Heat Hot Sauce Shop Roasted Ghost Habanero & Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Heat Hot Sauce Shop Roasted Ghost Habanero & Garlic

This is the fourth version of what is more or less the store signature sauce and I have a lot of thoughts on this, but many of them are random, such as admiring how the red of the Habaneros and Ghosties play off of the silver foil on the front of the label and the overall color scheme of said label. I like the food pairings on one of the side panels, but find the use of parentheses for the two peppers to be kind of odd and unnecessary. I also find the color of this sauce, which is lovely hue of tan or perhaps light brown with tinges of orange, to be curious, given the red of the Habanero on the label. The flavor, incidentally, is much more reminiscent of the oranges and while I'm not certain if this was a blend with reds or straight across oranges, this reads pretty strongly that they were used.

This is a very clean-tasting sauce, by which I mean there are 6 ingredients and they are all more or less allowed to stand on their own and shine. Gone, happily, is the apple cider vinegar in favor of white and the brown sugar just reads as a sort of sweetness with a bit of depth. Salt should not be detected, but given how well the various flavors are brought out, it is used nicely here. This leaves the label ingredients, the roasted Habs and garlic. I'm  not entirely for sure the Ghosties were roasted, but they definitely contribute, not so much in flavor, which is very much Habanero-dominated, but in the superhot bitter notes and an overall notable lovely smolder. Given the Ghosties, there is a notable punch here, but it will not be too greatly challenging for non-chileheads and probably not at all for chileheads. The garlic comes in at the back end, given the other far more prominent stronger flavors.

While I really liked the Paper Lantern variant (reviewed elsewhere here), tinkering with the formulation a bit has perhaps dialed down the flavor just a tish, but definitely amped up the flexibility. I had the other sauces mostly on Mexican foods, but this sauce is at home with those and breakfast foods as it is with tendies and sandwiches and beyond. This is definitely one I'm earmarking for playing around with a bit more in the coming colder months, as I think it would be lovely on fish as well. It's a medium thick sauce, so soaking in tends not really to happen so much, so pairing will be of major importance, however, it does go very nicely, as noted, with a wide variety of things. I wouldn't stir into a cream dish, say, though not because it won't go there, but moreso because it is far better elsewhere. 

Bottom line: While I do miss the notes of the red Habaneros from the other variants, this version makes up for it in being considerably more flexible and is all-around excellent. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9

Overall: 6