Splintered Jazz Berry Hot Sauce Review

Splintered Jazz Berry

I didn’t look at the labels too closely when I picked up the four sauces from Splintered, just doing the main check to make sure they didn’t have onions or onion-derivatives. Yes, there was onion powder, but that can go either way, depending on how much is used and so I figured I’d take a calculated chance, given that the idea of pairing Carolina Reaper with the various fruits could be very interesting. It was certainly unusual in that this is not something I often saw.

What I didn’t realize was that they have a framework, a flavor platform of sorts, in which they have a sort of base, including the mighty, mighty Reapers, but also Jalapeno, as well as the more usual vinegar and salt, but also including curious components for a fruit-based sauce, such as the aforementioned onion powder, as well as garlic. It appears that they then will just change out the fruit ingredient, be it pineapple or blueberry or here, raspberry. I don’t believe this is a direction I would personally take, but I do understand having a format, and so figured it would be interesting to see what they did with the various fruits in the context of that base, as sort of a control group.

While I didn’t like the pineapple (reviewed elsewhere here) especially, I think the raspberry works much better. There is a vibrancy to the flavor, which suggest to me that they most probably used fresh raspberries. Leaning a bit harder towards the savory side with those ingredients also meant that they might gain a bit as far as pairing with meats, but would also likely lose when it came time to pair with sweeter items, such as ice cream. I don’t know of a world in which garlic and onion would be good in ice cream, but can say definitively it is not this one...at least not for me.

Like the pineapple before it, heat is pretty moderate. Every so often, a trace of the Reaper flavor will show up and I will say I did find a lot of enjoyment playing around with this sauce, to see how flavor cancellation would go, depending on the pairings. I found it pretty pointless to use on sweeter foods, where I might normally use a more desserty raspberry hot sauce, but did find it lovely on chicken tendies, where I don’t like the more desserty sauces. It was, as expected, wonderful on burgers and I liked it quite a bit on pork chops also, though I must needs give some credit to the salt/pepper blend I use on the burgers, which greatly accentuated things.

Bottom line: A sort of interesting spin on fruit in hot sauces, with this one being a lot more enjoyable, as far as I’m concerned. Well worth a spin if that’s your bag.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5 

Seed Ranch Umami Reserve Hot Sauce Review

Seed Ranch Umami Reserve

So back a bit ago, on my last BYT haul, I came away with the Umami Everyday Sauce from Seed Ranch and the other hot sauce I reviewed earlier. Because the Everyday Sauce is very strictly not a hot sauce nor meant to be one, it does not appear in these annals. There is an FOH video for that specifically, if you’re interested in checking it out. Not to spend too much time on it here, but that is one of the best sauces of any kind anyone has ever created, ever. My one admittedly minor complaint was that I should like a bit of heat. I liked that Everyday Sauce so much that I made it a priority hunt down a bottle of that Reserve post-haste.

Clearly Seed Ranch felt the same way, as they released this, which is the Umami Reserve, which does have heat, and is also meant to be in the hot sauce category. This sauce is quite unique in the world of hot sauces, given that it is basically that other sauce, with the addition of Chocolate Habaneros. There was a time when I found Habaneros to be a fairly dismal thing in general, but definitely in a sauce...until I discovered the reds generally and red Savinas particularly. Since then, I have a greater tolerance for the flavor, which I still don’t think is very good, discounting those red varietals, which I do like. Chocolate I find kind of interesting, but still too close in flavor to remind me of the Oranges and it is that flavor here which mars this sauce, respectively.

Here is where it gets tricky. Taken by itself, the sauce is still quite wonderful and from a flavor perspective, both unique and quite beyond what a lot of makers out there are doing. However, it is a variant on a different sauce and a comparison, to me, is unavoidable. It is certainly hotter than the other, which has no heat, but it also adds both the Habanero flavor and a certain bitterness I could do without. The heat is not even remotely scorching, just a nice cozy warmth to let you know it’s there, but that is the trade-off with a lot of things. Drive the heat up and flavor will tend to necessarily skid somewhat. Where I think this one does better is that it is somewhat less astringent and pungent than the everyday sauce.

With umami, it has a fairly wide variety of applications. Everything from ramen to mushrooms to most meats, particularly aged ones, will all do well with a healthy dose of either sauce. Both sauces are a joy to experiment with and to be clear, the Habanero flavor notes is very much my own personal preference. There is not a damn thing wrong with either sauce, and both have a silky smooth mouth feel and just a pleasure to use. You can’t really go wrong with picking up a bottle of either, or have the fun I did and wind up with them both.

Bottom line: While my preference for flavor is more with the Everyday Sauce, I do like the heat and lowered pungency of this one better, so in many respects, it’s a wash. Absolutely very worthy sauces that any foodie should get their hands on with all due quickness.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 6  

Hawaiian Hot T’s P.O.G.2 Hot Sauce Review

Hawaiian Hot T’s P.O.G.²

Note: This sauce appears on Season 28 of The Hot Ones.

The worst thing about this is the label and yes, it’s apparently time for me return to grousing about labels and label design. I think there is a pretty strong correlation between sauces I find favorable and me doing this, because I think it potentially works against the sauce. Here, we have a few problems. The level gap is excessively large, which makes the ingredients and nutritional information section too small. The front part, with the Ghost pepper in a ghost costume, is mostly fine. I could live without the foil, but it’s ok for all that. Then there is the section between the two I mentioned, where we have an unholy onslaught of label foil with insufficient contrast and it’s just...not great. In that text, after searing my eyes, I detected that this sauce is meant to have Scorpion in it, an ingredient which does not appear in the ingredient list. I’m certain this is an oversight and the version used here is probably powder, but it’s hard to proof-read stuff like that when the label design is so poor. Amusingly, the ingredient list on the Heatonist website and the Hawaiian Hot T’s website is completely different from my bottle, so I’m going to presume I got a wrong or incorrect label or possibly different batch. 

That aside, the important part is the sauce itself. As I’ve mentioned numerous times, I’m no fan of either Scorpion or passion fruit and I kind of went into this sauce more for coverage than any other motivator, but I was happily and quite pleasantly surprised by the sauce, which does a lot of things at once. It is a very much composite mix of the flavors and there is a nice tropical vibe from the fruits and Habs, along with every once in a while a shot of what seems like a straight cane sugar. This is a thick and somewhat pulpy sauce, so agitation can be a challenge, but if I can get hits of that cane sugar in amidst the overall atmosphere, I want that. I really like the way this sauce approaches sweetness. I can’t really pick out individual fruit flavors, but this is evidently an island drink concoction ported over into a hot sauce, so I’m thinking the blend is probably the idea.

As for heat, there is a bit of a floral note and plenty of bitter superhot notes that seem to me beyond what the Ghost would impart in the dead last ingredient slot, as it is here. It seems likely there is some Scorpion in there somewhere, maybe around where the Ghost is. This was in the 7 slot for the show and it does have an appreciable punch to it, but nothing overwhelming. With heavily tropical flavors, I think this generally works best on lighter meats, so seafoods, chicken, and pork would probably do nicely here. I haven’t tested it on all of them, but of the ones I have, I did find this quite enjoyable.

Bottom line: Definitely dig what they’re doing here and this is another enjoyable entry from the show, presuming you like tropical flavors and a good bit of punch to your sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 5  

El Yucateco Habanero & Ghost Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Habanero & Ghost

I may have mentioned it before in these pages, but I’m a long-time fan of science fiction, particularly the “Golden Age.” One of the things that writers of that era loved to do was to come up with adages, phrases meant as rules, such as Asimov’s famous (and currently ignored) “Laws Of Robotics.” In that spirit, I am considering developing my own relative to this and for the first one, it would probably be something along the lines of “There is no hot sauce where the flavor is improved by the addition of extract,” followed by the corollary of “No sauce is ever improved by the addition of extract.” You may be able to see where this review is going...

This was part of a wave of new sauces that El Yucateco put out for their 55th Anniversary celebration, if memory serves. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, but like the other one from this batch that I reviewed this year (Hab & Grilled Pineapple, see TOC link at right >>), I put it on the backburner, both because I had other sauces in that style on deck first and because of the presence of the word onion in the ingredients. There does not appear to be actual onion in this sauce, just the flavoring of, and my intolerance will allow very limited uses, such as minor amounts of powder or salt of that type, so I figured this was probably safe in that respect. Ghost and Habanero go together well, so I was kind of excited about this combination here. Ghosties are my favorite superhot and I’ve personally used these two actual peppers together. I am honestly a bit miffed at the audacity of them using the word “Ghost” in the sauce name, when there are not actual Ghosties in the mix, but extract...I get ahead of myself a bit.

In any case, the onion does not read much in the flavor of this. Initially, the sauce reminded me of amateur cooking, in which someone may want to add some dried spice or other, and not give it sufficient time to meld and cook in and integrate with the dish and you get this flavor aspect heavily reminiscent of the scent of dried spice. That is what this tasted like, which usually means that a dried ingredient was added and given insufficient time under heat to rehydrate and become part of the club. After that, however, the flavor of the extract came much more to the fore and it’s why this review stared with the paragraph it did. There is just no masking that and the only one who has come close is the Buldak Black sauce from Samyang. 

Mexi-style sauces tend to be somewhat inherently limited in application, but here, you have a sauce that has extract fire, extract flavor, with a very slight citrus and Habanero aspect to it. It is quite rough overall and not something I find enjoyable by itself. It does mix out acceptably with other milder, better-flavored taco sauces, for instance, but if you’re in the position where you have to add other stuff in it to mask the flavor, the sauce itself is largely a failure and it disappoints me to no end to type those words. 

This is easily the hottest thing El Yucateco has ever made and this is quite a bit of heat for $3 shelf price, but I can’t imagine too many users finding this satisfying, particularly in flavor. Like all extract sauces, it races immediately to whatever heat level its going to hit and stays there, which I imagine will be too much for most normies. Chileheads may like that part, even if that heat reads largely as artificial, as most extract sauces do, but there is the flavor that one has to contend with, which is decidedly not great. The best thing I’ve found for it, other than trying to mix it out with something tastier, is to use it on meats. I can’t remember the last bottle of extract hot sauce I’ve finished, but even though this is the usual 4 fl. oz. instead of 5, I’m not sure I will be getting to the bottom of this one, either. 

Bottom line: Though easily the hottest, it is also one of the more disappointing sauces from this brand. I’m not sure who would find this enjoyable and their decisions on this I find baffling. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3 

Uncle Chainsaw A Fuego Hot Sauce Review

Uncle Chainsaw A Fuego 

As a chile and garlic flavored vinegar, this one is pretty nice. The peppers show up a bit on the back end and the garlic has a nice subtlety to it, after you get past the belt of vinegar. This, however, is indicated as a hot sauce, though the website refers to it as a style called chili water. The predominant vinegar is intentional, as is the lack of suspension for the various particles. We are going to be considering and rating it here as a hot sauce, given that is the nomenclature on the bottle, which again has a lot of the heavy metal motifs that are one of my favorite things about this maker. 

One of the facets with this style is its extreme looseness and consistency, which is basically watery. The second is that it is more or less as I described as a chile and garlic flavored vinegar, but perhaps infused would be more accurate than flavored. You will wind up with a big old hit of vinegar, just a solid punchy belt right in the kisser of that pungency. There are shades of fresh garlic as well, though nowhere near as prominent and way in the back of all that is some slight heat and chile flavor. It definitely doesn’t taste bad...once the vinegar wanes a bit. 

For most of us, hot sauces are something we like to pair with various foods, but with this kind of product, it definitely needs to be incorporated as part of something else...unless that astringency slug is what you want. I think it will probably work very nicely in a dressing or for making refrigerator pickles, but that’s not really what I’m after in a hot sauce. If you want something as an ingredient to cook with, buying a hot sauce is a very expensive way of going about it. 

Taking this as a hot sauce, the issue of application is apparent. Trying to pour this frequently sees it running down the threads of the bottle and sometimes into the label. This is absolutely one in strong need of a restrictor cap, but even if it had one, I wouldn’t pair a more or less straight white vinegar with any of the foods I generally eat. I definitely have uses for this kind of thing and will use it, definitely, but as I described in the previous paragraph. 

Bottom line: Not really a hot sauce, much more a chile & garlic vinegar or “chili water” that has the wrong labeling. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 4
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 2

Overall: 2 

Pepper North Red Serrano & Reaper Hot Sauce Review

Pepper North Red Serrano & Reaper

My first (and prior to this, only) experience with Pepper North was another that arose due to a sauce being on The Hot Ones show. It was called Stargazer and is reviewed elsewhere here. I loved the idea, loved the title, as it hearkens back to a great song on one of the best rock albums ever, from one of my favorite bands, Rainbow, at a time when they were fronted by one of the all-time greats Ronnie James Dio, dearly missed still, and under the helm of the maestro Ritchie Blackmore. The sauce itself, however, did not quite live up to all of that majesty and was ok, but kept surprising me by not ever quite being as good as I thought it was or should be.

I saw this on the shelf of BYT one day, it might have been on clearance, memory no longer serves, but the first two words were Red Serrano, a pepper I have grown quite fond of. I still dislike the green Serranos, which are tragically the ones available most of the time in grocery stores, but the reds are simply phenomenal. If there was a great pepper to pair with the Reapers to sort of modify the flavor favorably, it is probably a Fresno, but if there was a slightly less great, but still entirely wonderful pod, it is definitely the red Serrano. There was some nice maple in there to boot, along with some Chipotle powder to round things out and I missed that the label called it a 9/10 Ultra Hot, so I was somewhat excited to see what the mix was here.

When I opened the bottle, it was blazing Reaper superhot bitter and not much else, which mystified me considerably. It was then that I looked at the label and ingredients and observed what I evidently had not before. So, I socked it away in the fridge door, where it sat for quite a while and I set about experimenting with it. It did nicely in nearly everything I tried it on and as the sauce level in the bottle lowered and I was able to agitate it better, a gorgeous sauce emerged, more in line with the flavor notes I was hoping for. It worked very nicely on nearly everything I put it on, everything from ramen to pizza, from mac & cheese to various meats. I’d even suspect it would do well in both an Asian food and Mexican food setting, making this one of the more flexible sauces I’ve had in a while. 

For all that, there is no getting around the fact that this is very much a superhot sauce and the mighty mighty Reapers are fully activated here. This sauce also does a nice job of building in heat, even though it’s pretty punchy out of the gate. I suspect this will be well beyond where most normies will find enjoyable or probably even tolerable, but I’d anticipate chileheads will find it fairly satisfying, particularly those who are also foodies. It’s good to have a sauce like this around as it packs a quite decent wallop without having to use a whole bunch of it. 

Bottom line: A sauce that bloomed into a surprisingly lovely, impressive sauce, a rare combination of delicious and quite roasty.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 10
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 8