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