Mountain Man Fire-Roasted Habanero Hot Sauce

Mountain Man Fire-Roasted Habanero Hot Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLY5_GablGw

This chasing around for a Standby Mexican-style sauce can easily get out of hand with me, which is why I was happy during those times when I had a viable candidate. Somehow, I wound up back in it, again, this year and was poking around online trying to find fire-roasted Habanero, since I think I've settle on wanting that more than wanting a smoky flavor. The plan right now is to blend a couple of sauces together and the candidates I have in mind I still need to gather, but that project I plan to start maybe later this month or December...once I can get up to BYT again to collect the necessary goodies. At the time, I had that tentative plan, but also came across this when searching for fire-roasted Habanero as a hot sauce ingredient.

I had never heard of this sauce company, which comes from the mountains of...Florida. Ahem. It did not look to be an especially complex sauce and that is one of the attributes of the Irazu Fire-Roasted Habanero sauce (reviewed here elsewhere), so I thought I would give it a go, both because I had never heard of the sauce company and to just make sure I canvassed the choices a bit more thoroughly prior to moving forward with the blending process. 

The initial flavor here is the nice fire-roasted Habanero blasted with a not very palatable vinegar. It is not listed as such, label cites red wine vinegar specifically, but it reminds me a lot of an apple cider vinegar, which I dislike as a main or even strong flavor note. This is, by far the biggest weakness of this sauce, which is otherwise fine. So, we have both a bad vinegar and far too much of it, which is pretty odd for most Mexican-style sauces. If you can get past that, and you will need to find foods that are relatively strong in flavor profile (which most Mexicanesque foods are, I would suggest), this does have a very lovely heat to it, though pretty far from blazing and the fire-roasted notes are excellent. 

Bottom line: The vinegar is a shame, but otherwise this is an entry into both the fire-roasted and Mexican-style categories well worth checking out.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 3
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5

Brick & Mortars In Utah Update

It's been a good, good long time, all the way since July 2017,  since I did one of these. I really meant to get to this sooner and in fact, for a while, I was kicking around the idea of doing this yearly (feel free to click through the timeline for some of the earlier episodes). We have seen a pretty dramatic influx of spiciness to foods in 2020 (some of these I’ve done videos for in the YouTube FOH series), with a good percentage of the local grocers (Harmons, Fresh Market, Smith’s, etc.), expanding their selections notably. They still are a pretty far cry from any of the places on this list more dedicated to that specific product line, but it is nice to see the industry getting out there.

In the age of COVID-19, with businesses related to food dropping off right and left, I was a bit worried for all of these places and checked in with all of them at least once in 2020. The list is alphabetic and I will say there is a reason to go to all of them that are along the I-15 corridor, as they all have different strengths, some of those not really related to hot sauces specifically. As usual, all of them are also reviewed on my Yelp page, though I have not updated them all specifically to 2020.

Burn Your Tongue - Quilted Bear - Newgate Mall, Ogden, UT

700+ sauces. I might not need to add anything else to this, actually. This selection is intense and covers every spectrum of hot sauce you might think of, including some mustards and syrups. If you combined ALL of the shelf offerings of everyone else on this list, you’d probably break the century mark, maybe all the way to 150, but not much more. All of them. Combined. Roger, in addition to being the ambassador to spiciness, particularly with his support of the chilehead community, is also an all-around good guy and if you happen to catch him there, you’ll be treated to a great conversation about peppers, the industry, and exactly which sauce you should be taking with you, and maybe even a discount.

Grove Market - Salt Lake City, UT

This is what it sounds like, a small market servicing a deli counter that makes some of the tastiest sandwiches known to man. Everything there is in service to that, from the fresh desserts to the substantial drink selection to the snacks and so on. There is one neck-high shelving unit that is dedicated to the sauces, but in that area is probably a good 50 or 60 different types, some of which I’ve seen nowhere else. Selection here is a pretty far cry from BYT, but still enough for 2nd.

Pepper Palace - Park City, UT

Hot on the heels of that, though, is Pepper Palace. This is dedicated to the Pepper Palace line, aside from some of the extraneous stuff they lifted from Pirate O’s, such as dried insects. This place has t-shirts and other novelty junk, some meat snacks, some BBQ sauces, some wing sauces, some salsas, a lot of dried stuff, rubs, etc, some pickled stuff. In fact, most of the floor and shelf space is dedicated to things other than hot sauces. For those sauces, which I did not pick up, as I was not in serious need and literally nothing enticed me, even after a good half hour of time spent checking out the wares, there is a lot of duplication, which suggested that there are, despite 40 - 50 labeled sauces, maybe half that number of actual sauces. It also suggests a base, which always strikes me as kind of a dangerous proposition. I have heard rumblings that they like to pick off other sauces, reverse engineer them and release as their own, but I cannot verify. I didn’t see a ton of things that struck me as exact copies, but more than a few things that seemed more intended as analogues to other sauces. For a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that I hate Park City (it is about the same distance from me as Pirate O’s and I’ve been to Pepper Palace exactly once ever), this is pretty low on my list of things to get to, though I did find enough stuff that I’m vaguely interested in that I might try some of it in 2021, if I ever managed to free up shelf space.

Pirate O's - Draper, UT

More of a Euro/quasi-Scandinavian import store than anything else, though they extend the range a bit more each time I come in. The owner seems somewhat of a chilehead, and is also another good guy that I’ve enjoyed chatting with about sauces, but a couple of shelving units along the back wall means he’s deferring to other stuff that probably sells better and is more profitable, though selection has been better this year than at other times in the past. Even still, this one has a single digit (probably a low single digit) percentage of the available retail space dedicated to hot sauces and spicy stuff overall, but there are some gems here that I also don’t seem to run across anywhere else. This is well worth keeping tabs on, but moreso for the FOH series rather than the blog these days. I’d put this one closer to a tie with Grove, just depending on my mood on a given day, but will also not that I have a soft spot for it, as it gamely tried to provide when BYT was on hiatus. I enjoy the visits here a lot, just something warm and comfortable about it, that so-called je ne sais quoi.

And...so...we conclude another breakdown. All of them along the I-15 corridor are definitely worth a visit, but as a finale to this, in my end ringing endorsement, I again note that I have ceased buying sauces online entirely, in favor of brick-and-mortars, and that is largely due to BYT, which remains my overall favorite.

Inferno Farms Pineapple XXXpress Hot Sauce Review

 Inferno Farms Pineapple XXXpress Hot Sauce

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. .

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

It is worth noting that Inferno Farms is the company of Greg Foster, current reigning Carolina Reaper pepper eating champ. One might be tempted to think that his sauce lineup will be molten lava at every turn, particularly with the XXX (though I suppose that could be taken in a different and likely non-applicable way also) branding on this sauce, but indeed, no. He is a chef and as such, thankfully puts flavor first. To be sure, he has some hotter varieties as you go up the ladder, but not everything is meant to scorch your face off.

With this, another name in the longish list of pineapple Habanero (yes, I realize it is actually a Scotch Bonnet pepper, but those two are cousins and the usage here is that where you'd normally see the Habanero) sauces, there are some notable differences. It is not thick and gloppy, as sauces of that type tend to be. This one is rather thin and runny, along the lines of a Louisiana-style, but not quite that watery. Definitely will need a lot of agitation and if not, you can get flavor pockets. To those pockets, we have ginger (awesome) and lime (much less awesome). Those two notes seem to clash quite a bit and when it is heavier on the ginger side, the taste is both fresh and unique and something I want a lot more of. When I start hitting the lime notes, I begin to wish that was either cut down dramatically or, preferably, cut out entirely. 

While citrus and hot sauce is not an especially awesome combination for me, aside from maybe some orange notes here and there, I think it also makes the sauce a lot less useful. For instance, the gloppy Pineapple Habanero sauces are pretty damn wonderful on pizza, in addition to the usual chicken places. I've used it on burgers as well, as noted in one of the FOH videos. When you throw a citrus element into it, though, it's pretty much chicken and fried fish, maybe something along the lines of an accent for fish tacos. 

Heat-wise, this is pretty tame. It's runny enough to drink and if you liked lime notes, you could probably do that. I think this would also, come to think of it, work pretty nicely in a frozen mixed drink, either a margarita or pina colada or lime daquiri, something along those lines. To be clear, the dominant taste is definitely the pineapple, but it is also moderate enough to allow a lot of those grace notes to creep in, which can dramatically alter the utility. I get that you have to be different to stand out in an already saturated area, such as the fruit-based sauces, particularly pineapple Habanero, but this has taken one step too many for me.

Bottom line: This sauce is on the right track, but still in need of a bit more modification. Definitely worth a visit if you're a fan of pineapple Habanero sauces.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4

Hooter's Hot Sauce Review

The Original Hooter's Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSfsW6OlvfM

I picked this up on a whim. Hooter's is not exactly known for its kitchen prowess, but rather the gigantic...ummm...owl eyes of the various female wait staff and hosts. When I go to restaurants, I tend to go specifically for the food, so, given that the food here tends to be underwhelming at best, I have not really frequented this chain, having visited maybe half a dozen times combined ever. I honestly didn't recall the sauce specifically, but presumed it to be some sort of wing sauce, so probably pointed at a buffalo sauce, with at least a passing nod to a Louisiana-style. It sat on my shelf for quite a while until I picked it up, hoping more more of a pure Cayenne sauce. What it is comes fairly distant from that, though.

What we're really looking at here is a red Jalapeno sauce. In my haste, I think I pegged the pepper on the front as a Cayenne, but I think it is a Jalapeno. Jalapenos in sauces can be of use. It is a very flavorful pepper, but for me, like most other peppers of low heat, you need a lot of it. Where the pepper has, as its strong suit, great flavor, such as Bells or Jalapenos, you really need more of the actual pepper. Cooking it and distilling it into a sauce tends to rob Jalapenos of a good portion of their strength and you're left with this, which is sort of a vague stab at a hot sauce. This is not always the case, mind you. Boar's Head does a great job using this same pepper, but they're going for more of a pepper sauce, instead of a general hot sauce, which appears to be the intent here.

This sauce tastes cheap to me. Cheap sauce is not always bad. Crystal and Cheap Thrills come to mind as two lower-priced entries that are very serviceable, but this one actively tastes cheap, as in low quality. It kind of reminds me of the Trappey Bull sauce that someone threw a handful of sugar at and it's exactly as good as that sounds. This is not to say inedible, such as others this year have been for me, but it has to be used very carefully, not because of any heat level, but because of the tendency to foul things it's on, if oversaucing happens. This is not bad, to the point where I will refuse to do a video of it, but I will neither buy it again nor likely finish the bottle. I've found uses of it where it performed acceptably on food to be very minimal.

Bottom line: If you're a fan of this chain, and more specifically, this particular sauce, here you go. Everyone not fitting into that category can keep on moving.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 0

Big Red's Smokey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Big Red's Smokey Habanero Hot Sauce

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzqXF6Re2P8

This is a relatively new company to me and it's clear that they definitely like to have fun with the labels. This is the first of the sauces I've tried and, as mentioned, since I somehow got on the old chasing-down-a-standby-Mexican-style-sauce trail again, this one moved to the front of the line. I've said it elsewhere, but I now have a much better idea what I actually want out of this kind of sauce. I've settled down onto the idea of Habanero, as I don't think most of the other peppers would be fitting (ghost also would be fine, but not enough people use it in this style), but with a strong preference towards either fire-roasted or smoked. In this case, we have the addition of a Chipotle powder and smoke flavor, the latter of which is fairly novel to me in this setting. 

I was pretty curious to see how this would work, once I discovered this, but the results are...curious. What we have here is a sauce somewhat reminiscent of a taco sauce, along with a strong Habanero undercurrent. There is quite a number of ingredients in this sauce and some of them seem to be there in appearance only, such as the flecks of cilantro. This has a solid bit of heat, though it's definitely on the lower side of the scale. There is also the presence of Cayenne here also, which I encounter pretty rarely in a Mexican style sauce. The end result, though, is a bit confusing to me, as there are a number of competing flavors. The overall subtlety of this sauce enables different elements to shine through, but it did not ever quite make it to a cohesive whole for me. 

The subtlety is also somewhat of a problem, actually, as it makes this sauce much less universal on foods, even if restricted to Mexican-style foods. If you don't have somewhat of a heavy pour, the presence may show up in a slight heat increase and little else, but too heavy and those grace notes amplify depending on what you put it on and may show up enough to introduce diminishing returns. This aspect makes it a bit of a frustrating sauce to use. In addition to missing the mark on the flavor I'm after, it also dials down the universality, at least in regards to Mexican foods, my ideal standby sauce would have.

Bottom line: Definitely one of the more interesting takes on a Mexican-style sauce I've had, but one that is both a bit too busy and subtle and not particularly resonant with my palate. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 5
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

CaJohn's Black Garlic Ghost Hot Sauce Review

 CaJohn's Black Garlic Ghost Hot Sauce

Update: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYcD7_jIUpw

To a degree, I did not understand the draw of black garlic and why it would be of interest, let alone of use, in a hot sauce. While this did not sell me on the usage in a hot sauce, exactly, I do now more fully understand the appeal of black garlic and the relation to umami. 

Despite doing the Chipotle variation of the CaJohn's Black Garlic sauces earlier in the year, that sauce was, for me, just kind of there, somewhat confusing but best thought of as basically a sweet soy sauce, with not a lot of flavor. This one, on the other hand, is considerably both more flavorful and more punchy and is highly enjoyable. 

I used it in most of the same places I used the other and this is literally worlds better. That it is that radically different is somewhat surprising to me, aside from the idea that chipotle being such a strong flavor, my presumption is that it was used more sparingly so as not to overpower the more delicate flavor notes. Here, with ghost pepper not being a particularly strong flavor, more is able to be used and so not only is there a strong heat presence, but the melding of the Jolokias with those other umami flavors of soy sauce and black garlic helps them to shine all the more. This, unlike the other, is also quite a bit more flexible, equally at home being a curious dipping sauce, to working spectacularly on grilled or roasted meats. 

As to heat, the ghost is tempered somewhat, showing off its more flavorful side and while this is notably hotter than the other, it is pretty far from where I think it would give anyone much trouble, chilehead or not. It is just a very nice, all-around sauce, though heavily pointed at the Asian side, naturally, that does a lot towards answering what all the hype about black garlic is.

Bottom line: This is a very good introduction to the glories of black garlic and I'm simultaneously pleased and saddened I didn't try this first...this may, in fact, be a sauce I consider keeping on hand in future.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 8
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 7

Overall: 6

Arthur Wayne Montana Rooster Hot Sauce Review

Arthur Wayne Montana Rooster Hot Sauce

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.

Note: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq5nUuMH3Q4

Note: I have been reliably informed by the aforementioned Roger that the label for this bottle may be changing, so possibly this is the old label. A number of other labels throughout this blog are possibly similarly changed...my suggestion is to look on the respective web sites of the various sauces and see what the current look is.

Right, now on to the show...as those of you following along in 2020 already know, an Arthur Wayne sauce called Limitless (check TOC for review) is hovering about in my SOTY consideration list. I did find it a bit piquant for daily usage, however, and was really interested in the sauce it was based on, which is this. Had the heat been taken down a few notches, we could be looking at a battle between sauces from the same company, which is pretty rare. The last time it happened, if memory serves, it was back between a couple of CaJohn's entries. 

Sad to say, this will not be the case here. This sauce does not retain any of the smoothness of the other sauce and has almost no heat at all. There are spiky chunks of pepper bits, which is a touch on the annoying side, when I hit them and this is a far looser sauce, much closer to the runniness of a Louisiana-style. It is possible this is just a batch issue with the bottle I got, which can happen with smaller sauce companies, but I'm far from convinced that is what is at play here.

 I also have some related problems with the naming convention here. Sriracha refers to a pretty specific - and well established - style of sauce. Calling this a spin on sriracha is frankly just misnaming the sauce. If you're going to take a sriracha and spike it with fruit, fine, I guess, but it still has to be mainly a sriracha. This one reads more like a vinegary pineapple sauce and indeed, we have the fairly standard combination of pineapple and Habanero here.

Had the approach here been to take a swing at the sweet-hot and just call it sriracha-inspired, fine, but if you set up expectations, particularly for a well-known and beloved sauce, and then get nowhere near it...it is going to raise some questions. The taste here varies a bit, but never too far from vinegar and pineapple. I don't dislike it and it is mild enough you can use a lot of it. Flexibility is fairly strong, going well on nearly everything, other than Mexican food, where I found it somewhat clashy.

Bottom line: Do not consider this a sriracha-style sauce, regardless of the label. Think of it as another sweet-hot, another entry into the halls of Habanero-pineapple, albeit a runny version, and go accordingly.

Breakdown:

Heat level: 1
Flavor: 7
Flexibility: 8
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5

Seafire Classic Habanero Hot Sauce Review

 Seafire Classic Habanero Hot Sauce

Tell me have you ever just taken a spoonful of that concentrated, minced garlic, from Christopher Ranch or someone else and just eaten it right from the jar? Don't get the jars? Ok, have you ever then gotten one of the squeeze bottles or tubes and just blasted it right into your open mouth? No? If you did, did you enjoy it? No? If yes, you may enjoy this sauce. It might stop with you, though.

This is, ostensibly, a "classic" Habanero sauce in the sense that it has Habanero, carrots and some of the other sweet component goodies that other Habanero sauces have had. The twist, as it were, is that this contains, from the website, "an insane amount of garlic." How you should read this is as a garlic puree with slightly sweet and citrusy grace notes. If you did either of those things I mentioned in the first part, you already got the gist of this sauce. If not, if you are not insane enough to do such a thing, it is as close to the experience of trying this sauce as one can imagine, without actually also trying the sauce.

I like garlic. At times, I might even feel an affection for it bordering on love. I've had - and made - my share of garlic burgers, of heavy garlic spaghetti sauce or pizza sauce, even went so far as to roasting entire bulbs in a pie tine with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, then just eating the cloves as a light snack. I did that for a while, in fact, but I've never liked the heavily processed concentratedd kind. This resembles the version I like least and, since there will not be a video accompaniment to this sauce, here is basically how that went:

I started with a breakfast bowl. I sniffed the bottle and nearly gave up right then and there, but went on and managed to coax a bit of this thick, sludgy stuff out. It wrecked everything it touched, nearly to the point of inducing gagging. It was basically straight concentrated processed garlic. So...I poured out a bit of what was in the neck, figuring I hadn't agitated it enough. I then shook it up really well and put it back in the fridge. I tried again with chicken strips and the same result, except I could detect a slight bit of carrot underlying it, as well as a slight sweetness. 

I did not give up there, though, it was pretty clear then, given how I do the video addendums for the sauces, I would, in no way consider do it with this sauce. Rather, I tried to use it how I would use the actual concentrate, which is in various dishes, chilis, etc. It worked well there, equally as well as normal garlic puree would work, though none of the heat one might anticipate from a Habanero nor the sweetness nor the carrot tinge managed to make it through. So, it's fine being cooked into stuff, like the regular concentrate, which is how I will use the rest of it, but this labels itself as a sauce, but the rating reflects the sauce criteria, since the blog is for sauces.

Bottom line: This is a garlic puree masquerading as a sauce, albeit a slightly more expensive way to obtain a puree. Using it as you would those others is fine. Using it as a sauce will produce awful results.

Breakdown:

Heat level: 0
Flavor: 0
Flexibility: 0
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 0

2K20 Q3 Update

  2K20 Q3 Update

After the last update was posted, it came to my attention that Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue, the hot sauce and all things spicy Ambassador of the West, was celebrating 11 years in business as of July 2020. So, a hearty congratulations from TSAAF and FOH, and here’s to many, many more. Roger and BYT have also had a couple of nice write-ups, both in Utah’s own Catalyst paper, as well as on crafthotsauce.com. If you use Facebook, definitely check out his page on Facebook for links to that and a bevy of other good stuff, including posts on some of the 700+ (!) sauces he has on the shelf. I believe he has also been working up a new website, as well, which you can check out at https: //burnyourtonguehotsauces. business.site/ (remove spaces). I am not going to link to Facebook, as they have decided to move to an insultingly stupid format, which I refuse to support, but if you still use it, you can just search from there.

Season 13 of The Hot Ones went up and I’ve posted that as well...yet another season I cannot do 100% and I’m a few more sauces behind now. I will note that by doing 2 particular sauces, it will catch me up on a number of seasons and I have both of those at hand, so I anticipate that gap between how many I’ve done that were on the show and how many left to lessen somewhat, at least in terms of overall seasonal coverage in 2021.

Also found a pretty cool blog by another chilehead named Kendall. I really dig it a lot and it’s one of the better ones I’ve seen, rivaling Scott’s back in his heyday. It’s called “Tasting The Heat.” Check it out at tastingtheheat dot com. He’s a pretty awesome guy, so major shout out to him, and he has wisely pictures of the ingredient panel for the sauces, something I wish I’d thought of when I started doing pictures (but will not be adding now).

I should observe another milestone, actually 4 milestones. The first two are in regards to the FOH YouTube video series. As of August 2020, the FOH series has reached 100 video entries, and I’ve added video support for a sauce in every year of TSAAF’s existence, including 2012, a “year” which had only 4 months. The total FOH content, as of this video, is 112, and 55 of those are in support of full review for sauces. The second milestone is that as of October 1, 2020, the FOH series will be reaching its first anniversary.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out the video series, please do. I have a lot of fun making those, which extend beyond the blog’s intentional focus only on hot sauces, to include other spicy foods, along with various applications of sauce usage and testing, which doesn’t get covered here. Links to the various playlists are in the widgets to the right, as well as in the various reviews themselves, and in the TOCs.

While I’m at it, I should mention that I also doubled my sauces at once (in 2019 I did 6 sauces), in a single mini-review*, but also made it a 2-part video, also the first for that, wherein I went through all the sauces that are in the Book of Pleasure & Pain Hot Sauce Challenge, though inadvertently. For this, I did12 sauces at once, *though 2 had already been previously reviewed. It did help me to test out my preparation a bit (maybe I will work my way to actual heat challenges, if I can get it tuned enough - if so, those will be for the FOH series only), though it was also a lot more challenging than I was expecting when I first thought up the idea. It is the 2nd dual posting between FOH and TSAAF. I also managed to throw in another double review on the blog to boot, though the video for that will be in Q4 sometime, due to the lag right now between the blog and the FOH video series.

Talked about the total posts to the blog for 2020 in the last update a bit and how it relates to previous years. So far, I’ve posted 33 total, which puts it higher than every year but 2013 (52). I also posted (repeatedly) in every month of this year, which has not happened since 2015 and only for 3 of the 8 years this blog has been running. This year will make 4, if I keep that streak running. I don’t see a reason why it wouldn’t.

I should also speak to the 3rd milestone, which is not here as of yet, but is coming soon. That is 200 full sauce reviews on this blog. I’ve already reviewed well over 200 sauces overall and probably tried well over a thousand spicy food things, and I know I said I didn’t think I was going to hit 200 full sauce reviews this year, but now I’m beginning to think I might be surprised if I don’t. I am, as of this writing, at the 196 mark and there is still a goodly amount of time to go in the year. I don’t believe, however, that I will cover that particular milestone with a separate post, as I did with the first 100. These quarterly updates are very extensive as-is.

The final milestone, which did get accomplished in Q3 with the arrival of the review of both Blair’s Original Death Sauce and the Pain Is Good #218 Louisiana sauce, is that Season One of The Hot Ones now has a review for all of the sauces I am doing and is thus complete. It will be the only season I am looking (or likely) to complete this year.

For Q3, I did a lot of blog maintenance, this past little while, after the last update, fixing some html errors I missed, as well as finally creating a database, so I can more appropriately check on how many reviews I’ve done in a much easier manner than previously, which always had the possibility of me missing something. I have added a few more photos for the full reviews and believe I’m now at less than 20 sauces needing pictures, which is slightly over the 10% mark of total sauces in the full review list. I also needed to teach myself a new way of doing the blog, thanks to Google electing to change how the blog operates. Thankfully, I don’t do anything overly demanding, in a technical sense.

I guess since I’m on the numbers, as I alluded to last update, I may as well start going  through some of them. The average score, across all sauces, is about midway between 4 and 5. This is also, incidentally, skewed higher, as I usually buy sauces I believe I will enjoy. The list currently sits at 13 sauces with an overall score of 0, 14 sauces at 1, 13 sauces at 2, 22 sauces at 3, 26 sauces at 4, 28 sauces at 5, 31 sauces at 6, 26 sauces at 7, 16 sauces at 8, 7 sauces at 9 and NO sauces at 10. This is by design, as I structured the rating system so that no one element would be able to dominate the ratings, and also, to a degree, some of the criteria are in opposition to each other. This means that the odds of having a perfect 10 across the board are exceedingly unlikely.  I have also done video support for at least one sauce of every score level that has sauces in it.

Of the alphabet, all letters are represented, except for K, U, X, Y. I’m going to loosely keep an eye out for sauces/sauce makers starting with those letters, though the only one I’m really surprised about is the “K”. I do have one of those “K” sauces sitting on deck and plan on getting to it before the end of the year, though. As to the rest, I can’t find any makers for either the “U” or “X”, so those look to be waiting a while longer... The best represented letter is “C”, with 20 entries, being carried on the back of the best represented sauce company, CaJohn’s, both on the blog with 12 and on the FOH video series with 5.

Continuing on, as mentioned, I have 196 full reviews on the blog. Of those, at least 24 (I have not gone through every title quite yet) are either discontinued entirely OR have been reformulated and do not match the sauce I reviewed any longer. 55 of them already have videos. Looking over the back catalog, I’m thinking that I probably will go to a ratings cut-off.  There is little point in me going through and buying a bunch of sauces that are rated at 0 - 2, as I will be keeping some of them just long enough to shoot the video, thereby ruining whatever food I put it on, and only to be binned immediately at the conclusion of recording. This range may also be increased to 0 - 3. On that low rating side, there are 21 sauces without video support, only one of which, Zatarain’s, which was a 1, I will consider doing, and that only because I hear fairly regular whining about the actual review.

That is a definite exception, though. This year, for instance, I had the Grace Scotch Bonnet sauce at hand and wound up tossing it entirely and not even filming a video at all. I do have limits. If manufacturers or whoever want to offer up some of those sauces for that purpose, I’ll accept them and at least consider shooting a video, but I don’t see any wisdom in spending my money to do that again, unless this becomes something more than a fun, casual hobby.

So, between the discontinued, the low rated, and the ones already done, I have a playground of around a hundred sauces or so that I could conceivably obtain for the purposes of FOH. I still need to check into availability of a lot of them, but I’ve already identified 15 that will be more of a priority. My suspicion is that once those are concluded, the higher rated ones will be more of a priority, though that will probably take realistically beyond 2021.

On the brighter side, for this year, I have 5 SOTY contenders right now (Private Selection Calabrian, Arthur Wayne Limitless, Monroy’s Death By Kraken, Tonguespank Scotch Whiskey Trinidad Scorpion & Mikey V’s Sweet Ghost Pepper, if you haven’t read 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 works well with the widest variety of things and was eaten the fastest, Limitless packed the biggest wallop, and the Sweet Ghost Pepper is, by far, the best-tasting).

Speaking of SOTYs, here is the current breakdown: There have been 8, as I write this, in the history of this blog. Of those 8, 3 are discontinued. Of the 5 remaining, 3 have had videos done. Of the 2 remaining, 1 of them I’m going to try to get to this year, but it may not make it (Happy Beaver). The other one I bought with the intention of doing a video, only to find it has been reformulated. That is the Born To Hula Ghost Of Ancho. As that sauce is based on the Habanero Ancho from them, and which has evidently also been reformulated, the result is a sauce that would be pushing to break a 5 and nowhere near any SOTY criteria for me. They took what was a delectable sauce and utterly ruined it, to the point where it is very nearly an unpalatable abomination. If you’re interested in the exact mechanism, it appears they scrambled the ingredients order (amplifying the astringency notably with the lime) and moved from onion powder to actual onions. So, needless to say, I will not be doing a video of that, as it is no longer the same sauce, nor will I be consuming it again, beyond what I tried before I noticed that awful change. I have noticed this with some of the other sauces in the backlog, so I now will need to directly review everything, as in at least 2 different online sources for the ingredient list OR bottle in hand,  for any of the past sauces, a prospect which pleases me about as much as you might expect. Cumulatively, of the 8 SOTYs for this blog, 4 are no longer available, either at all, or in their reviewed form.

As always, 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.

Pain Is Good Batch #218 Louisiana Hot Sauce Review

 Pain Is Good Batch #218 Louisiana Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce appears on Seasons One and Two of The Hot Ones.

NOTE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnOaSUtrAN0

I had a lot of reservations about this sauce and passed it up, literally for years, because I disliked the Cayenne version from this company (which also makes the Pain percentage line and the Da' Bomb line) so intensely. Indeed, I have liked literally nothing they've produced thus far, so to say this wasn't even on my radar at all would be a gross understatement. Of course, then cue Roger at BYT for the rejuvenation of this blog last year, in the course of which, I came across The Hot Ones. I had not heard of it before that, but once I did, given the prominence of it in the industry, it made sense to take a look at the various sauces appearing that I had not done, one of which was this one.

Like the Cayenne sauce, this one has no idea what it actually wants to be. Calling it Louisiana-style is ridiculous and flatly false. If it came from the state, I could maybe give this a pass, but the company is out of Kansas. If they called it Cajun, they might be closer, as that style allows for a lot more elements than just Cayenne, salt, and vinegar, but this one is chock full of a lot of stuff that you would more normally expect to find in a barbeque sauce. This one is hotter than nearly every barbeque sauce I've had and I don't think there is quite enough sugar content in there for it to be a proper grilling sauce, but the smokiness and the tomato elements leads one there readily.

I am going to attempt to grill with it before the season closes down for the year, but have not as of this writing (the results will be in the video support, when that goes up), and instead have tried to use it as I do both Cajun and actual Louisiana-style. It works pretty well as a dipping sauce, acceptably in ramen, but the overall resemblance always harkens back to a poorly made, though somewhat hot, barbeque sauce. I do like that they used the Habanero mainly for heat and not flavor. The Cayenne is definitely the dominant pepper flavor, but spends a lot of time trying to fend off all the other competing flavors. I would anticipate it will probably work well as a wing sauce, but grilling could go either way, honestly.

As to heat, I would put this one slightly above a 3, but not enough to give it the push to 4. It definitely is enough to give non-chileheads pause, though no chileheads will be challenged by this. 

Bottom line: A very odd sauce, with a somewhat confusing taste profile, that bears little to no resemblance to the type of sauce indicated on the label. This is one that I'm not upset I bought, though it was mostly due to The Hot Ones inclusion, but would also have been ok with not ever having. Also, I will not be replacing once the bottle is done.

Breakdown:

Heat level: 3
Flavor: 6
Flexibility: 5
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 5