hungryboy The Strawberry Donut Hot Sauce Review

hungryboy The Strawberry Donut

Let me start off this review by noting that I am not a fan of strawberry frosted donuts and never have been. I don't love donuts generally and also never have and am not particularly a sweets person. Frosting is one of those things I would rather not at all be on things like brownies and I have never been, for the life of me, able to figure out why anyone else does or would want that tarnishing the actual dessert-ish item.

Sure, that's great and all, but this is a hot sauce we're talking about, right? Right? Yes, however, it is very pointedly aimed at strawberry frosted donuts, which should come as no surprise given the name, and it does a great job of recreating those flavor notes as a base. This is not a positive for me, particularly, however, if this were meant as a dessert hot sauce, then fine...except I'm not sure it is. There is way too much of a vinegar forward aspect to it to work in that setting. It's not to the point of the Radscorpion, reviewed earlier in these pages, wherein it makes it sour, but I cannot fathom why they decided to attempt this. I will note that they were quite successful in that attempt and one can definitely get the notes of strawberry and strawberry frosting for the donuts.

There is also red Habanero here, along with Jalapeno, but the heat is quite moderate. The problem for me is that fairly closely recreating a flavor profile I'm not so in love with isn't exactly a positive and I don't know where to pair this. I don't love strawberries on chicken tendies so much, though that's probably where the remaining sauce I have here will go, but less so once it tries to be strawberry donut frosting also. It is too astringent to work well as a dessert sauce, so as a standalone, it's pretty lost as fair as pairings. Interestingly also, the initial open tasted more like a regular strawberry dessert sauce, a number of which I've done in these pages. As I got further into the bottle, though, the more it moved away from that and also the less I started enjoying it. I can't think of any other sauce that has done that, so I suppose it's nice I can still come across the unexpected.

Bottom line: It's not a sauce for me, but if you like the idea of strawberry donut frosting used as a base for a hot sauce, this is probably well worth a go.

 Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2