all of this information much more of a struggle to digest. I probably am missing a lot of contextual data, which would provide some rationale, but on its face, there does seem to be something afoot. 
 

08.13.25: For years, literally over a decade, I held off on the idea of scheduling posts to the blog, preferring to retain some of the more spontaneous nature of posting the commentary on the fly. This didn’t work well for the quarterly updates, such as this one, so I started keeping a running document, where I could just add stuff and then go back and edit and re-work and so on before posting. All well and good, but I held off on pre-writing the reviews all the way up until this year and did that for most of the year, but in August, decided to start using the blog scheduling feature, like I do with the FOH series videos.

Ever come across one of those things where you’re kind of blase’ about giving it a try, but then you do and as it turns out, you find yourself wondering exactly what kind of dumbass you were not to give it a chance and glom onto it earlier? Yeah, that is definitely one of those things for me. Now, to be fair, for most of the blog’s life, I wasn’t doing particularly huge volumes of posts and even more relevant, not very consistent posting, so it may not be necessary long term, but now that I am and as long as I am, definitely going to stick with that format going forward. 
 

08.26.25: It’s pretty wild to me that a couple of things I mentioned earlier in the year, both the idea of consuming a 5 gallon bucket of sauce, as in 640 fluid ounces, or 128 of the regular 5 fluid ounce bottles we normally see, as well as the most represented sauce companies list, have already changed dynamically from when I posted those thoughts earlier. 

To the first point, as it is this year, I have finished a number of both 8 fluid ounce and 10 fluid ounce bottles, as well as several 3 fluid ounce and 4 fluid ounce bottles, in addition to quite a number of the 5 fluid ounce bottles. There have also been a lot of repeats and just in the sauces posted to the blog as I write this, I’m already well, well beyond the halfway point...so, to the interest of probably no one beyond me, I will almost certainly wind up hitting that particular benchmark for 2025.

To the second part, I didn’t really expect a lot of movement to the most represented companies in the blog list, but I should know better by now...that list, posted last quarter, is already out of date and if not, it will assuredly be by the end of the year. 
 

09.01.25: I changed around a lot of stuff with the internet service and uploaded October before the first of the month this time, but spent the weekend sort of pre-planning 2026. As it stands right now, about 2/3 of January is already scheduled out for the FOH series, while the blog is running behind, with about 1/3 of October being scheduled out. What this means, with the FOH series running so far ahead, is that nearly all of the written blog reviews from October and after in 2025 will not have accompanying video content posted until 2026, which seems to me a pretty excessive gap. Reducing that gap will be a focus for 2026...as it has been in previous years also...sigh.  

I have exactly one video left to create for 2025, which will probably be done around Thanksgiving time. I intend on keeping the current posting schedule of Sun-W-F until I am a lot more caught up, which means that schedule will run probably at least the first quarter of 2026. While I still have a fair number of hot sauces on the shelf left to review and film, as far as non-sauce stuff, I have exactly 3 products total left. I’m not really actively looking for stuff, but approaching it far more opportunistically. I will get into that more in the end of the year post. 
 

09.12.25: YouTube is crashing pretty hard right now, almost as much as my editing software (Magix Vegas 22), which seems to be ruined just in time for the newest version to come out for them to sell me. Fuckers. I am strongly considering dropping them entirely, after using that software since 2007, as it is becoming borderline unusable and if I have to get new software anyway, after less than a year and building an entire computer around it, getting pretty close to the point of saying so be it and having done entirely. 

Updated Season 28 of The Hot Ones. Kind of an odd season. It only adds about 4 new sauces to the to-do list, though, which is good, given how hard that project is currently dragging. For the most part, I’m almost through the first 20 seasons entirely. The problem kind of comes in where a lot of the sauces I only like on wings or like just enough to keep around for that and I’m trying really hard to limit how many sauces I have for the Wing Things on hand, so I don’t have like 30 open bottles just for that...I mean that and the backlog things I may have mentioned earlier.
 

09.19.25: In actual blog news, for a change in this lengthy commentary about updates to subjects other than the blog, at the current pace, like the last two years, 2025 is tracking to be around the same post count as the last two years. I don’t know if it will be exactly 84, like the preceding two years were, but at the current rate, will be in that general vicinity. I had thought that it might have been closer to 100, but there were a lot of repeats this year, some archive stuff, in which I film videos for older blog reviews, which are also repeats, I guess, and a number of sauces in larger bottles than normal. Also, this summer, my appetite got clanged pretty hard and without food to accompany it, it’s hard to eat a bunch of sauce. Sauce is probably my main avenue of driving tolerance, so it has ebbed to a lower point than in recent memory. I don’t really have a bunch of challenges in mind to do for winter projects, as I did the last couple of years, so I will probably start ramping it up to the more medium range, where it more typically rests.

Also, to end this off for this quarter, the experimental test kitchen has been running hot again, with some various testing of different items and some expansion into previously (for me) uncharted waters in the kitchen. If you’re interested in that kind of thing, be sure to check the Community page on the YouTube channel, where pics and attendant commentary is posted. 

09.26.25: A little of the old napkin calculation magic and we're completely scheduled through October on the blog side, all the way through January 2026, except for one date I'm holding open in reserve and one video for December that I won't be filming until later, and am now scheduling into February 2026. This means a couple of things, the first being that the FOH series is running an entire quarter (sometimes more) ahead of the blog on the hot sauce side. Second, I also found a few new things I've been meaning to film at some point and ran across them randomly, so figured I may as well pick them up, including an archive sauce, which brings the on-deck total to 5, after being as low as 2 prior to my recent discovery. So, it seems pretty likely the content deluge will continue through Q2 of next year...we'll see before then, I imagine, if something comes up to extend it further. 

Sauce Leopard The Assgasher Hot Sauce Review

Sauce Leopard The Assgasher

Ah yes, the famed assgasher, rather than someone savaging rectums like a demented Freddy Krueger, is instead an arm emerging from a bumhole and holding firmly aloft what one must assume is a pretty messy axe. This is in direct reference to the inspiration or, as the label copy calls it, the unholy union betwixt Sauce Leopard and Axeslasher, made in Hell, or perhaps more specifically Denver, CO. Axeslasher is a thrash band who takes heavy influence from the 80s and horror movies of the time. The vocals sound reminiscent of thrash from then, but the downturned instruments sound a lot more like a much faster version of the dearly departed Lair Of The Minotaur. 

Anyway, Sauce Leopard is probably my favorite name for any sauce company and Assgasher is a sauce name that tickled me the second I heard it, so naturally, I put it on the hit list, once I discovered it didn't have onions, and there it sat. It sat and it sat for a really long time, because it was described on the label as a Sriracha hot sauce. I am still quite fatigued of the flavor of srirachas, as I've had so very many of them, so while I very much wanted to try this sauce, the same was decidedly not true of another sriracha. It is my happy duty to then report that this is not at all what I would describe as a sriracha. 

Srirachas tend to have a couple of fairly distinctive characteristics, such as being fairly thick, to the point they need to come in a soft plastic bottle so they can be squirted out to apply to food. The other is density of a fairly specific flavor.  Neither of those things is true for this sauce. What this more reminds me of than anything else is a sort of slightly thicker than normal Cajun style sauce. I was beyond pleased to discover this, of course, even though I did want to use it at least partially as an actual sriracha, ironically enough. One of those was an Asian dish I was cooking and the lack of flavor density kind of worked against things a bit. In using it in an already prepared Asian dish, I found the vinegar a bit too forward, so this works much better in settings where you might reach for a Louisiana-style or Cajun.

What we have here is most of the components of an actual sriracha, but the arrangement and end result is pretty distant. This is a very wonderfully flavored and quite lively sauce, with the fresh garlic, unless I miss my guess, bouncing around and creating a fantastic harmony. I would put this within the top 2 of Cajun style sauces I've ever had, in fact, and I quite what they came up with here. Heat-wise, this is the excellent flavor of Fresno paired with Habanero, so it isn't particularly high. 

Bottom line: If you're a fan of any of the sauce types I mentioned, this should be on your radar, as it is, above all else, a great tasting sauce. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Smokin' Ed's Pineapple Teriyaki (Mild) Hot Sauce Review

Smokin’ Ed’s Pineapple Teriyaki (Mild) 

Another addition to the Smokin’ Ed’s line and this time, we see another take on an Asian flavor style, namely that of teriyaki. I don’t know if there is a difference per se between Teriyaki and Pineapple Teriyaki, though the latter suggests more of a Japanese by way of Hawaii vibe, but this does not seem to be trying to be an actual teriyaki sauce, but more of perhaps a teriyaki-inspired hot sauce. Whereas most teriyaki sauces tend to be heavily soy sauce based and frequently much thicker and dense brown concoctions, this one is a pretty swift turning away from that aesthetic.

This is, instead, a rather lively and vibrant red, with perhaps some slight lean towards brown. The color matches the flavor profile here and the entire result strikes me more as playful, in a very good way. The first few times I had this, until I got enough room in the bottle to properly agitate, this came across as hyper-sweet, almost cloyingly so. I did not find that enjoyable, though my immediate thought was that this was much more towards a sweet ‘n’ sour sauce than teriyaki. 

Once it settled in, I was able to get a lot more of the balance, from the subtle soy sauce flavoring, which here is more of an accent, to the pineapple dancing around with what I believe are red Jalapenos, as is my understanding all of the Smokin’ Ed’s mild sauces use as their pod. I quite like overall where this is going, flavor-wise, but it definitely isn’t really a hot sauce. Heat is low enough that I didn’t find it registering most of the time. While teriyaki itself is good on meats generally, I don’t know that this would transition as well to red meats like steaks. Though the sweetness did taper down as I got further into it, there isn’t quite the umami hit that actual teriyaki sauce has to work with the red meats and the lightness and sweetness of the pineapple doesn’t strike me as a happy union there. 

It is excellent on chicken, of course, but also on Asian foods generally, such as ramen. In many ways, it reminds me almost as much of an Asian-style sweet hot, with perhaps an nod to teriyaki, than to the actual flavoring of teriyaki itself. It’s a pretty neat trick to pull off and while I don’t know what exactly what Ed was going for with this sauce, the end result is pretty wonderful. 

Bottom line: Think of this more as perhaps a sweet & sour sauce by way of teriyaki, just on the really high end of things, and you’ll about have it.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Mexico Lindo Salsa Picante Negra XXXtra Hot Sauce Review

Mexico Lindo Salsa Picante Negra XXXtra Hot 

Here we have another entry, of which there have been quite a few this year, into the Mexican-style category from a sauce company I’ve found overall to be pretty enjoyable and impressive. This time out, they’re answering the question of what if we made a sauce heavy on the umami side and indeed, with msg and what seems a lot like soy sauce, in the mix, there is no shortage of that aspect. That, along with a bit of a lean towards the astringent side, makes for a pretty curious and interesting taste adventure, as this is very much a Mexican style sauce.

I find this sauce fascinating, and overall, really like what they’re doing, as it is fairly unusual, yet still retains a lot of the “classic” characteristics that one might expect from a Mexican-style sauce. There are hints of the warmth and comforting richness that tends to be stock in trade for that style, yet it very clearly is wanting to make its own flavor path and be its own distinctive sauce. In this, it succeeds pretty wildly. It is also a tad thick and sludgy, which can lead to these nifty little umami pockets if it doesn’t spread out on the food, which are their own treat.

It’s a bit amazing to me how they’re able to wander as much as they do, yet retain the core identity and this is definitely one of my more happier finds this year, and is yet another I literally stumbled across on a grocery store shelf. With Chiltepin being the prime heat driver, this is not, despite the suggestion in the sauce’s name and on the label, particularly hot, but it is a fairly nice, low-key and satisfying smolder. I could do with more heat, but that doesn’t seem what they were really going for here. This is very much a Mexican-style sauce, so usage here is definitely better off with that style, or related, of foods and flavors. It would also do pretty well in ramen, I’d imagine, and is flavorful enough that one could definitely have a good time experimenting.

Bottom line: Another hitter from a sauce company that I will always check out to see what new entries they have to offer, an effort which, like it is here, tends to be rewarding.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Dawson's Sweet Pear Chili Hot Sauce Review

Dawson’s Sweet Pear Chili

Don’t often run across pears too much in hot sauce, but I do love me some pears and I was pretty curious how the tap-dancing around what is a generally fairly delicate flavor would go...in a way, I’m saddened that it went the way I was expecting, but the resulting sauce definitely is a nice end result that has some very definite applications where it works well.

Like most of the other Dawsons’s, this is sauce is on the thicker sludgier side of things. Again, we have the olive oil, so there is a nice smoothness to it and the Vietnamese chilis, which I also don’t really see used a great deal, impart a pleasant heat without introducing much on the flavor. This is quite a good pairing there, those chilis with the fruit. Where it got a touch out of hand was the garlic, which tends to be a pretty strong flavor and here, it definitely asserted itself, despite being about in the middle of the ingredients. 

This, then, sort of ran roughshod over the pears and we have a fairly light somewhat non-descript fruity sweetness to the sauce. I admit I was hoping for a lot more presence from the pear and the resulting flavor, in conjunction with the garlic, moved this more into complex flavor applications, such as on a fried chicken sandwich, say, rather than just on some chicken tendies. 

I do like the sauce and find it pairs fairly nicely with mayo, where it adds a pretty fascinating dimension to things. I could also see this working extremely well as part of a salad dressing, so definitely there are some applications, but this is a sauce where I think you would need to experiment with it a bit, as it doesn’t seem to readily point at any food in particular. 

Bottom line: Another highly creative and inventive sauce from Dawsons’ and I absolutely applaud the use of infrequently used ingredients...for me this is a sauce more on the way than at its destination, but if the more experimental vibes are up your alley, this is well worth a look.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Zia Chile Traders Whiskey River Frontier Hot Sauce Review

Zia Chile Traders Whiskey River Frontier

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook and Instagram. 

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWAYhi0nfwQ

This may be the most referential sauce I’ve ever come across. We will start with a lot of the non sauce elements first, so you can skip this paragraph and the next if you aren’t interested in this part. The first of these is the name itself. “Whiskey River” has been used as a song title, referring, presumably to drowning one’s sorrows in a particular alcohol, as the namesake of a bourbon marketed by the singer who recorded and popularized that song, as a location within a fictional literature series, as a cultural phrase wherein the river eventually leads to Bourbon Falls, as a condiment selection at the Red Robin restaurant chains, as the name itself of a regional restaurant chain owned by a former NASCAR driver, and here and there by various other bars and saloons. Meanwhile, the idea of a “Frontier” sauce is largely meaningless and refers more to theme, as in visual appearances, such as on this label, or the various foods associated with a given area, loosely referenced to what we would consider the “Wild, Wild West.” 

From there, we move to the packaging. I already touched on the label, and I suspect the word “Frontier” was added both to refer to the New Mexican heritage of the peppers in this sauce, and John Hard’s current home, as well as an attempt to differentiate it enough to avoid litigation by others already using the name “Whiskey River.” As to that packaging, it is in a flask and a certain other sauce, from John Hard when he was the saucier at CaJohn’s, rather famously formerly came in a flask and also prominently featured bourbon as one of the ingredients. That sauce being, of course, the Bourbon-Infused Chipotle Habanero, reviewed elsewhere here.

Ok, now, as to this sauce, we definitely have a different lineup of peppers, being varieties of Hatch chiles, as well as Jalapenos. Definitely this drives the heat level down somewhat, but this sauce is clearly aiming to be more of a flavor showcase. It is thick and a tad sludgy, unlike the other sauce, and I think this is less an updating or re-imagining of that other sauce than a hot sauce on the way to being a barbeque sauce. I found the bourbon flavor to be a bit more prominent here, as well as the sauce being sweeter, but also working better as a “straight out the bottle” hot sauce than the other, which I used almost exclusively as a grill sauce. To be sure, this one is much better used as a grill sauce, where it can flash off some of that very forward bourbon and get a nice Maillard effect going, but I don’t mind this as an actual condiment, either. I particularly like that there is a lot more black pepper in the mix here. If I do have a major gripe, it is probably that I wish there was a lot more smokiness here. That was perhaps not what he was going for, but I felt the absence of that to be fairly prominent. 

As far as usage, I think this one is more broad. This will work just fine on grilled meats, pretty much meats in general. How much you like it will depend greatly on how much you can tolerate the bourbon coming to the fore in your sauces, but as long as it has something to counter that and the fairly forceful sweetness of this sauce, it could work on a pretty wide variety of applications. For me, I will stick to using it as a grill sauce, I think, as bourbon when carmelizing with sugars, imparts a pretty wonderful effect and this definitely is a sauce that benefits from both heat and whatever smokiness you can add to it. 

Bottom line: This one is a lot more accessible as a straightforward condiment, both in terms of flavor and in minimal heat. Think of it as bridging the gap between a hot sauce and bbq sauce and you’ve about got it. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot Hot Sauce Review

Hot Winter Bulgarian Carrot

I was not at all familiar with the Bulgarian Carrot pepper prior to coming across this sauce and bought it somewhat on a whim. The only previous sauce I’d ever from them, the Hatch Chile, was a tad on the underwhelming side, but I always get a little excited and my tail starts wagging and my ears prick up when I come across a new pod in a sauce that I haven’t had before, so I drove in full gainer...

...and was rewarded with a pretty fantastic sauce. For some reason, I thought this was a variety of a Habanero, which was borne out by the flavor, but looking into it further, Habanero is in the mix, but it is not a Habanero variant per se. Rather, it is a cross between a Habanero and a different Bulgarian pepper, with the idea being that the pod looks like a baby carrot. There are no actual carrots in this sauce, though the idea that there was initially drew me to it. 

This is not a sauce so much as a mash and is very pepper forward, with peppers being the first ingredient. There are a couple vinegars, rice and cider, which do a nice job of complementing each other and not transmitting any of the stinky foot aspect of the latter vinegar. There is also some sugar, some salt, and some of that good hardneck garlic and the flavor profile, top to bottom, is really quite brilliant.

It is very thick, very clumpy, and does not like to smooth out. There is a lot of rough sort of gritty bits to it as well, all of which sort of make this a bit of a challenge in terms of usage. As far as flavor, this went great with nearly everything, but as far as texture...for me, it works best in a sandwich setting, where you can spread it out or leave it in its own layer (I’d also love to try this as a pizza sauce, just this sauce by itself, to be clear), so things like burgers and chicken sandwiches and sub sandwiches respond very well with this, where it both meshes and retains a bit of its identity as it melds with proceedings. Even though Hot Winter calls this both very hot and their hottest available sauce, I found it rather mild all told and I don’t think it will give too many people much of a challenge.

Bottom line: An absolute ringer, just a dynamite gem of a product, but definitely one that I think is somewhat dependent on its setting.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6