Karma Cosmic Disco Hot Sauce Review

Karma Cosmic Disco

Note: This sauce appears on Season 19 of the Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLeyfqnJfzw 

This is a sauce that was a pretty big question mark to me going in. Karma is a sauce company that makes stuff I sometimes like, but overall has proven too streaky to move into my list of favorite makers (you can find that list in the SOTY link to the right). I greatly admire that the company is formed by an ex-NASA scientist and I find the many variations on a theme with much of their hot sauce line to be an interesting idea. However, a lot of their sauces just don't resonate with me. 

There are two (I guess you could say three, depending on if you count Scorpion Disco as its own sauce or a revved up version of Funken Hot, both reviewed elsewhere here) main sauces at play here, the aforementioned in parenthetical Scorpion Disco and the Cosmic Dumpling, with me finding to my surprise that I liked the former (and the other former in the parenthesis above) and not really having too much interest in or need for what was essentially a very boutique and perhaps even gourmet pot sticker sauce, as I never eat those. I didn't love the Cosmic Dumpling and it took me quite a while to go through the bottle, so I didn't know what to expect going in. Would it be Scorpion Disco-lite or an actual true homogenization of a hot sauce with strong Asian flavors?

To my dismay, what I found I would describe more as a clash of worlds. The smell and color are definitely more towards the Cosmic end of things and because of that, the initial taste is more in that direction before we get into flavor cancellation and the hammer floral bitter notes of the Scorpion come screaming in. This sauce reads to me a lot more of Scorpion peppers than does the Scorpion Disco, somehow, and that is among my least favorite superhots. The listing is for a "superhot blend" rather than specifically, but while I think this is probably the upper range of heat for normies, this won't give too many chileheads much of a challenge in terms of heat.

The other part of this is flexibility, or more specifically, the lack thereof. Do I use this as a predominantly Asian sauce, for a food type I don't really ever have and even if I did, am not sure I'd want those harsh floral notes there, or do I use it more where I would Scorpion Disco and just potentially have a confusing mouthful of flavors, depending on what gets cancelled out on a given food? I did opt more for the second of those options, a lot more where I used the Scorpion Disco and I can't say I loved any of the results too much. I get a lot of Asian spices there that come through as jarring and honestly have not really found any place, as I write this, where I think the sauce fits well. This may be one that comes down to whether it is good on wings or not, as I keep the Hot Ones show sauces for my quarterly Wing Thing videos on the FOH video series on Youtube and I may play around with it a bit on some Asian stuff, but the union between this sauce and my palate seems a rather unhappy one, ultimately.

Bottom line: This is another Hot Ones and Karma sauce that I struggle with, sad to say. It may have an application where it works wonderfully, but I have yet to discover what that may be.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

JimEmi's Creations The Red Sauce Medium Hot Sauce Review

JimEmi's Creations The Red Sauce Medium

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MQkcq89yfU

Interesting sort of stylization in the name, with what I presume is the first name of the sauce creators or company owners, capitalized for both and then run together. On their website, this sauce, the only one available, comes available in a coffin package, should you so desire, with a choice of colors, which itself is kind of curious. Most of the mini-coffin packaged products tend to be on the hotter side of the scale, which this is nowhere near, so no idea what they're going for there. The sauce itself is made by Angry Irishman, out of Ohio, though JimEmi's is from CA, which is kind of nice to see the co-packer get some love on the label. 

I'm not sure entirely what they were going for with this sauce, other than to make a sauce that is visually red, which this one is, quite deep, rich, dark almost to brown red. It is fairly thick, but flows pretty smoothly. When I looked at the ingredients, it seemed to me like it would be oriented towards Mexican/Southwest flavors and that is indeed where I found it to be best, thanks to a fairly strong note of cumin in the flavors. I could see this also working possibly in ramen, though I did not attempt it. There are additionally some nice notes of chili powder, tomato and an underlying sweetness from the honey, with the Habanero playing in there mostly as a back current of very slight heat. 

While I found the sauce very accessible and potentially a good gateway sauce, I also found it a bit frustrating, thanks to a personal quirk of wishing sometimes that a given sauce had this or that note to it. For this one, while I would have loved fire-roasted Habs in there, it seemed like there was something missing, a flavor note, and after some pondering, it is smoke. If this had a nice delicate flavor of chipotle in there or, better yet, make it a smoked Habanero or Ghost, the latter if they wanted to bump the heat a bit, that would have been just exquisite. Unfortunately, I've not been able to get this out of my head (fortunately for me, this does not happen with every sauce or anywhere near that often) and now lament the sauce it could have been and I wish it had been. Still, what is here is undeniably delicious and worked fantastically well on all the things I tried it on, which were admittedly limited to that food type I mentioned in the paragraph above. I am not a huge fan of cumin and a little goes a very long way for me. This sauce had a bit too much of that note for me to go too far off adventuring, but when it stays in pocket, food flavor-wise, it's very nice. I'm excited to see what they do next.

Bottom line: Excellent flavoring of ingredients you would generally find in a taco sauce or taco flavoring, tinged with a touch of sweetness and low heat. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 5

Lola's Mango Ginger Scotch Bonnet (Hyvee Exclusive) Hot Sauce Review

Lola's Mango Ginger Scotch Bonnet (Hyvee Exclusive)

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WrpKZBBB3o

I try really hard to keep an open mind and give things a chance, even when I've been underwhelmed in the past and this entry serves as good example of that principle. I previously did all of the varieties of the Lola's sauces I came across and the highest any of them rated was a cumulative 4, which is not exactly inspiring. I found them solid on ramen, which was where I used them the most, but not anything overly compelling (reviewed elsewhere here), with one of them so indistinct and uninteresting, I didn't bother to film a video of it (though in hindsight, I now wish I would have, if nothing else, pairing it with one of the others). I then nearly completely forgot about the company until I saw it during my vacation travels this year.

Where I saw it, as you may have already guessed, was at a Hyvee. The Hyvee grocery chain, for those unfamiliar, is a largely Midwestern presence and I found the stores I visited to generally be pretty fantastic, though admittedly, I didn't entirely love the layouts. I believe I may have Yelped some of the locations I visited, if you happen to be interested in my ramblings there. Regardless, I didn't glom onto the fact that it was a Hyvee Exclusive until I was getting ready to shoot the FOH video for it (link up top, when available, as per usual). 

Despite some misgivings, such as the color of this, which is a sickly sort of yellowish-green, and the idea of ginger in the sauce, which often is disappointing, but fruit-based sweet hots I find myself nearly perpetually in need of and figured I may as well give their foray into this a shot. These are not expensive sauces and worst case, I was just out a few bucks. This is not, to be perfectly clear, a fruit-based sweet hot.

It is instead a sauce that more closely resembles a slightly thick turmeric-flavored vinegar. Mangos are the first listed ingredient (and ginger towards the last, which really kind of brings a nice air of confusion to the naming structure of the sauce), but they perhaps contributed a bit more to the body of the sauce than the actual flavor. This is a fairly loose sauce as well, so I'm not entirely sure how much I believe the ordering. The Scotch Bonnet contribute a bit of warmth, but not a lot of flavor, and the ginger is nearly entirely absent. 

Now, I don't dislike turmeric, on the contrary, but I couldn't, for the life of me, figure out where this sauce was supposed to go...and given the nature of the Hyvee customer base, who it was for, either. Pairing this sauce, which requires something that can go with the pungency of vinegar and the very forward nature of turmeric, proved a challenge that I eventually tired of attempting. This is not a good thing for the sauce, neither was my overall impression that it was just odd and peculiar. The suggestion was to use it on anything, but those ingredients paired with, say, a mac & cheese, pizza, or even a ramen, sound more stomach-churning than appetizing, also not a good thing for the sauce. Even on chicken tendies, a lot of what flavor was there vanished and I was left with a light variety of sour notes, again, not a good thing.

Bottom line: This is not exactly a bad sauce, but more one without a place, ill-fitting in nearly every application I tried it in.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 2

Tennessee Honey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Tennessee Honey Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DEOPLP7IAc

I think, at this point, I can pretty safely say that this is a hot sauce company whereupon everyone that cares about this kind of thing should go find a bottle that appeals to them and try something. Not all of the sauces I've done so far have hit with me, but of the ones that did, when they did, they did to massive effect and, not to put too fine of a point on it, this is exactly the kind of hot sauce company we should, as chileheads, be supporting, the kind who put flavor first and have a very comprehensive approach, all the way down to their phenomenal website. 

The first of those sauces that blew me away was the Blood Orange Ghost (reviewed elsewhere here) and this is the second. While I think heat could stand to be slightly hotter here (it is quite minimal overall), my sole complaint with this one is that the sauce is a lot looser than I would prefer and not only does it try to run down the threads and the neck of the bottle, but that same looseness also inhibits its flexibility somewhat. This winds up putting it more or less into the Louisiana-style category, as far as application, though the inherent sweetness here might not always quite be what I want in some of those uses.

The flavor is fantastic, both starting and finishing with honey, while the vinegar and Habanero does a very nice balancing job during the in-between. This is another so delicious that I had to purposely reach for other sauces so that I didn't wind up just blasting through the entire bottle before I had a chance to film anything for the FOH accompaniment to this. Prior to that series, I would have probably finished this bottle in 1 - 3 days, as it hits a lot of the sweet spots, so to speak, for me. I hasten to add that though there is honey flavor and a bit of sweetness fore and aft, it is not overall generally what I would call a sweet sauce, as the vinegar is quite present. Pairing the Habaneros with bell pepper also seems to have tempered the flavor of the former somewhat, which works wonderfully.

Bottom line: This is a truly magnificent sauce from a flavor perspective and while the heat probably won't be satisfying for chileheads, it is a near-perfect gateway sauce for the chili-curious, who like the more vinegar forward entries out there.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 10
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Maritime Madness Frig That's Hot! Friggin' Hot Sauce Review

Maritime Madness Frig That's Hot!

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLCPlh3HBk8

I debated kicking this off with an expression of confusion over what, exactly, Odin's wife had to do with any of this, but since her name is Frigg, that wouldn't really make a lot of sense. "Frig," in this sense, is meant to be an alternate to the fuck word, as opposed to a shortening of "frigate," perhaps best and most humorously exemplified in the seminal "Friggin' In The Riggin'" song from the Sex Pistols, but I digress.

What we have here is a very Habanero-forward sauce, that reminds me a bit of a cross between a cocktail sauce and a Louisiana-style Cayenne sauce. Both tomatoes, one of the most underrated ingredients for a hot sauce, and apples do a lot of tempering of this, creating a nice roundness, but with Habaneros as the first ingredient, there is a strong degree of build here as well. Given that it is Habanero, there is a limit to how hot it will get, but this is quite respectable for a Habanero sauce, I will say. It is probably a bit more than beginner level, but not quite to where I would call it chilehead only.

In terms of usage, I have been using it nearly exclusively as a substitute in place of my usual Louisiana-style sauce and it works pretty well there, but is perhaps slightly more flexible in that it does very nicely with things such as shrimp cocktail, where I would not normally use something that vinegary. It is somewhat thicker than the aforementioned style and comes again in the nifty 8 fl. oz. squeeze bottles, so you can definitely control where the sauce goes. I'm not a huge fan of Habanero flavor, so I can't say I prefer this to a good Louisiana-style, but it is definitely notably hotter.

Bottom line: My favorite sauce so far from them and with a very interesting and novel approach to a vinegar forward Habanero-based hot sauce. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 6
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Local Hive Honey Mango Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Local Hive Honey Mango Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW_vOvEz_58

I'm debating just directing you to the review I did for the other sauce on this blog from Local Hive, the Honey Habanero sauce (review here: https://d-dubtsaaf.blogspot.com/2024/07/local-hive-honey-habanero-hot-sauce.html) as these sauces are at least somewhat similar. The bones of both is identical, but whereas that one leaned a bit more into the carrot and garlic flavoring, this one is definitely pointed more at a tropical fruit vibe, with undercurrents of mango. 

Indeed, heat level and uses are the same, which is not surprising, given that this sauce, unless I miss my guess, is built on the other one, with the addition of mango, but I will also say that this one is my strong preference. As delicious as I found that one, I find this one even moreso and I think this one goes a long way towards highlighting just how awesome an ingredient sweet mango can be. So, rather than repeating what I said in that review, I will just direct you to go read it and just picture it this variant for yourself, as you consider the wonders of a gorgeous and tasty sauce of honey and a general sort of tropical fruit vibe, along with some grace notes of mango, garlic, and Habanero. The genius of Local Hive is once again in ready evidence here and finds like this are why I never give up on checking grocery store shelves, sporadically as it may be.

Bottom line: This is an absolute stunner of a sauce and if you're a fan of fruit-based sweet hots, even though the heat here is very moderate, this one is absolutely a must. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 10
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Hellfire Detroit Bourbon Habanero Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Hellfire Detroit Bourbon Habanero Ghost

Note: This sauce appears on Season 13 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QelLdMulb04

This is one I've had on the shelf for quite a while, since the previous entry from them I found to be okayish, but more a puree than an actual sauce and a bit on the underwhelming side. Further, the leadoff ingredient was apple cider foot vinegar, along with questionable elements such as lime, and with bourbon in the name, that was likely to be prominent. Booze in sauce can very easily go bad and the vast majority of sauces I've had with it in there, from beer to hard liquor to wine, I tend to find an unpleasant presence. This one was another with the impetus more on coverage of sauces on the show and I fully expected to have to use it as a grill sauce.

Looking closer at the ingredients, I did see fire-roasted Habaneros and smoked Ghosties and felt a glimmer of hope. I love fire-roasted peppers, probably my favorite way of having them, and smoked peppers can also be a great addition. Add in black peppers, which this does, and things started to look up. I'd forgotten most of that by the time I actually got around to opening the bottle and was pleasantly surprised at the sauce inside. Like the other sauce from Hellfire Detroit, this one requires near constant agitation and there is quite a lot of pepper pulp, but the sauce overall was quite intriguing. It has a very unique and quite distinct flavor that sets it apart from nearly everything else I've had.

We have the initial hit of the vinegar, which gives way almost immediately to the fire-roasted Habaneros and then the superhot bitterness of the Ghosties. The aftertaste is more one of that black peppers and as you get further into using it, the bourbon begins to emerge more and more. This mirrors the heat as well, in that the initial taste is fairly low, but with a building pepper like Habanero coupled with the Ghosties, this can build a pretty nice little smolder. For me, it was past a 2, but not quite to a 3, so maybe 2.5, but if I give it the push to 3, I'm saying this is a chilehead only sauce, which I don't think is the case. This is strongly flavored enough that I think non-chileheads will find some degree of enjoyment here at much smaller amounts. 

Doing that may be a bit of a challenge, though, as this is not a very smooth sauce and its inherent chunkiness will tend to keep it in place on whatever you put it on, which can be a bit of a dilemma when it comes to blending flavors with whatever you're eating. I'd call that not necessarily a drawback but more something to keep in mind. I find it works better with meats and with less complicated foods where this sauce can more readily shine, so flexibility is a touch lower, perhaps.

Bottom line: This is another of the better sauces on the Hot Ones show and definitely speaks pretty well to my palate. It is also one of the few sauces that I find uses booze effectively in flavor combination. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 9
           Flexibility: 5
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

Tennessee Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Tennessee Pineapple Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcaV0H7-PwE

I have written the beginning to this review many, many times in my head, from starting by noting that the company, Tennessee Hot Sauce, has one of the best, if not the best outright, web sites in the entire industry, full of wonderful anecdotes and more importantly, pairings, and is a treat to visit. It is clearly a labor of love and the passion shows through quite considerably. That, along with their spirit of innovation and experimentalism, I quite admire. After my gushing about the website, of course, I would follow that up by observing that if I'm spending a lot of a hot sauce review talking about something peripheral, that's probably not a good sign, sort of like saying that the buns were the best part of a burger. I debated going a silly route, such as "down yonder in Tennessee country, the pineapple is a little different round these parts," and carrying on from there. I then considered returning to something I've said many times, which is that if you're going to do an established style of sauce, you have basically two choices: either do what is already out there, only better or go in a more radically different style and hope for the best. 

In some respects, I think they decided to try to straddle those lines, although I think it leans more towards the latter. Here we have a number of things somewhat unusual to a pineapple-Habanero sauce, such as lime and more notably, cinnamon. The interplay with the three main flavors of pineapple, garlic, and cinnamon is a sort of novel one, but that last ingredient is one I only like as an accent, as in very small doses, and the impression of this sauce overall is tied inextricably and quite strongly to that one ingredient. If you're a fan of cinnamon, you'll at least be more receptive to this sauce, assuming also you like pineapple. If you're like me, where a little goes a long way, it will often prove distracting. When the cinnamon doesn't show up as strongly, it's a quite decent sauce and unquestionably I think it would be better without it. I found myself when using it frequently wishing that that note was not there.

Strong flavors can tend to towards polarization and while it's not necessarily to that extreme, it does cut down on the flexibility. Pineapple-Habanero is a sauce that can go quite a few places and work amazingly well, but adding in cinnamon means now that you have to find a food that will work with that. Most of the foods we relate to cinnamon are sweet, dessert-y type things, but this sauce, while certainly having a degree of inherent sweetness, is not one I would call particularly sweet. The garlic shows up in equal measure, which means that desserts, quite tidily, won't go together here. So, too, won't burgers or pizza or fish tacos or a few others things where I'd normally bust out a more straightforward pineapple-Habanero. I find it works acceptably on chicken tendies or roast meats, where the cinnamon doesn't need to mesh with other flavors. I stop short of saying it's a bad sauce, more that it doesn't resonate super well with my palate. Heat-wise, with Habanero being the only driver, this is definitely more on the tamer side.

Bottom line: While I can appreciate a newer spin on an established classic, there is always the danger of veering off-track and that, for me, is what happened here. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 5
           Flexibility: 2
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Local Hive Honey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Local Hive Honey Habanero

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdobwqN2FC8 

I have this...thing in my mind, this vague sort of conception when it comes to sweet-hots, that I always kind of hope a given sauce will be like, in which it's a sort of predominantly sweet, with the other flavors and heat in balance around that. I think both the sadly departed Voodoo Chile's Voodoo Honey Dew and the Shield Maiden from Z's perhaps best approached this, but it's sort of along the lines of Blair's Pure Death, only with a touch (or more) of sweetness added to it (all of these sauces, by the way, are prior Sauces Of The Year and reviewed here, if you're interested in checking those out - handy list on a link to the right). It's like a splinter stuck in my mind, in some respects, in that I'm always half-hoping that any new sauce, while still having its own identity, will also be somewhat along those lines.

This sauce, this work of sheer genius and brilliance, is one of those I'm surprised we don't see more of and didn't come along sooner. Here we have an actual honey company, either producing or having someone make for them, this very refined and slick sauce, which sort of fuses the carrot-Habanero and garlic-Habanero sauces of yore, and runs them both under a base of delicious honey. I look for hot honeys a lot of the time and many times, I'll come across something that is a sauce masqueraded as a honey or vice versa, but not here. This definitely knows what it wants to be, which is a hot sauce, and intentionally distinct from their line of honeys, which interestingly, does not include a spicy version. 

Sweet-hots generally tend to have their own narrowing of application and this one is no exception. It is perhaps a bit on the sweeter side than some of the others, but pretty far from cloying, so creamy dishes are probably out. It is also fairly honey-forward, so things like lighter meats, particularly chicken, as well as pizza, work very nicely here, but I wouldn't try it on a burger or any Mexican food, for instance. Heat-wise, it's a Habanero, so quite moderate and I'd guess this is intentional, to make it as accessible as possible. 

Bottom line: This is a very well-done sauce, very smooth, with a wide variety of flavor notes that work together quite harmoniously.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 10
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 6

Tennessee Blood Orange Ghost Hot Sauce Review

Tennessee Blood Orange Ghost

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gdA3RP7WcY

Well, ol' Roger over at Burn Your Tongue happened to have a sale right before I was getting ready to go on a road trip (which was why the previous post was a bit earlier than normal) and since I was, as seems perpetual to me, in need of a fruit-based sweet hot or two, I dropped in to one of the spinoff locations to pick up a few at the tidy discount he was offering. I picked up a few of those, figuring I'd get back to them once I returned, but this one proved too much to resist and I had to fight back using this (and another, which will be forthcoming) prior to leaving, so as to have enough left to both review and to film for the FOH series.

My favorite citrus overall is probably blood orange and it was that, in combination with the Ghost, still my favorite superhot, that pushed me over into picking this one up, even though I had some misgivings about the lime. Happily, those misgivings turned out to be misplaced as this is one special sauce indeed. The citrus notes combine into a sort of general citrusy tone, while the garlic, Ghost, and salt blend together in a near magical fashion. The tomato is there to put out some roundness and bring the whole thing together, with the result being quite nice and absolutely one of those sauces wherein the whole is more than the sum of the parts. I found it an absolute delight on meats and meat-forward dishes, but one of the really neat things about the company, which I was not familiar with prior to Roger putting them on, is that they have an entire section of their website devoted to pairing the hot sauces with foods. Absolutely brilliant and I commend them highly for this. I haven't tried everything there, but might get another bottle to do that. I will say that, for me, this sauce is a touch limited as far as usage in that whatever it is needs to accommodate citrus, so pizza and cream-heavy dishes are probably out, at least for me.

This is definitely one of the more delicious sauces I've had this year and the last few it's felt a bit like I'm trudging along trying to find ways to use them. Here, I had to hold myself back from using it up and I'm always overjoyed when I find sauces like that, which are rarer and rarer for me these days, which is also probably to be expected. Having that superhot means the heat is the flash type, which means it is immediately hot, like a lighter coming to life, and then cools off right after, such as if you let off on the gas of a lighter. Still, this is one that kind of skirts the line between being overly hot for normies, if I had to guess. I won't say it's chilehead territory outright, but more the red line separating. 

Bottom line: An absolute stunner of a sauce, both unique and utterly delicious. Pretty much a must for chileheads and fans of Ghosties. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 10
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6