Kinder's Creamy Louisiana Hot Sauce Review

Kinder’s Creamy Louisiana

Here we have a bit of an anomaly, a strange sort of entry. It is very clearly labeled as a hot sauce, although I believe it has since been rebranded as a “Wing & Dip” sauce, which is probably more realistic. I find this functions barely as a hot sauce and if they simply marketed this erroneously, it does got a long way towards explaining things...at least some things. The label, throwing the convention of treating liquids with a volumetric nomenclature, instead goes for weight. Additionally, there is the inclusion of both Vitamin E and Green Tea Extract, both ingredients going beyond my understanding of why they’re there. 

Kinder’s is a pretty huge name in the seasoning trade, with a fairly large and wide variety of rubs and dry mixes centered more or less around meat. They have some frozen food products as well and I imagine this is part of a larger brand extension. I’ve seen many of their BBQ products and found them generally favorable, if slightly overpriced to my mind. They also have many wing sauces, but the hot sauces are new. I want to say they had some beef jerky out at one time or maybe snack sticks, but I may have just dreamed that. I try to get to the bigger names when they come out with new hot sauces and while I don’t know if Kinder’s is national or not, they do seem very present. I went in thinking that the hot sauce would be more along the lines of the other stuff I’ve had from them that I’ve mentioned above. 

The big issue here, beyond just being in a plastic bottle with slightly overly thick and rigid walls, is the off-flavor to this. I can’t put my finger on precisely what it is, but something is very off, some odd note that I find overwhelmingly distracting. It is less so when used with meat, which is why changing this to a “Wing & Dip” sauce is more reasonable, particularly if you are pairing it with a nice bleu cheese dressing, but trying to use it as an actual Lousiana-style hot sauce proved to be a mistake, as it generally fouled and degraded whatever I was putting it on. It is both somewhat harshly abrasive, as well as having those very funky flavor notes that struck me as somewhat artificial in tone. It could have been the plastic leaching or whatever they were using for the Vitamin E or the Green Tea Extract or possibly the modified dextrose or soybean oil, all ingredients I don’t generally run across in hot sauce, but I’m not familiar enough with those flavor profiles to definitively pick it out. Perhaps it’s some combination. Whatever the case, I found it rather unpalatable for the most part. It’s not all the way to inedible, but the usages are very, very narrow. Heat-wise, consistent with the style which name it uses, there is next to no heat.

Bottom line: I’ve had a lot of Louisiana-style sauces, as it is one of my favorite styles. I’ve had a lot of wing sauces as well, some of which appear in FOH videos. I truly do not know quite what they were attempting with this, as it fails as a hot sauce, while also not being especially creamy. The overall effect is just kind of bizarre and confusing.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 1
            Flexibility: 1
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 0 

Captain Mowatt’s Jolly Roger Hot Sauce Review

Captain Mowatt’s Jolly Roger

The very last of the Captain Mowatt’s I got last year and possibly my favorite of the bunch, though the Canceaux Turbeaux was also excellent (reviews can be found in the TOC > link at right). It is at least the minimum of that very worthy and delectable blend. This is definitely the hottest of the bunch, with Habaneros and Ghosties holding court. I found this to have a nice degree of build, though I don’t think this will be overly challenging. It can get up there a bit, though nowhere near to the exaggeration suggested on the label, so it might be nice for normies who are ready to push the envelope a bit but not ready to go all the way to full chilehead. Chileheads will not find this particularly challenging. It is happily missing any of the bitter superhot notes.

There are quite a lot of things going on here. We have some playful fruitiness here and there from the Habs, along with a quite lovely umami punch from the seaweed, the salt, and possibly some of the other spices at hand, but the first flavor is a very nice tang from the cider vinegar. Here, though there is a touch of the foot smell from that vinegar at times, the effect as far as flavor is a lot towards tang than vinegar punch and this is one of the rare times that I think that particular vinegar works well in the blend. 

Indeed, we have here an exceedingly well-done sauce, provided you want the tang, as at home in a ramen soup as it is on fried foods or generally anywhere you might normally use a Lousiana-style sauce. It definitely is more than that, though, and this sauce is quite a bit more flexible than that style usually is. I found it very nice on a fairly wide variety of things and for quite a while, was flying through the bottle. Given that it is an 8 fl. oz. bottle, that is probably saying something. It may not have the depth and richness or accessibility of the aforementioned Canceaux Turbeaux, but I found it worked pretty well on seafood also.

Bottom line: As long as you want both a nice degree of heat and tang, this is a quite worthy blend, and well worth a look. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Stuzzi Hot Sauce Review

Stuzzi

There is a YouTuber named Barrel Shape that I’ve been bouncing back and forth with a bit and I mention this because it is via one of his videos that this sauce came across my attention. I’d never heard of it before, but Italian food and drink holds a pretty strong appeal to me and so I was immediately interested, particularly since the sauce sounded right up my alley. Not only did it seem more in line with a Louisiana-style, one of my favorites, but it also had a couple of peppers I didn’t run across much, namely the Italian Cayenne and the Campanian. Mostly we hear about the wondrous Calabrian, which I do greatly love, but I’m always interested in trying out pods I haven’t run across before. Also, the claim is that the sauce is loved by wolves, which the more literal part of my brain was intensely curious about from a testing perspective...

I wasn’t able to find out about the validity of the wolf thing, but as for the Campanian peppers, at least in how they are represented here, I did find them to be nice, but not to the level of my beloved Calabrians. This sauce also has the pods in both a fresh and powdered form and I’m always a bit leery of this, as drying out pods tends to have side effects. Here is no exception and I found a slight bitterness to it. This isn’t really of major concern, however, as I only really noticed it when I was eating the sauce solo, which is pretty infrequent. 

This is a highly accessible, intensely flavorful, and quite flexible sauce. Even though it is a touch vinegar forward, it is not bracing and all the flavors meld together nicely, which helps it complement whatever you care to use it on. It is not hot, which is to be expected, given the peppers, but I could see this being a great gateway sauce. I tried it on a fairly wide variety of foods and while it definitely worked better moreso on some than others, I didn’t find a single food it didn’t work with. 

The glass bottle this comes in is quite unique and seems a bit artsy to me, another facet I quite enjoy. The packaging all around is quite excellent and I’m thrilled to report that the sauce is no less so. It could be a lovely elegant gift to the discriminating chili-curious around the holidays, I’d say. If there is a bit of a caveat for me, it is that all that attractive packaging does modify the value proposition a bit. I got my bottle, which is 3.4 fl. oz. for around $10, which is both a tad steep for the quantity as well as that style of sauce generally. I don’t usually dock for this too much in the reviews, but when you’re paying extra for stuff that will likely hit the recycling and/or trash bin, it does bear some noting.

Bottom line: Absolutely recommend this sauce for those who value flavor first and especially for the chile-curious out there...just don’t expect any heat particularly.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 9
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 7

Butterfly Bakery Duchess Mystery Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Duchess Mystery Pepper

Here, we have a sort of “flying under the radar” type sauce, cloaked in a very nondescript and unassuming label, yet within that bottle is a sauce of pure wonder. As legend has it, there was a mystery patch growing within a field of Ghosties at the fabled Duchess Farms. It was not exactly a Ghostie, exhibiting what the label calls “juicy sweetness.” For me, once I learned of it, I was immediately interested and once I opened it and tried it, it immediately, out of the gate, scratched a number of itches all at once, appealing to my sense as a foodie, chilehead, and former homebrewer all at once. 

This was fairly unusual. Generally sauces will appeal more strongly to one aspect over the other and it is usually to my foodie side and absolutely, this is as intentional as I can make it on my part, but I’m always interested in new varietals and different pods. Not only is the sauce here delicious, with one of the more pleasing mouth feels I can remember, smooth and silky, with a fantastic body, it also really embraces and examines the pod itself, supported by one two other ingredients, that of the vinegar and salt. 

I mentioned homebrewer earlier and here’s why. Different yeasts will naturally yield differing grace notes during the fermentation process to the end result. Anchor Steam Beer, for instance, is derived from using a lager yeast, which generally wants stable chilled temperatures, and putting that at a higher “room” temperature, which yields the fruity notes that beer is known for. That aspect was immediately familiar to me with this sauce. The tones are delicate and lilting, dancing around the sort of Ghostie flavor, and complimenting the superhot bitter notes. 

I don’t think this would really qualify as a superhot, and I found the sauce here to be fairly tame. I can’t really say to try this if you’re interested in a superhot flavor without the accompanying heat, as this is really representative of itself and is very much its own thing, it’s beautiful gorgeous self. If you’re interested in the chiles from a pod perspective, you will get a lot of mileage out of this, as well as if you just want a really great sauce. Functionally, it fits more into the category, for me, where a Louisiana-style might normally dwell, but here, I have a bit of a dilemma. I definitely want to enjoy those grace notes and savor them, which cuts out most of the foods I would normally use with a Louisiana-style Cayenne...but that is me personally. The value for that aspect below is reflective of how well it would work there. 

Bottom line: This is one of the more fascinating sauces I’ve had in a while and one of the very few that I’m enormously grateful to have been able to try, perhaps the ultimate reward for being a food explorer and having an open mind, and yes, another itch scratch by this absolute gem.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Sauced & Glazed Marty's Fusion Fuel Hot Sauce Review

Sauced & Glazed Marty's Fusion Fuel 

In August of 2022, I reviewed Doc’s Fusion Fuel (link in TOC at upper right), which is the flagship sauce. I found it seeming to want to straddle the line between a hot sauce and a barbecue sauce, which is fine. I didn’t find it particularly hot, so the intent of this sauce, which wants to be a milder version of that, I find kind of baffling. Since it has directly invoked the comparison, I think we’ll roll with that for a bit. In fact, I wasn’t overly interested in this sauce at all after reading through the ingredient list, but I figured since I did the Doc’s, I may as well do this as companion piece. I will say now that my recommendation is strongly towards the Doc’s, which at least makes a flavorful pass at what it’s attempting. 

To the comparison, both have the annoying foil labels that like to bounce whatever light source you’re trying to use to read it. This one makes a mention of giving it to kids and the website calls it “family-friendly,” which is one of the more nonsensical things I think I’ve seen for a product purporting to be a hot sauce. So, the intent here is a sort of “my first hot sauce” vibe? I will take them at their word and assume this is what they meant by putting out a milder version of an already mild product.

I’m all for accessibility and gateways for the chile-curious, as I have repeatedly noted, but we have a few problems with the approach here. If you lower the heat of something that already has fairly low heat, you’re left with no heat, which is what we have here. Chipotle is the only heat source and it is the third ingredient, so what heat is there will be and is minimal. The ingredient panels are the same between sauces, save for Doc’s Fusion Fuel having red Habaneros as the heat driver, again in the 3rd spot, with the addition of smoke flavor. Of the two, Doc’s reads as more notably smoky as well.

It’s nice they’re trying to make a product for children interested in chiles, I guess, but to my mind, the best gateway sauces are the ones that are flavorful and taste great. While Doc’s was a definitely push towards a barbecue sauce, as noted, this one seems to move from that nearly entirely. What is left is a sort of rough very tomatoey, slightly bitter, and noticeably unrefined collection of the various powders as notes on that platform, an approach I find baffling. I’m not sure what happened here, exactly, but what is here I don’t find works as either a hot sauce or a barbecue sauce. It is probably closest to the latter of those, but not a very good version there, either. This is not to say it is a bad or unpalatable sauce, but more a confusing and overall somewhat mediocre one. It is not one I find especially enjoyable and will probably be binning. 

Bottom line:  I might be wrong about who this is for and it’s perhaps more meant as a novelty companion piece for fans of the Back To The Future movie franchise and not intended to be consumed. I found it remarkably underwhelming and an unnecessary alteration to the Doc’s.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2 

Mikey V's Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Mikey V’s Pineapple Habanero

I like pineapple a great deal, and hot sauce, of course, and pairing pineapple with Habanero was a very big deal in the hot sauce world for quite a while. It seems less so now, especially once mango and Habanero sort of came into the fold, but I’ve had a lot of both styles. For a while, before things started to drift more towards mango Habanero, I had the idle thought that I might just wind up covering every single pineapple Habanero sauce that was around, sans onions, naturally. Sweet hots and fruit-based sweet hots, where these sauces usually reside, are among my favorite styles, so I consider myself well-versed enough in these to sort of have internal sub-categories of the style. This particular one fits more into the “pineapple juice” area. 

While it is clearly fruit-based, I can’t say it’s a sweet hot, though. This one reads a lot more as salty pineapple, which reminds me a bit of the churrascarias that put a rock salt water spray on the pineapple and roast them on a spit, twirling on a trompo. I don’t think that’s exactly what the intent was here, though...I’m not sure quite what the intent was, but there are quite a few ingredients that don’t really show up in the flavor, which is vinegar, pineapple, salt, with the vinegar making things more tangy than a blast, and a slightly bitter note here and there from the Habs. I quite like this flavor, but I have a bit of a problem with this sauce.

One of my favorite places to put the tropical fruit-based sweet hots is on pizza and I’m always happy when I’m able to do that. With the more watery and loose sauces, such as this one, that is right off the table, as the sauce will just run and sog out the crust, if you’re not exceedingly careful. Another issue with the sort of “pineapple juice”sub-category I think this falls into is that you tend to lose concentration of flavor. Sure, this can mean saucing more, but what happens when a sponge is saturated and you try to pour more water on it? I think this sauce would be dramatically improved by being a good two to three times thicker, go for a nice medium body to it. As it is now, it probably should have come with a restrictor cap. 

The best places I found this are generally with meats where you’d want pineapple, so things like chicken and pork, grilled pineapple slabs, or mixed drinks. For the foods where you’re not so worried about the sauce pooling and puddling, this can make a welcome addition, though I found the flavor frequently got lost in things like breading of tendies, for instance. It is a touch on the hotter side than these kinds of sauces, specifically the ones more like juice, tend to be, but I’d say more like 1 - 1.5, rather than racing towards a two. It is a quite nice, pleasant heat.

Bottom line: While I think this is overall a solid sauce, particularly in the flavor direction, the consistency definitely works against it. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate (Hot) Hot Sauce Review

Black-Eyed Susan Death By Chocolate Hot

It’s hard to believe it’s been nearly two and a half years since I did the Mild version of this, review available here: https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2023/10/black-eyed-susan-death-by-chocolate.html, but it was worth the wait...way, way worth the wait. This is an extremely well-done sauce, very excellently delivered, and quite unlike anything else out there...just like the aforementioned Mild version. In fact, I’m tempted to just say to read that other review, because everything else applies, with the main difference being this one has a more satisfying heat. This one hovers more between a 1 and a 2, while the other was perhaps even under a 1 slightly, but both are utterly delicious. This also, incidentally, makes their ratings identical.

If I had to pick between the two, it would be this one, on account of that nicer heat level, but I also like the flavor of this slightly better. The more food adventurer you have in your blood, the more you will appreciate this, as there’s a lot going on and it’s a great deal to fun to play with some of the more meat-forward Mexican-style dishes that might bear some mole’ influence, like carne asada, carnitas, and Al Pastor. The sauce is a bit sweeter than most of the mole sauces I’ve encountered, but I found it a wonderful addition generally where I tried it. 

Bottom line: Picking up directly from the Milder version (again, read that review, as nearly all of it applies), this is, for me, the more preferable version of a thoroughly unique sauce, featuring one of the lesser used and undersung pods out there, the venerable Chocolate Habanero.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6 

Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost

I had noticed this brand on various grocery shelves here and there for a while, but the flavors always seemed a bit tame, so I thought it was maybe a boutique brand that was geared more towards intriguing flavor combinations, but not necessarily a heat that I would find satisfying. I gave them no more thought until I saw them on the hallowed shelves of BYT and noticed some other flavors that sounded intriguing. This was the one I picked up as introduction to the company, given that the ingredients up front were Ghosties, Chipotle, dates, and, inexplicably, cumin, but naturally I disregarded that last one.

After getting into it a bit, I think this sauce may be another that is somewhat miscategorized. For me, this is much more in line with what I recognize as a steak sauce than a hot sauce. It is fairly astringent, but like most steak sauces, the various ingredients are part of one unifying whole, an amalgamation of flavors rather than one individual component, other than maybe the black pepper. Interestingly, in both smell and aftertaste, that is the one ingredient that tended to read the strongest and hang in there the most, but it is not an especially black peppery sauce. 

What I was most excited for was the idea of having something smoky and perhaps leaning into the dates, which is a fruit I quite love, and with Ghosties in the name, I expected some degree of heat as well. Heat is here, but quite minimal. This is not going to be challenging for anyone in that respect, I wouldn’t think. The dates appear to be here more as part of the texture and body of the overall composite, rather than an individual flavor note. I was able to detect some grace notes of carrots here and there as well, which was interesting. Of note, apple is also in the mix here as well, but I think it’s more like the date, providing body to the whole. To be sure, this is not a particular sweet sauce, either.

I tried it in the usual places, but it didn’t work the way I was hoping, until it tripped over in my brain that I was applying it to the wrong foods. Once I switched over, things fell more into place. I thought the sauce was nice and the flavor pleasant, but it also seems to me “wrong,” for lack of better word, unless it is on something like a burger or maybe some pork, generally the same sorts of food where you might reach for a steak sauce. There it is excellent and unless they were to reformulate it and lean much more heavily into the things I mentioned in the first paragraph, which are also on the label, I think they’d be better off calling it a steak sauce instead of hot sauce.

Bottom line: Very intriguing introduction to this company, with a blend of ingredients that are somewhat unusual to behold for a hot sauce. If you stick to where you’d normally use a steak sauce, this delivers a quite lovely element to things.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 5

The General's Berry Breach Hot Sauce Review

The General’s Berry Breach

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

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

I have a stance about fruit-based sauces and it is that I think they should always lean towards the sweeter side of things. Now, admittedly, this is my direct preference and does not preclude me trying and sometimes enjoying sauces that don’t fit into this characteristic exactly, but that is what a not inconsiderable part of me wants when I see fruit as an ingredient in a sauce. For this, I was very interested to see what the result would be with their first fruit-based sauce, given this company’s very distinctive approach to the other sauces. 

The General’s sauces all tend to have a fairly notable characteristic in the flavor note that I’m fairly sure is due to the fermentation and how much mash is going into the respective bottles. This sauce joins the others in that and like most of the others, is relatively few ingredients. We have blueberries, Habanero mash, vinegar, honey, and salt. The honey is an interesting addition, given that it is far too subtle of a flavor to be there as a tasting note and instead winds up as sweetener. Most of the flavor here is Habanero, with a salted blueberry side note. There is a degree of bitterness here from the Habs as well that I could have lived without, even with the honey probably at least tempering that somewhat. This is definitely far from a sweet sauce, however. As far as heat, what is there is mostly immediately, but with Habaneros comes a slight build as well, which this does. I would call it a nice warmth, but not particularly challenging.

As with many other sauces that skew away from sweetness, I think it works against the sauce here and it would have been better served to lean a lot harder into the sweet side. I know, I know military-theme, tough guys, rah rah and all that, but that’s marketing and irrelevant to what’s actually inside the glass. I think had they skipped the honey and instead used pure maple syrup and also more of it, the result would have been a lot closer to my happy zone. I definitely enjoy what is here, which works nicely on both chicken and especially red meat, but making it sweeter would not have detracted from those and would have also positioned it nicely against the other sauces in the line-up. It also would have opened up things for dessert, which I assume even military rah rah tough guys also enjoy from time to time. 

Bottom line: The first foray from The General’s into a fruit-based sauce was as interesting as I was expecting. While solid, it ultimately does not quite hit the spot I was hoping.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5

Butterfly Bakery Mustard Cranberry Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Mustard Cranberry

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WM18-lxagUQ 

This is a fascinating sauce and one of the few that comes to mind which places the Ghosties front and center from a flavor perspective. Most of the time, when sauces use this ingredient, it is more as accent, if used for flavor, but generally, the idea is that it will provide some superhot heat. Here, it delivers both heat and flavor, which is enhanced considerably by the lovely Carmen peppers also in the mix. To be sure, while the heat is not quite what I would call chilehead only, there is little question a superhot is in the mix and I suspect it make take normies unaware, if they are not prepared somewhat for it.

So we already have that profile, which gets us some pod fruitiness, along with some bitter superhot notes, and then in comes the mustard and cranberry. Mustard and the quinine of cranberry tend to be fairly forceful notes, with the latter of the two borderline unpalatable in its raw form. There is quite a bit of bitterness to be had with those as well, so I was greatly curious of the direction this sauce would take. It is one of the more intriguing combinations I’ve had, in that you have the pod flavors, as noted, then grace notes of the mustard and a not-exactly-but-close sort of berry quality from the cranberries. Altogether, it sort of defies categorization.

I will be frank here. The enjoyment of this sauce rather greatly depends on where you put it. I don’t find it an overly flexible sauce, as there are definitely some strong flavors going on here. Pairing notes suggest German food, which I think is definitely the good call. Some nice smoked ham, some outstanding cervelat, maybe some brats are all on the money. Rye bread is also a suggestion and I do think sandwiches are one of the places it excels. If you happen to be making a sandwich where you would want both mayo and mustard, for instance, making up a spicy mayo with this and using that as a sandwich spread, especially if you’re pairing it with a nice creamy cheese, like a high quality Havarti, is going to put this is fantastic territory. In terms of pairing, just think of a food where you’d want a fairly strong mustard to go and you’d about have it. 

Bottom line: One of the more unique sauces (I can think of nothing quite like it) out there, but a bit narrow in terms of application scope. While the heat level isn’t overbearing, some familiarity with the bite of Ghosties would definitely be in order before stepping in.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Lauren Urban Farms Pink Panther Hot Sauce Review

Lauren Urban Farms Pink Panther

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D75p9xglVqI 

The naming convention of this sauce I find a little curious. There is no connection with the motion picture franchise, nor to Peter Sellers, nor to Henry Mancini, not even to the animated series from United Artists. The color of this sauce is decidedly not pink. Panthers were not a part of the creation of this sauce, which is understandable, given that they don’t actually exist and the word itself translates to leopard and/or jaguars. There is a genus of panthera, but that doesn’t refer to any specific big cat...all very curious indeed.

It is here that I will do that rare thing and directly refer you to the sauce makers website, where we can see pictures of this saucing, utilizing some nifty peppers, in creation and can at least understand the pink part of things. There are a couple of pods here that I don’t think I’ve ever run across before, certainly not in a sauce. They are the purple heirloom Bells, which I may have had in the past in another setting, though I don’t recall specifically now, and the buena mulata pepper, which is an offshoot of the Cayenne. The name is kind of fascinating as it refers in direct translation to a “good,” which is the buena part, though in this context it appears to often mean merry as well, female person of mixed African and European heritage, the “mulata” part. How this got applied to an ornamental pepper pod seems like it would be a fascinating story.

In any case, as far as its usage in a sauce, I found it to be very curious. There are definitely shades of Cayenne, but almost more like Cayenne-lite or maybe a more tamed version of Cayenne. It seems closest to a Lousiana-style or Cajun, given how extremely loose and watery the sauce itself is and this is another that probably needed to come with a restrictor cap. There were a lot of subtleties that were strongly reminiscent of home-canned pickles and the juice thereof, but not overtly...just subtly. I find the flavor here to be fascinating and somewhat light and delicate on the palate. Regrettably, in my experience, it also meant that it would wind up getting lost with various foods and after flavor cancellation, I’d be left with a vaguely peppery vinegar aspect. This is a shame, as the sauce is quite lovely in tone, but also means pairing must needs be judicious. There more you can get out of its way and let it shine, the better, so think some nice roast chicken, but I do believe it will also be exquisite in some vinaigrettes and dressings as well. 

Bottom line: I love coming across new pods and quite enjoyed my experience with this. It perhaps resembles most a Lousiana-style Cayenne or Cajun sauce, though a far more delicate one.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Savir Foods Churro Ancho Dessert Hot Sauce Review

Savir Foods Churro Ancho

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

Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRIWsYDAx7M

This is a sauce I was not expecting to like and wasn’t aware it existed until very recently. I’d seen other Savir Foods hot sauces here and there, but I noted their lineup seemed a bit light and a lot of them had onions, which was kind of the end of things...or so I thought. I really like this idea of dessert sauces, which is a relatively new kind of thing or direction, if you like, for the hot sauce world. Certainly, I have covered a few others on this blog, but most hot sauces are not really intended for that and usage there winds up being more incidental than anything else. 

The main reason I didn’t expect to like this was the idea of the cinnamon. I’m not a huge fan of that and a little goes a long, long way for me. I’m not a fan of cinnamon things, particularly, and find that cinnamon gets used as a hammer too frequently for my taste. I don’t keep any cinnamon powders or sticks at all at hand and if I come across them in a recipe, will usually just delete that part. When checking this one out, I noted it also had Ghosties, Cayenne, and dates, the last of which is fairly unusual for sauces, though I’ve run into it twice already this year (the other one being the Seed Ranch Smoky Ghost hot sauce, which may or may not be posted by the time you read this - check TOC at right). This is not a particularly hot sauce, though, just has a nice comforting bit of warmth in the velvety mouth feel it delivers. 

This sauce uses the dates better. The label describes the cinnamon as a warm cinnamon and I have no idea what that means, but it does seem gentler than in other things I’ve had it in. I think the cinnamon is used very nicely here and it melds with the the sugar and fruit and the avocado oil and possibly the nutritional yeast in a very lovely and smooth way. I found this, to my great surprise, quite enjoyable and tried it on a number of pastries. I also tried it on ice cream, which was a bust, but if you stick to using it anywhere you might normally use or want cinnamon, this should work the trick quite nicely indeed. Obviously, this precludes savory foods, but by calling this as a dessert hot sauce out of the gate, a reduced flexibility comes more or less built in.

Bottom line: This is an amazingly lovely dessert sauce, in addition to being one of the happier surprises I’ve come across in recent memory. If you like or love cinnamon, you will probably get more out of this sauce, but I did find it astonishingly pleasant.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Monoloco Matasanos Hot Sauce Review

Monoloco Matasanos

Note: This sauce appears on Season 23 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nFpzH0lw2M 

It’s hard to think of a flavor profile that would be more contrary to my palate, excluding things that actively make me physically ill, like onions. As I’ve noted, I’m not generally a fan of Indian flavorings or food, and the more forceful those particular spice blends tend to be in things, the less I find it palatable. Here, it is quite prominent and it is backed by one of the more bitter aspects I’ve run across in a sauce. This could be the superhot bitter of the Reapers, but I strongly suspect it might also be at least partly due to a mix of dry spices at play. Whatever the cause, I find great difficulty in locating enjoyment when using it.

It is immediately blazing, quite beyond what any non-chilehead will likely find either tolerable or enjoyable, so definite chilehead only territory. It was in the 9 slot on the show, which is sometimes meaningful and sometimes not, but here it is pretty reflective of the punchiness this sauce delivers. Heat-wise I found it rather pleasant, but accompanied by that bitter, that bit of enjoyment dissipated almost immediately. I half wonder if them using oil, which should create a smoothing effect, might be interfering with the integration of the dried spices somewhat, but in any case, there is a slight graininess to the sauce as well, which further doesn’t help matters. 

Where I think this would be in best use would be to add it to a sauce in the Indian style of food. I think it would work exceedingly well there blending in with the other spices and with its quite hot nature, one would not need to use a great amount of it. Obviously, that is very much not my thing, so I’m not the one to try this out, but for other chileheads who may like Indian cuisine more than me, I think they could find much to enjoy here and presumably, that would also temper the highly bitter nature of this sauce.

Bottom line: This is the second sauce from Monoloco that is very much not for me. While I found it slightly more enjoyable than the XXX (reviewed elsewhere here), it is going to be getting gone as soon as I film the Q2 2026 Wing Thing.  

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 0
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1

Earthquake Spices Biohazard Hot Sauce Review

Earthquake Spices Biohazard

I think this review might be more random thoughts in nature, as I don’t find this works particularly well as an actual hot sauce. It is very loose, quite watery, needs a restrictor cap it doesn’t come with, is very vinegar forward, and is a fruit sauce that has no discernible sweetness, which is a big-time no-no in my book. Happily, even though it lists apple cider vinegar, the stinky foot aspect of that particular vinegar doesn’t read at all, but that is kind of where my happiness ends. If you have this sauce solo, you can definitely get a nice blast of salt, with grace notes of a sort of amalgamation of the berries, and an undercurrent of the superhot bitter of the  mighty mighty Reapers, which also make this sauce punchy enough to be better reserved for chileheads. I’m going to stop well short of suggesting it is a salt or berry or Reaper flavored vinegar, but vinegar is quite forward in the flavor profile. That flavor profile is not bad, per se, as much as I find it confusing. There is enough fruit flavor,especially if you hit one of the fruit chunks that underlines the potential and what could have been, that it needs to be accounted for and combined with the runniness of the sauce, I found it fairly challenging to use, though definitely it worked best on fried foods, like chicken tendies. To be sure, though, I vastly preferred other sauces there as well. I will definitely be using it as a chilehead vinegar, however, in composite recipes going forward and I think it will be very interesting in something like a quinoa salad dressing or possibly as part of cole slaw dressing.

I find a lot of amusement with the label, which lists the sauce as “Bioharzard,” which is not a word. I looked up the website, where it is listed and pictured correctly as “Biohazard,” so this is probably a typo. Another typo is in the ingredient list, which spells raspberry as “rasberries.” The scale has at the highest level, a mushroom cloud, on a scale trying to reference piquancy, but titled using a word that references to measurements of planetary vibrations. Obviously, that has nothing to do with heat, so the entire thing reads with a bit of dissonance. Then there is the “CONSUME AT YOUR OWN RISK” tag, which is probably meant to indicate that the sauce will contain some good heat, but in light of other elements, has some additional connotations. Finally, it is stated that this sauce will be “great on everything,” and I usually don’t get too much into label copy, but this particular one is bringing me a good deal of merriment. I can’t imagine anyone wanting something along these lines on a pizza or a bagel and lox. 

Bottom line: This one needs a lot more refinement. I can’t imagine what was in the bottle I had was what they envisioned when they set out to make this. There is conceptually some good stuff here, and if they re-ordered the ingredients, such as putting the berries first, then the vinegar, then sugar, and then the rest of the stuff, they would probably be on to something...as well as having a sauce with more appropriate body. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

2026 Q1 Update

2026 Q1 Update

I think towards the end of 2025 I got into some pretty serious burnout and despite the year starting off very strong with a couple of SOTY candidates and some otherwise great sauces, it didn’t seem like this year was going to be resuming the chilehead streak of some years past. Obviously, the unhealthily deranged state of the world and the propensity of one particular individual to pick global fights with former allies and trade partners definitely was not and is not helping anything. That this person is regrettably occupying the highest office in the country in which I live definitely is contributing to the damage to the overall mental state. Things were continuing to get much, much worse, and seemed perpetually on the verge of flying out of control entirely. Perhaps humanity needs a World War within their lifetimes to shock them out of their stupor, but I’d have been just as happy to not be around for that...I suppose others in the past have held a similar sentiment.

On January 15, First We Feast kicked out the sauce list for Season 29 and I updated that page then, as per usual, as well as posting on YouTube. The season seems a pretty widely varied one, which I appreciate, though it only added another 3 sauces to the hit list. I think I probably need to reconsider the idea of getting repeats on the Quarterly Wing Thing FOH video series (link at right), if I’m going to keep current on that, but I also really wanted to get some new sauces in the mix as well, particularly SOTY candidates, so it’s always a challenge, I suppose.

For National Hot Sauce Day on January 22, a very special collab between myself and Dylan over at Heat Hot Sauce, which was a map of various hot sauce companies in the US and Canada, was posted up over there. This is a project I’ve long wanted to see realized and with Dylan and I both being chileheads and statistics geeks, this proved the perfect combination. The initial launch was with nearly 500 companies in that criteria, with us initially leaving out makers with only a single sauce in their lineup and those companies where the sauces were produced out of the country. It expanded pretty considerably and pretty quickly after that. This will be an ongoing thing and I’m truly excited at seeing it develop. 

I also made a post about all of the Runners-Up for my annual SOTY award, which can be found at the SOTY page (link at right). 

It seemed as if my prediction at the end of 2025 was starting to come true. The scheduling for this blog, which was running about a month ahead by the end of last year, was closer to 2 weeks and I really hadn’t filmed much of the non-sauce content for the FOH series...not a lot of sauce content, either, truth be told, as the FOH series was running an entire quarter ahead by the end of 2025. That was somewhat improved, though, to maybe a couple months and change, instead of a full quarter, but I did have a lot of sauces on deck, still unopened, and was trying to make a concerted effort to clear out some of the open bottles from 2025 in the fridge door. 

One of the directions I’ve wanted to go for a while was to explore more Gindo’s, and more recently, Butterfly Bakery as well, so this year seemed like a really good time to do that. Thus, the first quarter featured a lot more sauces from both of those companies than normal and yes, this will impact the Q2 post section wherein I go over the most represented sauce companies on this blog. 

It became also exceedingly clear that we are again in a spicy food drought, as far as fast food and commercial snack products go and with the havoc I mentioned earlier, a lot of what I do find is also more expensive than I have interest in shelling out, so if it holds, the FOH series will be moving much more heavily into strictly hot sauce review addendums for contents sooner rather than later. As things stand currently, it will be pretty close through Q3 before I run out entirely of non-sauce FOH content, though, of course, stuff might filter in between then and now.

I also discovered some somber news...I still can’t quite wrap my head around it or being to process, but mid-March I found out that one of the icons of my chilehead development, a gentleman named Jimmy Savas, passed in the later part of 2025. He was the man behind the counter at Grove Market & Deli, which, prior to Roger Damptz and BYT, about the only place to find actual scorching stuff in the Salt Lake valley. Even though my visits there were extremely inconsistent, he always seemed to remember me and had time to chat and as time permitted between his many other customers, we’d catch up. I don’t know why he remembered me, but he always seemed to...perhaps with the incessant conversation about hot sauces and spicy foods generally...or maybe all the people I dragged with me through the years if they were up for a massive lunch. In the winter, I’m not so much for cold deli sandwiches and it had been a bit since I’d dropped in, but my brain is struggling to comprehend that the man, this fixture, this beacon, was gone, and with him, the entire soul of the place...and now, of course, I can’t really bring myself to go back. There is no point. He’s gone and it’s far too late for me to talk with him one last time and say goodbye. I suppose it is some measure of solace that I appreciated my visits and he reciprocated the sentiment, though all of that, at least right now, pales somewhat to the degree that I miss my friend. 

In brighter tidings to leave this update off, the blog is closing in on 700 posts, which will probably happen sometime before the next quarterly update, as well as being within striking distance of 250K views. Around 9 months ago, it had hit the 100K mark. I find this both gratifying and perhaps a bit surprising, but I’m absolutely grateful. None of this, of course, would have been possible without the timely intervention of another of my good friends, the absolutely stellar and cherished Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, who came through with a lift when these pages were strongly in danger of cratering into ashes. Once again, I strongly urge you, if you're within 100 miles of any of the locations, to make the pilgrimage to the hallowed shelves of BYT. The locations are quite convenient to access and you can find the exact addresses by checking out BYT on Facebook or Instagram. 

Butterfly Bakery Maple Rum Chipotle Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Maple Rum Chipotle

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc0avtETqQM 

I am well prepared to say that Claire Georges, mastermind behind Butterfly Bakery (of Vermont) is a certified hot sauce genius, but I fear that might be understating things. I would not wish to limit it solely to the realm of that particular condiment and strongly suspect it might be far more extensive. The dazzling flavor combinations she comes up with, which translate to the liquid ambrosia pouring out of my various bottles, are absolutely truly something to behold and I am so very thankful for the existence of The Hot Ones show, if only for introducing me to these culinary wonders.

For this one, we have a smokiness that again hearkens back to fall smells, the smoke in the air, the crispness biting your cheeks, and perhaps that motif is not too distant as there is a little nip to this sauce as well, in the form of some maple rum, itself backed by a bit more of that wonderful Vermont maple syrup to boot. While this is definitely not a sweet sauce, it is an immensely flavorful one, but the first aroma is that of the smoke and it both takes me back and perhaps even aback a touch as I admire the callback to my favorite time of year and memories past.

Flavor-wise, this is fresh Chipotle with a dash of some astringency and if you ever thought all Chipotles were the same or wondered the difference between canned and more processed Chipotle vs. fresh Chipotle, get you a bottle of this and wonder no more. The fresh Chipotles are front and center, first ingredient out, and there is a slight degree of higher heat than I would normally associated with Chipotle. Not to say this is hot or punishing, just slightly more surprising in the nice element of heat tingles I was not really expecting. 

Like all Butterfly Bakery sauces, this is also intensely flavorful and I found, given the astringent element, that it really shone on fried foods, but also on things like wings. The recommendations are for pizza (too astringent for my tastes there), as well as red meats, perhaps bowing to the smokiness, but I don’t always love astringency with those either. For me, putting it along the lines of where I might reach for a Louisiana-style, just a really emphatically good-tasting one, where was I liked this best, but all that said, it is an immensely fun sauce with which to experiment.

Bottom line: This is both an excellent gateway sauce for early chileheads, as well as for more established chileheads who are like me and foodies first. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Gindo’s x Deane’s Market & Deli Sun-Dried Tomato Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s x Deane’s Market & Deli Sun-Dried Tomato

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54WgrFv-h7A 

I am not at all familiar with Deane’s Market & Deli, but figured it was probably something in Illinois somewhere and, perhaps predictably, that is exactly what it is. I imagine this is perhaps in proximity to Gindo’s, as it appears to be more or less a local favorite and you know, those are great. I have a few of my own in relative vicinity, one of which has food that has appeared in a video or two and one that was the source for hot sauce in the area for quite some time in the pre-Roger of BYT days. My education did not stop there. In the ingredients is something called a Red Fish Pepper, something I’d never heard of nor seen or even seen used prior to this sauce. It appears to be mainly a red bell variant, but it’s kind of cool that it shows up here. 

For a company that primarily makes fairly boutique, chef-ish, one-off sauces, this is perhaps the creme de la creme of them all. What we have here is a carefully orchestrated sauce that would be and is absolute magic on sandwiches, which is perhaps the thing delis generally are known for best. The secret here is the kalamatas. It is the first flavor you get before the deep richness and impact of the sun-dried tomatoes comes in, itself followed by a lovely back end finish of appreciable, though modest, heat as a finish. This is from the Carolina Reaper powder, and bolstered a bit by the Thai peppers. I’m usually not a fan of powder usage in sauce, as I think it goes wrong way more than it goes right, but here, it is in the hands of a maestro, and it shows. The orchestration is fantastic and something I have seen very few sauces do, dancing across the palate with all the grace of your favorite ballerina.

It’s hard to imagine a more gourmet sauce than this, particularly representing some of the very best that delis can offer, all in one delectable sauce, and, of course, given my fondness for pickled olives generally, this speaks to me rather directly. Given those olives, however, it does limit flexibility somewhat, but it is a great trade-off to my mind and where it works, it works spectacularly. Obviously, your mileage may vary somewhat dependent on how much you like those, but if it’s anywhere near as much as me, you will have great fun playing around with it in a variety of settings and for me, this is another of those sauces that works exceedingly well with Italian food flavors generally.

Bottom line: Gindo’s has done it again, putting out yet another brilliant sauce that makes me strongly suspect that magic is afoot somewhere over there.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7 

Butterfly Bakery Honey Field Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Honey Field Habanero

I’m tempted to make this a relative rarity for this blog and do a fairly short review, as I don’t really have a lot to say about this sauce. It all comes down really to how much, or if, you like the flavor of orange Habaneros. Are the ones from Honey Field better than the ones I can put my grubby mitts out and grab from the grocery store shelf nearest to me? I’m willing to concede the point and the design of this sauce, with those Habs front and center as the first ingredient, is very much focused on representing that pod...but it is not a pod I view particularly fondly, nor have I ever. I do think this is about as good as a sauce can be where this is the intent and it has a very nice mouth feel, but I don’t love the flavor of orange Habs. 

I do wish I would have thought to hold out some of the Vermont Habs sauce I did earlier in the year to compare and contrast, as both sauces really do well to highlight the differences between the red and orange Habanero, especially in terms of flavor. I don’t dislike the flavor here and will definitely empty out the bottle, probably mostly where I would use a Louisiana-style, as I think it works in those settings best. It does bring a nice warm heat with it, but this is not something to which I’ll be returning. 

Bottom line: This is one of those sauces that just winds up not resonant to my particular palate, but it is otherwise a fine sauce, particularly if one enjoys the flavor of orange Habs.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 6

Merman’s Revenge Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Merman’s Revenge Cajun

This is the second product I’ve from this company, the first a glaze that I did an FOH video on in the late part of last year, but which wasn’t a hot sauce per se and so didn’t show up here. I wasn’t overly fond of that sauce and some of the aspects that stuck out a bit to me also appear here, namely the rather forceful nature of the garlic. I don’t mind garlic and in quite a few settings, like it considerably, but in hot sauces, I prefer it be more accent, something more like another component instead of abrasively aggressive. Unfortunately, it winds up being more the latter here. To wit, there are both garlic bits and granulated garlic in the proceedings. The garlic pieces are reading more as jarlic to me, which probably explains the harsh nature of that component.

Cajun sauces are essentially Lousiana-style Cayenne sauces with extra ingredients and for the base Cayenne sauce here, we have a lot of pepper bits in it. The flavor of that part reminds me a lot more of the vinegary hit of something like Crystal, while the pepper pieces and the garlic impart a grit that sort of makes an unpleasant mouth feel, depending on where you use it. I don’t generally get a lot of Cajun sauces, as I think garlic, while a flavor I’m generally favorable towards, has a lot of potential to be overused in the overall flavor mix. I very definitely do not find the approach here to be particularly enjoyable. 

Both the grit and the overly garlic-forward flavor cut down the flexibility quite a lot for me here. There is plenty of a vinegar charge to cut through the richness of foods and at times, the garlic won’t read too obnoxiously, but one really has to be judicious with applying it, perhaps doubly so since this did not come with a restrictor cap. I presume it doesn’t because of all the bits and pieces in the sauce, but the potential for oversaucing with this loose of a sauce is quite pronounced and for me, this is definitely not something I would like to oversauce with. This style of sauce tends to have fairly low heat and this fits nicely into that motif, though I didn’t find it registered much heat at all, even for the style. It’s not egregious enough that I’m going to bin the sauce, but it is one that I will be using up perhaps somewhat grudgingly.

Bottom line: If you’re a fan of fairly prominent and forceful garlic notes in your low-to-no heat vinegar-based hot sauces and don’t mind some grit, this is probably well worth a look. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2

Gindo's Mild Roasted Red Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s Mild Roasted Red Pepper

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FFkTRz8Onqk 

This is a bit of an unusual selection, in that I wouldn’t generally pick something that is intentionally low heat. A couple of things strike me, one which was a factor in me getting the sauce in the first place and the second something that came about later after consideration of me contemplating something on the label. The first of those was that Habanero was listed in the ingredients, so I thought there might be perhaps a modicum of heat. To that end, there is not. There is no heat really to speak of at all in this sauce, but that ties in to what was on the label. It is intentionally a mild sauce and there is mention that it is a perfect sauce for beginners new to the chilehead world. I definitely would not disagree with that, but the more I thought about it, the more it seemed like a good thing. 

I write these reviews and make these videos and cast them out in the world on their own, without ever knowing who may be reading or viewing and perhaps, if all the stars align, may be inspired by something they read or see, some neuron, the right neuron, fires and things click over for them. I have tried to not get into gatekeeping territory and it’s been very important to me for a very long time to be as inclusive as possible and it struck me that people who may be in the beginning of their chilehead journey are not especially represented here. The blog has generally been more reflective of where I see myself, which is far more intermediate to upper end of heat chilehead, but that was its design. While this doesn’t mean there will be more milder sauces that I intentionally pick (and I have backed off of my earlier impulses over time), I do think it doesn’t hurt anything to have sauces like show up from time to time. All of us start from zero and have different beginnings, different origin stories on our path into the chilehead journey.

Anyway, as to the sauce, roasted red peppers was one of my happiest food discoveries, perhaps ever. I should back up. Fried red peppers was a world-altering event for me, but those I found a tad hard to come by, but it was that which set me on the discovery to roasted red peppers, which were far more readily available. I loved those quite a lot, but also discovered that at times, they would come out of the jar a bit slimy. This sauce is basically like a fresh and vibrant roasted red pepper, in its very best form, made into a sauce, with that same freshness and vibrancy. It is that flavor, tinged with salt and vinegar, which constitutes nearly all of the flavor and it is pretty wonderful...provided you like roasted red peppers, of course. This would be brilliant on a sandwich or pizza or any other place you might use the roasted red peppers and the sauce is both so flavorful and mild, that you will not be punished for oversaucing. 

Bottom line: Definitely a potential gateway sauce, as those have to taste great, though I think this serves more as just an excellent version of roasted red pepper more, given the lack of heat.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 6

Butterfly Bakery Chipotle Squash Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Chipotle Squash

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qK6yaljcq4s 

If one wanted a sauce that was strongly reminiscent of fall and a warm, comforting hug in a bottle, one would be hard pressed to find one more apropos than this. Once again, Butterfly Bakery comes forth with a work of genius, pairing roasted butternut squash, one of my very favorite fall foods and one that never fails me to drag me back to those chilly and biting nights that heralded both the end of summer and that the harvest was well and truly at hand. Fall has been my favorite time of the year for a very long time and things like that I suspect constitute a significant part of that formation. Add to that the smell of smoke in the air, as people fired up their furnaces or had bonfires, perhaps a last ceremonial hurrah before the bite of winter ended outdoor activities of that nature for another year.

The squash, of course, you could make into nice soup or add to casseroles or perhaps into a sauce for a nice macaroni dish and it’s one of those ingredients that if I ever see it used in a hot sauce, I’m immediately interested, instantly curious to see what they did with it. It is a tad unusual, but here, it is used to glorious effect, along with the pairing of some lovely tomatoes, to add a nice richness and depth, and, of course, the fresh Chipotles that are part of the proceedings. The first ingredient to all of this, it should be noted, is red Serranos, which I’m beginning to think more and more are underrated as a sauce ingredient. 

This sauce has a slight bit of grit from the seeds, but a nice amount of heft to it, creating a quite solid mouth feel. It is also very tame as far as heat, and they laid back a bit on the smoke, so one can use quite a lot of this sauce when experimenting and it is a very good sauce to do that with. The adage that if you make a good enough tasting sauce, the flexibility will be built in still holds true and I think you could have yourself a lovely time just playing around with different food pairings and this sauce, naturally going through all the suggestions on the label, of course. They are once again on the mark here with a truly unique and delicious sauce. 

Bottom line: A very accessible sauce that speaks to me on a number of levels, but with the low heat level, this is one probably more appealing to foodie first chileheads.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Four Sixes Salt Creek Hot Sauce Review

Four Sixes Salt Creek

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpKJAwNPoy0 

Here’s another one that I threw on to get me over shipping on Amazon, for which it serves its purpose admirably. I had never heard of Four Sixes and bought it more or less because of the price and ingredients. Once I got around to opening it, I took a closer look at the label and saw B & G Foods, one of our many gigantic conglomerates, who also was the owner of Trappey, architects of one of my more beloved sauces, Red Devil. Examining it closer, I got more confused, as the entire Four Sixes line seems to be duplicates of existing product, so I wasn’t sure of B & G’s motivation. It wasn’t until I discovered that this had some tie to Taylor Sheridan, apparently an author and creator, though I am unfamiliar entirely with this person, that I began to understand and I imagine, given them going out of that way for that reference, this is akin to a vanity sauce.

If so, fine. I’m not that curious to discover anything about the Four Sixes Ranch or who Sheridan is, but instead, we will focus on the sauce, which is more or less just a solid example of the Louisiana-Style Cayenne sauce. Cayenne is one of the most used pods on the planet and small wonder why. It always tastes phenomenal and is extremely versatile, offering great flavor and, probably contributing to its popularity, generally fairly miniscule heat. If someone is confused about what a Louisiana-Style Cayenne sauce might be, this is a good example to show or give them. The consistency is the usual wateriness, to the point that it comes with a restrictor cap. The sauce itself is the normal red-orange hue, with bits of the pepper suspended. The flavor is very vinegar forward, but has no heat to speak of, but you can get a good sense of the 3 main ingredients, which are the aforementioned vinegar, the pod, and the salt. You need nothing else for this style of sauce, really.

There are definitely sauces I like better in this style and this one, for me, is a bit pedestrian and middle of the road, but at the risk of overusing a certain word, it’s fine, entirely inoffensive. It tastes like what it is, which is a mass market version of the Louisiana-Style Cayenne sauce, and unless I miss my guess, is most likely a relabel of existing Trappey stuff...which, if that’s the case, more to the good. Trappey sauces are generally pretty decent. Ultimately, I've had better, I've had worse, and this one is more or less in the middle of the pack, though the rather notable lack of heat would prevent me from repeating this.

Bottom line: This is not a sauce I would say to go out of your way to obtain, unless you’re a megafan of Sheridan, I guess, but does the job capably enough. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Butterfly Bakery Maple Sparkle Sriracha Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Maple Sparkle Sriracha

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OsVQDK2o08 

One of the nicer things is finding out that a company you deeply admire because of their immense culinary skill is also comprised of really good people doing good things. It just adds a little extra wonderful overtone to supporting them. While I greatly admired Butterfly Bakery before because they make what I feel are pretty consistently delicious sauces, I was not aware of the whole Genersaucity mission they have to give back...until I saw this sauce, a sauce which is to support the Pride Center of Vermont. In these current times we live in, I feel it more important than ever to take a stand and plant your flag in the name of diversity and inclusion, which has been a hallmark of my time and of this blog and of the FOH video series and the very channel itself and I commend Butterfly Bakery for their further monetary support to help foster a sense of belonging.

I’ve said it numerous times, that I’m very very tired of the flavor of sriracha sauce generally, because I had so very much of it in my younger years, but when I saw this sauce and saw what it supported, I instantly wanted in. Happily, what is here does not contain many of the regular sriracha characteristics of which I’m so tired. Instead, what we have here is a sauce that is very forward on the red Jalapenos, all of which is buffered by the grace notes of the garlic scapes and the maple syrup. The label suggests this sauce is intended to go on a wide spectrum of foods and I think, indeed, that the flexibility of this is pretty pronounced, far more than a regular sriracha would be. It is also far more delicious than any of the more perhaps authentic srirachas.

This is a very accessible sauce and it starts by being utterly delicious. I’ve long said that when someone is in the front part of their potential entry into being a chilehead, it helps if the sauces are tasty, as then they will want to use it more. This fulfills this mission quite handily. It reminded me very slightly of the richness of a ketchup, though it is not so sweet as one of those, but even moreso as a very nice cocktail sauce, smoother than those usually are and far tastier as well. I adore this sauce on seafood, but I think it would be equally at home on Asian foods, such as a nice Vietnamese spring roll or banh mi or on a burger, pizza, as well as generally anything fried. It’s one of the facets of great-tasting sauce, which naturally adds to the number of things it will go well with...presuming the food base itself tastes great, of course. Because it is only red Jalapenos, heat, which is typical for sauces of this type, is quite low.

Bottom line: Not very representative of the classic sriracha flavor, but to my mind better, and could serve as a fantastic entry point not only to that, but to hot sauces generally. It is ultimately a fantastic sauce for a wonderful gesture. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 9
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Woodstock Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Woodstock Ghost Pepper

This is one of those rare reviews that are a tad difficult to write, so I beg your indulgence if we bounce around a little...or a lot. I will start by saying there is something wrong with this sauce and by that, I don’t mean it has turned or oxidized or anything, but from a flavor perspective, this is the most floral Scorpion tasting “Ghost” anything I’ve ever had. Given that the vaunted Ghosties are my favorite superhot, I’ve also had a lot of them...and plenty of the Scorpions as well, before the flavor wore me down. 

So, when something goes wrong, it’s important to try to trace the understand the issue and trace the origin. I mean, mistakes do happen and it wouldn’t be the first time I got something incorrectly labeled. Here are a few distinct possibilities I consider most likely. The incorrect peppers could have been used for the sauce batch. The correct peppers were used, but the wrong label was put on the bottle. There was cross-pollination at play. I suppose the wrong plants could have been planted and/or labeled prior to harvest as well. In any case, I find it a tad frustrating on a couple of levels. The first one is that I’m largely disinterested in sauces that read that florally and second, whoever else got a bottle similar to mine is going to get an incorrect impression of Ghosties. 

As to the sauce itself, it’s somewhere between being thin and maybe medium thickness and flows very nicely. The color is also nice, the sort of red-orange hue one would want from a Louisiana-style, which is the type this sauce is closest to. It is also a quite punchy sauce, in addition to being overly floral, and I suspect this will be too much for normies. The flavor here is such that I don’t find it overly flexible and used it mainly where I would a Louisiana-style. It is fairly vinegar-forward, but much more pepper forward, just not flavored in a way I find enjoyable...and after fighting it for a month, I finally am tossing in the sponge. I knew it was going to be a problem the second I opened the cap and smelled those floral notes that made me instantly thing of a Scorpion and I wasn’t wrong. If you like the flavor of Scorpions more than I do, you might find it more solid than did I.

This also brings up another sort of issue, for me, anyway, in that if this is not, as I strongly suspect, an actual Ghost pepper sauce, how do I go about rating it? I hemmed and hawed for most of that month I mentioned before finally deciding to judge it based on what was in the glass, but if it is a mislabel, the rating won’t be indicative of the actual Ghost pepper sauce. Then another problem arises in that if I get another bottle and it’s the same thing, that is one more I have to bin...also, maybe that is what they meant. There is a huge potential here, as both this sauce and the Scotch Bonnet from them also (I think they used to be called the Tropical Pepper Company prior to Woodstock) were priced quite nicely, but if it’s not a sauce you find especially palatable, I suppose any price realistically is too high.

Bottom line: A massive disappointment and the first sauce of 2026 that is getting the boot.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2