Salsitas Mendoza Hell Fire Hot Sauce Review

Salsitas Mendoza Hell Fire Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wp7oR4usa8Y
 

I'm almost tempted to do this review in the form of suggestions. This definitely feels a lot like a fairly ground level operation that is starting to try to expand the gamut a bit, doing farmer's markets, sourcing local product, all the stuff that makes you want to root for a company. The focus, clearly, is on salsas, and most of their product comes in much larger, metal screw-on lidded jars. Their website does not have any product information on it, and has a slightly unfinished feel to it, so I'm not sure what is in it, precisely, but I have yet to see any of those jars of product not have onions in it (save for one particular Kroger product), and that sort of thing is a bit beyond the confines of what I would consider "hot sauce," and hence this blog.

As to this product...I get the desire to have a hotter Mexican-style table sauce. Most of them, particularly the commercial ones, are woefully lacking in this department. Partially, I think this is customer driven, as there are sometimes some fairly complex spice balances in play and over-adding too much can tend to diminish returns fairly readily. I think people also like heat on this type of food, but of a fairly moderate variety. The hottest pepper I've seen added to this style is the Ghost Pepper, and when done with care and judiciously, that can work quite well.

In a few ways, this reminds me of El Yucateco Red, particularly in terms of how the heat reads as an immediate flash heat, though I don't think the sauce overall has quite that kind of polish. This one is far harsher and abrasive, with a fairly prominent bitter tinge that I don't care for. I suspect this is due to stepping on the sauce with various powdered ingredients. Using powders and other concentrates is somewhat of an art, in any style cooking, and if you don't give it some time to gel and mesh, the full effect may not be known, which can prompt an impatience chef to add more to try to get to a desired taste.

I also note that this bottle used a fairly tough shrink plastic to keep the cap on, which is sort of a nuisance, but not the end of the world. Of far greater concern was the bottle being full literally to the cap when I opened it. I managed not to accidentally spill any of it, but wound up having to pour out a certain amount of the neck in order to create enough space to agitate it properly, given that it had separated in the bottle. If you're going to fill to the top, there needs to be an emulsifier or some other agent to hold ingredient suspension, though even then, I would say there is little reason to actually do that. The company seems very devoted to fresh ingredients, so the use of emulsifiers or preservatives is likely not happening.

My final piece of commentary is on the name of the sauce itself. Hell Fire, Hell, Hellfire, et. al. are in fairly steady usage already in the market place. Having customers look for something called by any of those names is certain to lead to brand confusion. The sauce is also nowhere near hot enough for that moniker, realistically, so I'd suggest a name change in the near future.

Bottom line: Very hearty stab at a more picante Mexican style table sauce, but one that I also find still needs refinement before I would consider buying again, let alone keeping at hand.


Breakdown:

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


Overall: 3

Diablo (Scorpion) Pepper Sauce Review

Cactus Candy Company Diablo (Scorpion) Pepper Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXGbtjR6VSM

Much like the Lola's sauces, I get the impression we're dealing here with another base sauce, that then has whatever other pepper added to it. In some respects, it's not altogether a bad idea. You come up with a solid base sauce and then modify it with various super hots to get different flavor profiles. However, like as in many, many other areas of life, the theory is better than the reality. Execution is really what is going to make or break this concept and with both of the sauces, this and the Lola's, it is broken by poor execution. I get that you need to have a recipe that can be scaled up to fit into a heavy production setting and, unquestionably, it is harder to do that than maybe any other aspect, which is why we see so few national commercial (i.e. grocery stores, Wal-Mart, etc.) hot sauces of merit.

For this one, having a base sauce is fine. It is the same one as the Jalapeno styling from this company I reviewed earlier and either it hits or doesn't. It did not, at all, resonate with me, but generally, with the base sauce, you have your spice load in place and then just add a single different component. What happened here is that they added the single component, which was itself a product of multiple components, meaning the Scorpion pepper mash, which was the Scorps + salt, etc. The result was an acceleration of salt, to the point where this sauce immediately oversalts whatever one puts it on. This effect is slightly less noticeable on Mexican style food and pizzas, but in any instance where there are not other flavors for it to meld with (or to make that aspect somewhat), it's immediately noticeable and has the effect of diminishing returns.

Honestly, it's a bit of a shame, as adding the Scorpion element improved this sauce notably. With a relatively tame sauce like this, one can taste the somewhat flowery notes of the Scorpion readily, without needing to worry about excessive mouth burn. Not really useful for myself and other chileheads, but for "normals", this is a good way to experience the flavor profile and a small modicum of the attendant heat, which shows up here mostly in shadow form. However, with it wrecking half of the food it is used on and not, overall, being an especially wonderful-tasting sauce, the oversalty aspect is one I can't ignore and this is another that will be binned immediately after the video support is filmed.

Bottom line: If you have a fondness for salty sauces and want to get a good read on the flavor (without much of the heat) of Scorpion peppers (or want to introduce a non-chilehead to that profile), worth considering.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 1


Overall: 2

2K20 Q2 Update

2K20 Q2 Update

Super huge update, pack a lunch and let’s get to it.

From the last update, I resolved the filming issue for the Fundamentals of Heat video series on YouTube, which you can check out by clicking on any of the links in the Table Of Contents here for any sauces that have a video available. The plan to steadily shoot enough on weekends only to keep ahead is working well. As of this write-up, August and part of September is in the can.

I had to get a bit rangey (even though that took some slumming, dipping even as low as Takis)  to keep things at 2 posts a week, but I’m good through probably October at this point, maybe beyond a bit.  The non-sauce stuff was always meant to be temporary, but I want to keep it rolling as long as I can because those videos are pretty fun to tod. I do have some good sources for other snacks that I’ve recently discovered, so it will be a while before I have to move to every other week on those. I also have thought of a new series, though I think more likely that won’t start until 2021. Still undecided and need to work out the formatting a bit more in my head. As to sauces specifically, I now have enough waiting on the shelf that I will not be able to film them all this year (written review, maybe, but probably not).

I now have 4 separate playlists available in the FOH video series as well, to try to make it a bit easier to digest. I have added all of those playlists to the blog, as well, in another side widget.

I’ve been pretty pleased with this year so far, specific to sauces, the blog and videos only. Obviously, this is a very difficult and stressful year otherwise... For sauces, so far, I’ve had the best Asian-style sweet, the best Cajun, and the best mustard ever, which is pretty nutty when I think about it, considering how long I’ve been eating hot sauces, mustards even longer. The video series is definitely doing an ace job of driving posts for the blog and I’m hopeful it will grow in its own right. If you have not checked it out, please do so.

As of right now, speaking to the blog, I’m beyond the total amount of posts for all of 2018 (15) & 2016 (19) and tied now with last year, 2019 (20). The next ones are 2012 (21), 2014 & 2017, both with 23, and I fully expect to surpass those before end of Q3 this year. That would put us in range of 2015 (32). I think that one is also somewhat likely to fall, but I doubt we will approach the high point of 2013 (52). I will get into the whys of this a bit more in the end of the year recap.

I also have 4 SOTY contenders right now (Private Selection Calabrian, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper, if you haven’t ready them yet and are interested in checking them out), which is a great relief to me, as the last few years it has been nearly right down to the wire. Of those, Calabrian was eaten the fastest, Death By Kraken packed the biggest wallop and the Sweet Ghost Pepper is, by far, the best-tasting). I have also solved a mystery here in Q2, which was also kind of fun and cool to take a bit of a trip down through history.

Obviously, one of the side effects of the COVID-19 measures is that I have a far greater deal of time at home now, so I’m able to bank videos into the future. I don’t do that at all with the blog, but the sauce videos, especially for the new sauces, take much longer to film, since I have to actually do all the testing for the blog post well before I consider shooting a single frame for the videos. With the non-food stuff, I can generally just open a bag or box or can or whatever and dig right in. They have their own challenge with availability, though, as there are a lot more hot sauces than there are packaged spicy foods.

That aside, one of the things I’ve been trying to focus on, once it became clear that I was going to have some struggles coming up with all of the previous SOTY winners, is to work through a lot of those Hot Ones sauces. My tentative goal right now is to get all 4 of the first seasons (for the sauces that I will consider doing, that is) in the can by the end of the year. If I can do more, of course, I will, but that is the soft goal. Along with that, as many SOTYs as possible, and any Standbys I haven’t done. I’ve gone through all of the sauces Roger (Burn Your Tongue - find him on Facebook and show him some love) shot my way, along with a number of back catalog stuff and some newer ones that looked interesting. Of the SOTY winners, I have done videos for 3 and 3 are discontinued. This leaves 2 that I need to obtain in order to film.

As to those Standbys, once I have the SOTYs done, the Standbys will also be done. I’m not going to bother chasing down the Emeritus sauces, unless there’s a significant demand. I have also revised my Standby list as well. Barring anything unforeseen, I should be able to get all of the SOTYs and Standbys done by end of the year, and put a healthy dent into the sauces for The Hot Ones that I want to get to.

Speaking of the Hot Ones, the list for Season 12 has been posted and I have updated that TOC page with the new info...so, 12 seasons, 10 sauces a season is 120 sauces...except there are many, many repeats. Deleting the repeats gives us 87 individual sauces. However, there are some discontinued/limited edition items on there also. Removing those puts us at 84. Still a solid amount, a good respectable number. I have waived my extract exclusion for this series, but the onions ban is still in place. Ejecting those gives us 50 possible sauces. I have reviewed 15 already, which leaves us 35 to go to get this covered. Interestingly, I have not reviewed a sauce that appears past Season 5. I do want to note that the Hot Ones sauces, especially in the later seasons, tend to be more expensive than everything else out there, even beyond the Hot Ones branded flavors that are only available via Heatonist, which curbs my interest a bit. I don’t know if this is because of some kickback arrangement with the sauce companies and First We Feast, but I get a little balky at anything past $10/bottle (assuming 5 oz. bottle), unless the sauce has some super exotic ingredient, like truffles. Many of those sauces are $14/bottle and higher, which lowers their priority for me significantly and, if I’m being honest, will also tend to impact their Enjoyment To Dollar Factor rating...

You got a little bit there in that preceding paragraph, but I’ve really been trying to compile data, both because I have, like a lot of everyone these days, some goodly amounts of time on my hands, and because I’m somewhat of a data junkie (one of my soft goals is also to get an average rating), but also because it helps me to get an idea for future projection. I’ve added a few new pictures (and am getting closer to the point where nearly everything that I can add pictures to on the blog now has pictures) and started chopping out titles from the list that are no longer produced, such as the Zakk Wylde stuff and the Bad Brains sauce. There are a number of others that were evidently limited editions, now gone, so I will never be able to get to 100%. One hot sauce company, Wicked Cactus, sadly is shuttered entirely. By having an idea of how many I can possibly get, that will give me an idea of how long into 2021 I can extend the weekly video thing. There are also a number of sauces that have been reformulated in a way that will cause me to exclude them from future consideration and a number I intensely disliked and probably will not be bothering with at all, since I’m not going to re-buy sauces for the purpose of a single video (unless this somehow wildly takes off and I can do it professionally). 

As of right now, I have 183 full reviews on the blog, which puts me well over 200, if you count the mini-reviews. 200 full reviews is do-able for 2020, but unlikely, as I also have some back catalog stuff to get in there for the blog/FOH tie-in. There will not be videos for everything or probably even close to it, but I’d be pretty content at around 50% or so, at least of the full reviews, which also won’t happen this year.  I will probably re-compile everything sometime in Q3, when I start working on 2021. Check back for the quarterly update then, if you’re interested in this.

Hopefully you’ve all been enjoying the new stuff as I try to branch out a bit more. I will say it is a great load of fun to do and I’m enjoying myself immensely producing this content. Of course, if you have any suggestions on anything you could care to see in the world of spicy foods, drop me a line and I’ll definitely try to get to it.   

Inner Beauty Hot Sauce Review

Inner Beauty Hot Sauce

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bmTSUNOooKo

I should start this one off by noting right away that this is not so much to me what I would call a hot sauce, as much as it is a sweeter, pour-able dijon style mustard. The label calls itself a hot sauce, though, and that's what I try to go by when reviewing entries, but I don't consider it a hot sauce, per se. For heat, it relies on the wonderful Scotch Bonnet and I was kind of hoping it would be similar to the Bad Brains hot sauce kicking around a few years back. It wasn't quite hot sauce in that direction or to that level, instead definitely far more learning hard in the direction of mustard. It reminded me at times of that old favorite, as well as at times a nice honey mustard, though not heavy enough on the honey there for my taste. I eventually modified that with some raw honey and was well-pleased with the results.

This is also one of my more thoroughly, perhaps even somewhat exhaustively, tested sauces, as the flavor I loved instantly. I would not hesitate to call this perhaps the best mustard I've had. There was some minor suspension issue and the top of the bottle definitely was a bit different than the rest, once I got into it a bit enough to agitate, but all of it was great. Heat is relatively minor, as these things go, but, like Louisiana-style sauces, I don't necessarily want a whole ton of heat to go with them. It also comes in a flask, which I like quite a bit, as a rule (I don't know why, exactly, but I do).

The big question for me was whether or not this was going to fit into the SOTY criteria and that's not an easy answer. Mustards are a bit limited in what I like them on and dijons a bit narrower still. I had a couple of easy 10s in flavor and value, but heat as a 3 is about right. How then, could I conceivably get this into that higher echelon? The best mustard ever surely must belong in a conversation about SOTY? Right? But the best Cajun style sauce I had (also this year) missed the cut also. It brings back to why I have the categories I do. Getting near SOTY should not be an easy thing. It should be hard. It should be a trial.

But I loved this sauce, so much so that I tried it on everything in the vain hope that I could realistically give it a higher flexibility rating. Mustard on pizza...not a good idea normally, here, two flavors I liked separate, and together, just tasted like two separate flavors I liked in my mouth at once. On chicken strips, it was ok, but not sweet enough (hence my addition of raw honey). for my taste. Where it really excelled was on sandwiches and I came up with a variety of sandwiches, including hot ones, like hamburgers, to test this. I almost never have hot sauce on a cold sandwich, but here, this sauce excelled in an application that nearly no other sauce has or is likely to do in future. That has to mean something...but alas, I can't, in good conscience, given it enough of a nudge to get into the running for this year. Still a great mustard and if you love Scotch Bonnets in a mustard style sauce, or dijon mustard in general, this one will make you quite happy.

Bottom line: Best mustard I've ever had, and as a hot sauce, the best mustard I've ever had. Outstanding.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 10
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10


Overall: 7

Hotter Than El Ragin' Cajun Hot Sauce Review

Hotter Than El Gator Jake's Ragin' Cajun Hot Sauce

Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nlf0Yc_uJcw

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

Quite a mouthful to say the full name of this sauce, but digging into it, quite a mouthful in each bite as well. It always amazes me that certain saucemakers are able to pack so much flavor in such a scant few ingredients. This is yet another one, something that takes great skill and which I am here to applaud. I notice also on the black neck wrap of the bottle a sticker with "WINNER 2018 Fiery Food Challenge". This refers to the Zest Fest of that year, but in looking through the list, I see this came in 3rd in the Louisiana-style category, which suggests the #1 and #2 respectively must have been some kind of fantastic.

I will get to the sauce shortly, but I can't leave without addressing a minor issue I have, which is not really helped by entities who know better perpetuating things. Take, for example, the Zest Fest itself. This was put in the Louisiana-style category, which is fine, if that's the closest you can get, but the full list for 2018 was 3 pages, just for the contests and top 3 finishers. If you can have a Louisiana style, you can have a Cajun (categories for any festival I might be deciding, incidentally, would be quite a bit more extensive) as well. Less so online, but when I talk to people about this whole hot sauce thing, which happens frequently, once they find out that I'm one of those weirdos who likes to light their mouth on fire, there is a lot of confusion about Cajun vs. Louisiana-style. I think this can largely be summed up in one ingredient: garlic. A good Louisiana-style sauce needs 3 things: Cayenne, vinegar, salt. Any other flavor components will tend to detract from the glory of the Cayenne, which should stand alone to better shine. With Cajun, there is a much wider range of potential ingredients, but every good Cajun sauce will have garlic. I realize I sound like a hot sauce sommelier, but one of the fun things about having a blog is that I can just redirect people here rather than explaining all of this to them when they equate Cajun to Louisiana-style. Similarities, sure, but identical. Nay, I say. Nay.

That aside, despite all the turmoil of 2020, I have to observe, from a purely chilehead perspective, that I've happily had experienced, for me, the best sweet Asian-style sauce (Mikey V's Sweet Ghost) and now, to my mind (and tongue) the best Cajun sauce. Most Cajun sauces tend to pound one half to death with garlic. I love garlic and have been known to roast several bulbs in the oven (with a little olive oil and kosher salt, natch - I'm no savage), to eat the cloves as another might candy, but with granulated, a little goes a very long way and too much and it will wind up stepping all over everything else. Here, the very delicate tightrope is handled very deftly, in that it is still present, but is not the overriding characteristic, but another supporting player. Exceedingly well-blended and crafted, this is by far the best example of a Cajun sauce I can think of.

So, I hear some of you saying, where and why do I use that in place of Louisiana-style, which is a valid question or maybe questions? Again, we look at the garlic. Where would we be without garlic in the sauce of a pizza? Nowhere. So, in places where garlic is a natural fit, pizza, nearly all pasta dishes, garlic burgers, maybe in a pinch Mexican food, and so on. Where it fails is in heavy cream sauces or cheese sauces, such as mac & cheese or a ham & cheese sandwich. To me, the Cayenne winds up fading a bit and I'm left with much more garlic than I would prefer. In the past, I would not consider keeping both sauces at hand, but I will say this one has opened my eyes a bit, rather than making Louisiana-style do full duty on nearly everything.

If there is a slightly shortcoming, heat, as is usual for this and the Louisiana-style, is a bit on the light side, meaning there is precious little of it. If you're a chilehead looking for your heat fix, this isn't going to help much. If you're looking for flavor, though, you won't go wrong. 

Bottom line: If you're not familiar with Cajun style sauce, start here. If you are familiar with the style, but have not had this particular one, also start here. A true stem to stern fundamentally great sauce.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 8
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 9


Overall: 7

Lola's Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Lola's Fine Hot Sauce Ghost Pepper

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvx4-ERbON0

 I don't usually start off reviews this way, but I strongly encourage you to read the Lola's Original review prior to reading this.

What I think we have here is a sauce manufacturer coming up with a base sauce and then substituting in various super hots for the heat element. This naturally also alters the flavor a bit as well. In this case, it improved the heat slightly and the flavor a bit more. It still does not work particularly well on Mexican foods, and generally follows the same applications as mentioned in the Lola's Original review. It did fail as well, pretty considerably, on mac & cheese, but did fare fairly well as a chicken strip dipping sauce.

It does not really strike me as flexible enough, though and only 2 of the four criteria I have really moved. There is still precious little heat here (I'm reluctant to give it the full bump to a 2, as it is more between a 1 and 2), and the Jolokias have been considerably restricted and tamed here. The sauce flow problem also persists a bit with this one, but oversaucing will just create flavor issues, rather than any heat problems.

Bottom line: Markedly better in flavor (and slightly hotter) than the Original, it is still a far cry from the "everyday" sauce it claims and ostensibly tries to be.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Grace Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce

Grace Scotch Bonnet Hot Pepper Sauce

A while back, I reviewed another of the Grace products, their sort of generically-named "Hot Pepper Sauce," which you can access via the TOC, if you want to read that review. It was a pretty positive review. Scotch Bonnet are also a pepper that has my immediate interest, if I come across it. It is often paired with onions, so I don't enjoy it in sauces as much as I like, but like fire-roasted anything, if I see it, I'm immediately interested.

With those two things going for it, this should have been an easy slam dunk, but instead, a sauce I was greatly looking forward to enjoying turned out as one of the worst things I've ever put in my mouth. I have no idea where it went wrong, but fighting back a gag reflex to smell, let alone eat, the sauce, is several bridges too far. Even if it wrecks my streak of filming a video for every sauce in 2020, that streak ends here as this sauce is unusable. From my attempts, it does have an ok heat factor, but the flavor (and odor) is noxious. Maybe the sauce went bad, I don't know, but it comes out with the thickness of gravy and is repulsive. I had harbored, for a bit, the thought that I could mix it in with something, but even that failed, and then wrecked what I was attempting it with. That, naturally, was the final straw and my disappointment is great.

Bottom line: I have no idea who would conceivably enjoy this, but it wasn't miss. An offensive waste of good Scotch Bonnet peppers.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: -8
            Flexibility: 0
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 0

Mikey V's Sweet Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce Review

Mikey V's Sweet Ghost Pepper Sauce - [TSAAF Sauce Of The Year 2020]

UPDATE: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK4sWES9-xA

This is one of those few sauces that I feel fortunate to have stumbled across. It is easily the best sweet-hot Asian style sauce I've ever had, very deftly combining stunning flavor with a very pleasant amount of heat, definitely more substantial than Zenso or any of the other sauces in that vein, but not so hot as to overshadow the tremendous flavor. Though it has been since surpassed as reigning SHU champ, the Jolokias and I seem to get along very well and there are not very many sauces that come to mind with it as the main heat driver that I haven't like and quite a number where I found it to be a vast improvement, such as this one. It definitely works very well in Asian style sauces and I again find myself surprised there are not more of those floating around. In many respects, this is a lot like the Pure Death in that the sauce itself is so good, I have trouble finding things it doesn't go well with, aside from things I dislike sweet in, such as ramen or Mexican food.

That leaves a pretty solid myriad of choices, though. It works fantastically on meats, with cheeses. It even works in a PB & J sandwich or as a dipping sauce or on pizza. Where it shines, of course, is where you would naturally use it, in various Asian dishes. I didn't love it on a few of those things, but it wasn't awful or inedible, but more unusual in a way that made me think it was an interesting experiment, but would be a waste of sauce to continue along that path.

Heat-wise, it definitely blows everything else in that style out of the water, but the very thick nature of it does some odd things to the consistency of heat. No change to that stellar flavor, but I'd find pockets where the heat was a very robust warmth, much past anything else out there, and a few places where it was more similar to the other sauces, wherein the heat is minimal. No agitation would change that and it wasn't a huge bother, just more something to observe. There are also a lot of largish particulates suspended in the sauce, besides the usual red pepper and pepper seeds, which is again not a bother for me, but bears noting.

Bottom line: Easily the best of the Asian style sweet-hot sauces I've had and the new peak of what that kind of sauce can be at its finest. It is also not only another candidate for SOTY, but is now the new frontrunner.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8

Lola's Original Hot Sauce Review

Lola's Fine Hot Sauce Original

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8Afeq2AoXI

Since Roger has brought back Burn Your Tongue, I do this a lot less, but still like to cruise the sauce aisles at grocery stores every once in a while, partly to see what's new and partly because so many of them stock sauces in such a seeming random and haphazard fashion, it's easy to miss things you may not have noticed and "new" stuff will be uncovered during an aisle shuffle. This particular sauce was one such find and the store had four of their entries (out of 6 for the full line) and all of them were on sale, so nothing ventured, always need new content, etc. etc.

The sauce is...curious. The ingredient panel seemed to me, with its leading of both Jalapeno and Habanero, to be taking aim at a Mexican style sauce, also borne out by the addition of lime. The flavor is somewhat more vinegar-forward than other sauces of that type, so I hopped on the website. There is a short video about the company, apparently out of Des Moines, Iowa, and the story itself is: daughter gets family recipe (and some sauce) from mother, makes some herself, takes to work, everyone wants to buy it, makes more for a Farmer's Market, everyone also loves it and wants to buy it and then the feel-good story hits the road until it winds up on a grocery store shelf 4 states away in Utah. The labels are also very slick and professional, which sort of works against the homegrown feel they're aiming for here.

One of the curious things about all of the sauces in the line (I also have the Ghost, Trinidad Scorpion and Reaper versions - reviews coming in the future) is that they all tend to separate. There is a huge problem with this, actually, as every single use requires agitation. Most chileheads do this by rote anyway, but this is a necessity here and sometimes, you will need to re-agitate during usage. Also, despite this having Habanero as the second listed ingredient (which I'm honestly a bit inclined to doubt), there is very little heat here.

Where I was going with this diversion is that I went to the website to try and figure out what market they were angling towards and this was painted as more of an everyday sauce, that is flexible enough to go with anything. Indeed, a lot of the typical Mexican spices, such as Chile Arbol or cumin, are not present here and this doesn't particularly lend itself well to Mexican style foods. I tried it on a couple and one one, that did have those ingredients, it was pretty solid, but on another, which as plainer, it landed with kind of a thud. As I got into the sauce, it grew increasingly garlic-heavy, with a preponderance on a taste that was most reminiscent of the granulated variety. It's probably a bit much to expect it to be fresh garlic, as the site proclaims, in what is clearly a mass-produced sauce, but concentrated garlic can get away from you. Here, this turns into much more of a garlic sauce than a hot sauce.

That aspect worked well, then, with things where you'd want a healthy blast of garlic, such as on pizza, for instance, but far less well on something like mac & cheese. I also tried it on a breakfast sandwich, which nearly made me want to toss the entire sandwich (which was Canadian Bacon, American cheese, a hash brown and an over-hard egg on English muffin) across the room. I think overall them trying to make this more flexible sort of works against it, as the sauce does not really have an identity nor does it have a good enough flavor to really stand on its own. This is one that really relies on ability to blend in with the food, that food item also needing to be able to somewhat absorb and meld well with intense garlic.

Bottom line: If you don't enjoy a strong garlic flavor, this is a good one to avoid. Flavor is curious and the lime is used well, but the sauce overall is without an identity and ultimately somewhat forgettable.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

TryMe Cajun Sunshine Hot Sauce Review

TryMe Cajun Sunshine Hot Pepper Sauce

UPDATE 1: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EdoMUPJi-M 

UPDATE 2: Received a response from Reilly Foods. The sauces (see below) are identical and contain different labeling specific to various regions, where one name sells better than the other.  This confirms some of the speculation I indulge in both reviews, and in the video for this sauce.


For a good, long time, I passed this by, in favor of other Louisiana-style sauces. Even once I became more familiar with (brother? clone?) the other entry from TryMe in this market, the Tennessee Sunshine sauce, I still skipped this one, as my preference is nearly always towards a Louisiana-style sauces over a Cajun style, for reasons I have outlined frequently in the various reviews, but will touch on by noting that the Cajun styles tend to feature a lot more spices, garlic and so on, which I find unnecessary at best.

Anyway, I forgot about my apprehensions when poking around and picked this bottle up. It's funny, the naming of the Tennessee sauce was something I found confusing, even back then, along with the seeming duplication. Once I finally cracked open the bottle, things got a lot more confusing. Consistency was similar and since I had an already opened bottle of the Tennessee that I got for the FOH video of that, I was able to compare them head-to-head. There may be a slight difference in viscosity, but it is very hard to detect (will get into this more in the video for this sauce). Looking into it more, it appeared to be  identical to the Tennessee sauce, all the way down to the ingredient panel, even the label copy. The main difference, apparently, was the name. Hmmmmm.

Both are still available on the website, at an identical price point, which leads me to wondering why the company would want such duplication in the line. Answering that question, along with why an obvious Louisiana-styled sauce would be called Tennessee, led me on a quest. I called up Detective Google and tried to unravel this mystery. Tennessee Sunshine, at least at one time, was made in Knoxville, which probably answers that, but why the duplication? Were they making identical sauces in two different states? If so, to what end? Is it so markets that wanted Cajun would just buy that? Was it for people who hated Tennessee? The search led me to a campaign from the state of Louisiana against "counterfeit Cajun," as they evidently take that word very seriously down that way. I was not able to find any sort of definitive answer, I must say, so wrote to Reily Foods, who now own the TryMe line, to see what response I am able to get. I will put any answer from them in either the video or update this review (see above).

For now, let's turn to the sauce. All what I said in the Tennessee Sunshine review applies here. One of these is a clone of the other, as far as I'm able to determine, though I don't know which is which. Neither I would call an actual Cajun sauce, with the ingredients being Cayenne pepper (including bits of it in the actual sauce), vinegar and salt. Both also have vegetable gum, but that's an emulsifier/suspension agent and irrelevant to flavor. The flavor of both is quite good, though there is precious little heat. Both make outstanding demonstrations of a Louisiana-style sauce and if you're looking for the epitome of what that kind of sauce should taste like, this is a good way to be introduced, given that it does not carry as much of the harshness, as something like Crystal does. I will say that I don't prefer the bits of pepper in it, though, and wish they'd strain it before bottling, but a minor quibble overall.

Bottom line: Like line-up mate Tennessee Sunshine, this is an excellent tasting entry into the Louisiana-style, but with a lower heat than I prefer, not anything I would keep at hand. Great in a pinch or for an introduction to the style.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6