Splintered Lu'au Pohaku Hot Sauce Review

Splintered Lu’au Pohaku

This is, to my memory, the first time I’ve had the combination of Carolina Reaper and pineapple, but it makes sense. We see a lot of Habanero and pineapple as well as Scotch Bonnets and sometimes we may see a Ghostie floating around, but rarely does this type seem to get too far into the superhots, particularly the upper level. I really liked this idea, given that it was possibly a new spin on pineapple sauces. Pineapple is also one of my favorite fruits, so even discounting the onion powder and garlic powder in the ingredient list, I had high hopes.

Those hopes were temporarily dashed into the rocks when I first opened the bottle at room temperature. The sauce had a foul odor and a fairly unpleasant taste and it seemed directly attributed to those aromatics I mentioned. Sauces of this type almost never have those elements and it’s largely because they’re unnecessary. Here, despite being near the end of the ingredient list, they were quite distracting, to the point I was debating whether or not I was going to do a video. For me not to film a video on a sauce, it has to repel me to the extent that under no circumstances do I ever want to taste it again, even for a video. It’s been a while since that’s happened, so for this to be the case, that’s kind of saying something.

But...as is my wont, I threw it in the fridge to see what it was like chilled. Refrigerating sauces can change the flavor complex, sometimes pretty considerably, so I was hopeful the sauce would be more tolerable colder. It was, almost to the letter, as in I found it tolerable rather than something I disliked, but not much more than that. This was a shame, as clearly pineapple is used in the sauce, as it is quite nicely pulpy and thick. The body of this sauce, in fact, was fantastic. There is a decent pineapple flavor, but despite it being the first ingredient, it is trampled under foot by the aromatics. I also did like the combination of the Reapers and Jalapenos and if those two ingredients I mentioned in the first paragraph were simply absent, this would be a far better sauce.

As it stands, I kind of think this is using the flavors that might be utilized to prepare Kalua pig and tossing them into a sauce, given the Lu’au name for the sauce, but they might have just tried to make a different approach for a very saturated segment of the market. I did find it worked to much varying extents, depending on what it was paired with, so I’m happily more able to come to terms with it, but this is ultimately very against my preferences. Despite the Carolina Reaper, which is paired here with the more flavorful Jalapeno, this is overall a quite mild sauce.

Bottom line: If your tastes for this kind of sauce run to more the semi-sweet and you wouldn’t mind some onion and garlic with your pineapple sauce, this is probably worth a shot.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3 

Butterfly Bakery Maple Chocolate Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Butterfly Bakery Maple Chocolate Ghost

Reviews like this are among the most challenging to write. Like other Vermont sauce makers Angry Goat and Silk City, Butterfly Bakery is in my favored nation sauce maker list (see SOTY list at right for link to that page) and like those other two, they are very intent on experimenting and presenting flavors that are quite unique in the world of hot sauce. However, like both of those other two, in doing so, they have created a sauce that has missed a bit with me and it is this one right here.

I refer to these sauces with the phrase “more interesting than good,” and it’s not necessarily a knock, as those words mean distinctly different things. They are not mutually exclusive attributes, by any means, but at the end of the day, not everything is always going to hit. Here, I should be pre-disposed to love this sauce. It has my favorite superhot, the lovely Ghosties, presented front and center and backed by the usual mash accompaniments, but also by maple syrup and cocoa. It is herein that I think the problem lies for me. When you use the word “chocolate,” it implies certain things. The chocolate we generally know is created by melding a sugar, usually a lot of it, cocoa powder, and cocoa butter (or possibly another fat). This sauce seemingly has 2 of those 3 things and of the 2, neither is in great amount, at least not enough to greatly influence the flavor profile in comparison to the Ghosties. Calling this one Maple Cocoa Ghost would have been more reflective of what’s in the bottle. 

Every superhot, Ghosties included, have a facet of frequently being intensely bitter. Cocoa powder by itself is quite bitter, as any of us who tried it as a child thinking it was Nestle Quik powder can attest. So, we have bitter amplified by bitter, which creates somewhat of a feedback loop. This is also one of the thickest sauces I’ve had from anyone not named Torchbearer and so it tends to come out in dollops and the dollops tend to hold in place, especially if the sauce is cold, which further reinforces that attribute. 

This results in some difficulty in finding where this sauce fits and with what. There are some suggestions on the label, but for me, it didn’t work on ice cream, even a heavily sweet one with chocolate flakes in it. This is definitely a sauce that works best if you spread it out more, to let it meld with whatever you’re attempting to use it on. I found it best paired with aged cheeses, salty meats, and fruity cheeses, like a bluberry Stilton. The label suggests using on beans, which I’m taking as refrieds, and I could see that working better as you would have both heat and potentially stirring into something, as well as adding to a brownie batter batch, but I think it will take more playing. As this is not a particularly pleasant sauce by itself, and the thickness I mentioned means you will likely get pockets of the sauce by itself. With Ghosties this far forward, it is also probably best reserved for chileheads only, as I don’t see normies enjoying this overly. This does, however, represent the attributes of Ghosties well, in that it ratchets immediately to as hot as it will get, which for me was somewhat over a 2, and then camps there. Additionally, this is one of those where a little goes quite a way, so the bottle should last quite a while...

Bottom line: While I appreciate that the Ghosties are this forward, I think for me, the tuning on this one would need to be both a thinner sauce, as well as a much sweeter one. It did inspire quite a bit of curiousity in me, however, and I will continue to play around with it...

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

Gindo's Nashville Hot Pickle Hot Sauce Review

Gindo’s Nashville Hot Pickle

Note: This is the 700th overall post for this here blog.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Qt02EhFr-E 

I’m not really the hugest fan of dill in hot sauces. I definitely like dill as a flavoring and have made many a dill dip and, as a kid, used to chew on the herb raw during the summer months, but I find that I like it only in fairly specific areas. One of the major areas of interest to me with hot sauces is pairing them to foods and when you have a fairly strong herb presence, such as dill, in a hot sauce, that also needs to be paired, in addition to all the other components. So, for all that, traditionally I have found hot sauces using dill to be a bit limited in where I like it. But, like with many other ingredients, put it in the hands of a master and things change. I won’t go so far as to say I’m a believer now, but my eyes are much more open to the light now...

I think in concept that this is a brilliant marriage of flavors. Nashville Hot I’ve had in many ways, or at least in many ways of people calling it that, but heavy Cayenne will generally have my interest and the highly flexible nature of that pepper goes a long way in forgiving tinkering. I should now note that there is no Cayenne, or at least none listed, in this sauce. Also, pickle sauces...so these tie in with my earlier comments on dill and a lot of them seem like nothing more than pureed pickle, to which I always wonder, what’s the point? Why am I buying a liquefied version of that? I can just make that my damn self, but pickle was one of the hotter trends for a while and thanks to places like Popeye’s, I can see more of a value in pickles than previously. Altogether, merging those two flavors, which should be complementary, makes a degree of sense.

But, as I said, leave it to Gindo’s to blow my mind, which this sauce instantly did. Analysis is one thing, but having your head exploded via taste buds is always a welcome experience. Here we have perhaps the ultimate version of what this union could be. This is a medium thick, gorgeous-looking sauce, using at least some of the Gindo’s base that shows up in a lot of the limited run sauces. Habanero is as hot as the peppers go, so this has a nice degree of heat, but nothing challenging. I had to check the ingredients to be sure, but there are no pickles here, just an expert use of fresh dill to create one of the more brilliant and comprehensive taste adventures I think I’ve run across in a while. 

It also sort of defies pigeon-holing. I’ve tried it on a lot of things. Some I expected it to be good and it was, but in other arenas, I was less sure and the results were sometimes good and the sometimes clashy with other strong flavors. That is, I suppose, the blessing and curse of dill, but it was absolutely a joy and great fun to experiment. This joins the Deane’s crossover sauce in the list of me wishing I had gotten multiple bottles, but if you can get a hold of this gem and like pickle-flavored products, this is an absolute must.

Bottom line: Another frankly genius and often surprising elixir from one of the greatest talents we have in the hot sauce world.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 7 

Buffalo Trace Hot Sauce Review

Buffalo Trace

Yet another stealth B & G Foods sauce, a facet of which I was unaware until after I’d already received and opened the bottle, and another I found on the Amazon because I needed to add a couple of bucks for free freight. This reminds me a lot of the Four Sixes hot sauce I reviewed earlier in the year (check TOC at right), only with the heavy addition, as one might reasonably expect, of bourbon. While I think liquor, booze in general, can work in hot sauces, I find it’s a lot like extract in that most of the time it does not and it’s for a similar reason. Many of the times makers using one of those components gets very heavy-handed with the addition. In the case of this, it smells and tastes considerably of raw bourbon.

This creates a considerable problem for what is ostensibly a Lousiana-style Cayenne style. For other styles, if the liquor comes across as raw and unrefined, an application of heat to cook that off can often save the sauce. I generally will wind up sending them to the grill, particularly if they have enough sugar to help caramelize things. Given the vinegar-forward nature of this style, that is not really an option, as you will lose one of the defining characteristics of the sauce along with it. I do think the idea is potentially workable, but the bourbon needs to be much further back in the flavor mix. I’ve been saying bourbon here because in an oddity, the label says the flavor is “inspired by Buffalo Trace,” and the ingredients list bourbon and not Buffalo Trace specifically. So...why is Buffalo Trace on the label? 

I don’t know, but I can’t imagine it is any more complicated than mere branding. It’s hard to see this sauce winning over any fans, unless there is a market for a collector’s item. This is the kind of sauce you could ostensibly make by taking the aforementioned Four Sixes sauce and dumping some bourbon into it. That might be what they, in fact, did. Certainly the heat levels are similar, specifically not existent in either. 

At times, the Cayenne will try to peek its head out, but rather than being useful in restoring balance to heavier dishes, something the Louisiana-style is quite adept at, this one sort of degrades and diminishes the dishes, largely by wafting the smell of raw bourbon into your face when you bring the sauced food towards your face. It’s not outright horrible, not even the worst sauce I’ve had that has used liquor, but is also definitely not what I want in any sauce. 

Bottom line: Liquor in a sauce can work if handled carefully and gracefully. This one is a good example of when that doesn’t happen. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 1
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1

Overall: 1 

El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QsPwC4hYm40 

I was pretty amped when El Yucateco came out with some new flavors a while back. I’ve had my fair share, and then some, of their regular ones and anything they do will always be of strong interest. They are frequently the next step in hot sauces for many chileheads when they get tired of the lower heat mass market stuff that tends to popular the market in the Mexican-style. 

I was amped and then I couldn’t get my greedy little grubbins on them without some major ordeals...and I noticed the word “onion” in the ingredients, which always gives me pause. I also had a number of other sauces in that style ahead of it, so I backburnered these until that fabled “someday,” but always intended to get to at least some of them. I don’t recall this one specifically, but when I saw it on the grocery store shelf where I normally shop, I figured I’d pick it up right then before they changed their minds.

As it turned out, I had recently gone through another sauce, which will be coming AFTER this both on the blog and in the video series, because that’s how I’m rolling I guess, and it was a bit more on the savory side. I had a really neat video idea in mind, but it needed the sauce to be somewhat sweeter, which this one kind of is. It definitely calls to mind both churrascos, where they do the grilled pineapple on a trompo, but even more where it might go with an al pastor type setting, or possibly chicken done in that way rather than pork. So, it didn’t quite work as I had in mind with that dish and I’m still searching, but this is overall a quite nice sauce. 

Unusual for sauces with pineapple, the Habaneros come in front of the pineapple and there is a quite forward amount of that flavor as well as some of those al pastor leanings.  Pineapple is present, to be sure, but it is a very different take on the style and probably not meant at all to live in the space where those other more fruit-forward ones we’re more familiar with does. This one does at least have a nicely appreciable degree of heat, but it’s none too much. I don’t mind this, but with the lean away from those others, this also is something I’m not sure is going to work overly great on pizza, though I am willing to try...which I will also do at some point.

Bottom line: Very lovely and intriguing sauce from El Yucateco and a bit of a surprise as well. Definitely think of this one more in that al pastor vein rather than a fruit-based sweet hot, but where it works, it works extremely well. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

Mythical Meats Dragon's Breath Hot Sauce Review

Mythical Meats Dragon’s Breath

This will (probably) be the shortest full review on the blog. This is the third (and almost certainly) final of the Mythical Meats hot sauces I do from them, this one another I got from Amazon. Because of that facet, I was not aware the sauces were produced by Torchbearer, which is indicated directly on the label of this one. From the Mythical Meats website, this is a relabel of the Garlic Reaper, which I reviewed here: https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2021/05/torchbearer-garlic-reaper-hot-sauce.html

Unlike the other two, which were slightly different from what I remembered of their Torchbearer counterparts, probably due to a batch variation, this one is exactly how I remembered the Garlic Reaper and any commentary I might make has been already covered in that review, which I will not repeat.

Bottom line: This is a relabel of the Torchbearer Garlic Reaper. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 4
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 3