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