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