u/MagnusAlbusPater

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Quick Flavor Notes: Tomato, garlic, sweet, smoky, earthy, rich

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium-thick, smooth, creamy

Ingredients: Purified Water, Onion, Tomato, Chilies (Bhavnagiri Chilies, Sankeshwari Chilies), Sugar, Vinegar \[Water, Acidity Regulator (INS 260)\], Garlic, Vegetable Oil (Rice Bran Oil), Soya Sauce \[Soyabeans, Wheat Flour, Spice Extract, Flavor Enhancers (E621, E631, E627), Natural Color (E150c)\], Salt, Permitted Class II Preservatives (E211), Stabilizer (E415).

Naagin Indian Hot Sauce was founded in 2019 by three friends Mikhel Rajani, Kshitij Neelakantan and Arjun Rastogi. Rajani, who’d always been interested in food entrepreneurship and had left his family’s textile business to study hospitality in Hong Kong before founding his own ghost-kitchen pizza business, realized that India needed a homegrown hot sauce brand. India is the world’s largest consumer of chile peppers and the world’s largest exporter of dried chiles being responsible for 40% of the world supply (Mexico leads is fresh chile exports). The trio decided that they should launch an Indian hot sauce made from Indian peppers grown by Indian farmers. Today the company partners with small and family farms throughout India developing ongoing relationships with fair trade practices. The name of the company came from a cricket match Rajani was watching where he saw the players and spectators doing a snake-like dance called the Naagin Dance, meant to imitate a cobra (as naagin means cobra in Hindi). Thinking it was a great name for a hot sauce the brand was born.

India was first introduced to chiles by the Portuguese through their port city of Goa. The Goans embraced them almost immediately turning the Portuguese wine and pork dish carne de vinha d’alhos into the vindaloo curry which is still wildly popular today. Over the next two centuries chiles spread throughout India and evolved into unique peppers not seen in the rest of the world from the mild yet aromatic Kashmiri chile to the scorching ghost pepper. Naagin Original uses two chiles I haven’t encountered in a hot sauce before – Bhavnagiri and Sankeshwari. Bhavnagiri chiles are from Bhavnagar, a city in Gujarat (which, coincidentally, is the Indian state where a ton of Indian immigrants to the USA come from) and are green with a mild heat and a thick flesh. They’re known to have a mild sweet fresh pepper flavor. Sankeshwari, likewise, come from Sankeshwar a town in Maharashtra, western India’s wealthiest and most developed state. Sankeshwari chiles are medium-heat that builds over time and are said to have a smoky and earthy flavor. In addition to the chiles this sauce includes tomatoes, onion, garlic, sugar, rice bran oil (which isn’t something I see often, but it’s nice to see a unique oil), vinegar, and soy sauce. The soy sauce used doesn’t appear to be an artisanal product as it includes flavor enhancers E621, E631 and E627 (which are MSG, disodium inosinate, and disodium guanylate) plus ‘Natural Color E150c’ (caramel coloring). This also includes preservative E211 which is sodium benzoate and stabilizer E415 with is xanthan gum. I have notices many hot sauces from developing nations tend to have artificial preservatives so, while I don’t like to see them in hot sauces, it may be a requirement in India.

Naagin Original Indian Hot Sauce has a medium-thick consistency and a smooth texture. The aroma is a combination of sweet, earthy, and somehow almost mushroomy and meaty. With the oil this sauce is almost fully emulsified, not quite to the level of a mayonnaise, but certainly creamier than the majority of hot sauces. Naagin Original has a mellow sweetness that’s evident at the front but that’s balanced against the rich flavor of the tomato, onion, and garlic as well as the smoky earthy Sankeshwari chiles. With the tomato, onion, and chiles plus the creamy texture this sauce has a hint of a butter chicken or chicken tikka masala vibe, though it doesn’t have the traditional spices used in either. The soy sauce comes through as the flavor develops and brings a salty umami element that again help offset the sweetness at the leading edge of this sauce. Being generally unfamiliar with the Indian chiles used the Bhavnagiri seem to be used primarily for bulk and substance in this sauce, similar to how many sauce makers use bell peppers, and they do bring a bit of a vegetal quality which is nice. The Sankeshwari remind me somewhat of certain dried Mexican chiles like guajillo or ancho with a earthy smoky dried-fruit flavor, and in many ways this sauce is similar to La Pimenterie’s Mycelium though without the maple-syrup mushroom element. Naagin Original isn’t vinegar forward and leans much more towards being rich and luscious than tangy and bright, but there is enough acid to keep it from being dull. There’s an initial sting of heat and then a low warm build but this never rises above a low heat.

I was a little bit perplexed on what the best pairings would be with this sauce after the first taste. Although it seems initially counterintuitive I very much enjoyed this with rigatoni bolognese. I sometimes find very acid-forward hot sauces to be too much when paired with an acidic sauce, but the lower acidity in this sauce combined with its rich flavor and having the tomato commonality made it work very well, and the umami boost was a great added benefit. I also liked this poured over a burger. With the tomato element, the sweetness, and the creamy silky texture it was almost like a ketchup and mayo in one without the overtly overdone sweetness that ketchup has, and the earthy smoky vegetal fruity chile flavors plus the onions and garlic went perfectly with the beef. The one pairing that I found didn’t work was, surprisingly, pizza, especially since apparently the founder of the company was inspired to make this sauce in no small part to have something that would go well with pizza. Since pizza can already be rather rich with the cheese and toppings I found that the lack of vinegar-forwardness and umami richness of this sauce was too much of a same-on-same and didn’t provide enough contrast.

While I do wish they’d chosen a higher quality naturally brewed soy sauce for inclusion and I’m not a fan of the use of artificial preservatives in hot sauce I did enjoy Naagin Indian Hot Sauce The Original quite a bit and am happy to give it my recommendation. This sauce will especially appeal to those who prefer a smooth and creamy texture to their hot sauces and don’t care for a very vinegar-forward taste profile. The combination of the tomatoes, onions, garlic, soy sauce and unique Indian chiles results in great flavor and a great opportunity to try a sauce based on some peppers you don’t see every day.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Tangy, Sweet, Celery Seed

Recommended: Conditional

Texture: Medium with some pepper and garlic bits

Ingredients: Distilled White Vinegar, White Wine Vinegar, Chopped Garlic (garlic, water, citric acid) Green Jalapeno Mash (green jalapeno, distilled white vinegar, salt) Lemon Juice, Cayenne Pepper Powder, Old Bay (celery salt (salt, celery seed), spices (including red pepper and black pepper), and paprika), Minced Onion, White Sugar, Arrow Root Powder

Torchbearer is no stranger to musical tie-in sauces. They’ve teamed up with metal band Nekrogoblikon, alternative rock band Shinedown, and former member of New Kids on the Block and solo artist Danny Wood. While I’ve loved the Nekrogoblikon sauces from Torchbearer that I’ve tried and have yet to try their Shinedown sauces my experience with the Danny Wood sauces hasn’t yet been positive. I found their Jalapeno Cilantro to be lacking in the fresh cilantro flavor I crave and a bit overcooked tasting and the Danny Wood’s Guac Sizzle was one of the only bottles I’ve thrown away after just a few tastes, it just tasted completely rancid, chemical, and foul. The Danny Wood’s Ripped Rojo, however, is the newest sauce collaboration between the two and the first that isn’t green so I had high hopes that it would redeem the line for me.

When I see a sauce marketed as a Rojo sauce my mind immediately goes to assuming it will be a Mexican style sauce. After all Salsa Roja is one of the most popular and ubiquitous table condiments in Mexican restaurants and Rojo and Roja are both simple Spanish for red. The previous two Danny Wood sauces are also somewhat Mexican inspired – one being cilantro and jalapeno based and the other using avocado, a popular Mexican ingredient. Looking at the ingredients list on this and reading the blurb on Torchbearer’s website it’s clear that that’s not the case here though. The goal was apparently to make an everyday table sauce and not something very Mexican. A few things jumped right out at me in the ingredients list, the first being Old Bay seasoning. Growing up near the Chesapeake Bay I’ve long been a big fan of Old Bay and I always keep a jar around the house. Next is the main pepper used in this sauce – green jalapenos. That one shocked me as, obviously, this sauce is red, why are green jalapenos being used? The red color ends up coming from the second ‘pepper’ being used which is just ground cayenne powder. I’m not sure why Torchbearer decided to go with green jalapenos in a red hot sauce as, at least in my opinion, the flavor of red jalapenos is far superior to the green ones, richer, more robust, and less vegetal. Two types of vinegar, both distilled and white wine, a lot of garlic, some sugar and spices round things out. One thing I will commend Torchbearer on here is the use of arrowroot powder as a natural thickening agent as opposed to using xanthan gum.

Danny Wood’s Ripped Rojo has a medium consistency and a semi-rustic slightly chunky texture – there are some pepper and garlic bits inside instead of being smooth, something that I appreciate. The first taste confused me a bit. Despite sugar being towards the bottom of the ingredients list this sauce has a pronounced sweet flavor. It’s vinegar forward as would be expected from the first two ingredients being vinegars but with the white wine vinegar in the mix it’s not as harsh as a sauce based completely on distilled vinegar. There is noticeable garlic flavor but less than I would have expected given the gobs of garlic in the sauce. Torchbearer’s own Garlic Habanero for instance has a much stronger garlic flavor compared to Ripped Rojo, not to mention several even more garlicky hot sauces I’ve tried. In terms of pepper flavor the green jalapenos and cayenne powder don’t seem to bring a lot to the table. Much like Huy Fong was rightfully roasted when they started to use unripe jalapenos which both made their sauce an unpleasant color and resulted in a decline in the flavor I’m not sure why Torchbearer decided to go with unripe jalapenos here. Fully ripe red jalapenos can be glorious in hot sauces with a natural pepper sweetness and more depth of flavor, plus with the natural red color perhaps real cayenne peppers could have been used instead of a powder, resulting in a double-whammy of improved pepper presence. The Old Bay is a good addition however. The umami from the celery seed adds some depth to the sauce and the seasoning blend rounds out the sauce. Although this sauce only has 20mg of sodium per serving it somehow tastes much saltier than that. Overall it comes off as a somewhat bizarre take on a Louisiana style sauce with vinegar up front, a vegetal sensation from the jalapenos, some garlic, some umami and tang from the Old Bay, and a pervading sweetness that doesn’t seem to fit.

Despite not really being a Mexican style sauce Torchbearer does suggest using this on tacos and burritos on their website so I gave it a try first with some tacos from a taco truck I pass on my way home from work. I didn’t care for this with the steak taco, the sweetness and Old Bay were jarring there, but it worked better with the al pastor and the shrimp tacos. I found myself preferring the traditional salsas that came with the tacos more in all cases however. Going from Mexico to Americana I tried this with a microwaved salisbury steak and macaroni and cheese frozen dinner. Typically I find vinegary hot sauces great to go with cheesy pastas but the sweetness again was unpleasant in the macaroni and cheese, though putting dabs on the salisbury steak ended up being the best pairing I found with this sauce. Finally trying this with some grilled shrimp to play off of the Old Bay angle I found that that aspect of the sauce worked well as did the garlic but again a bit too sweet and with a strange aftertaste from the green jalapenos.

Torchbearer Sauce’s Danny Wood’s Ripped Rojo is far from my favorite sauce from the company but I will say it’s the best of the sauces from the Danny Wood lineup. I’m not sure how involved the musicians are in the creation of the sauces and it could be that John Goblikon and I just have much more aligned tastes than Danny Wood and I do. Ripped Rojo isn’t a broken sauce or a poorly made one. There are certainly some things I’d have done differently if it were me designing it but I’m sure Torchbearer did plenty of testing and I can fully admit maybe it’s just my taste buds not clicking with this one. I’ll give it a conditional recommendation. I think it’s primarily the sweetness throwing me off from this so if you like mostly-savory hot sauces that have a sweet undercurrent you may totally dig this.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Umami, citrusy, woodsy

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Chewy and crunchy simultaneously

Ingredients: Water, Konjac Powder, Tapioca Starch, Soybean Oil, Salt, Sugar, Chilli, Monosodium Glutamate, Soybean Fiber, Spices (Sichuan Pepper, Ginger, Garlic, Scallion), Artificial Flavors, Vinegar Powder (Vinegar, Salt), Hydrolyzed Soybean Protein, Bakers Yeast Extract, Disodium Guanylate, Disodium Inosinate, Broad Bean Paste (Chilli, Broad Bean Kernels, Salt, Wheat Flour, Rapeseed Oil), Xanthan Gum

Konjac is an interesting plant. Known by multiple aliases such as Devil’s Tongue or Mountain Yam it’s root originally cultivated in southern China and Southeast Asia but has now spread throughout East Asia as well. The root has a long history of being used in Buddhist cuisine as well as helping people fill their stomachs in times of famine but in modern times they’ve been become popular due to their texture and health properties. Pure prepared konjac root is a zero carb zero calorie food. It’s made up of 97% water suspended in 3% of glucomannan, a dietary fiber which your body doesn’t digest. Tied bundles of konjac are popular in Japanese and Chinese hot pots and noodles made from it have shown up in western health food stores for decades.

More recently we’ve seem the launch of these Chinese spicy konjac snacks that first swept Asia starting in the mid-2010s and have now expanded to the west. These snacks became so popular amongst school children in Asia that some schools in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Thailand banned them due to the potential choking hazard and the high sodium content. Wei Loong, also known as Weilong, originally launched the wildly popular Konjac Shuang line in 2014. More recently they’ve rebranded it as Moishine which is a romanization that more closely matches the Chinese name of their product. The company makes four different flavors – Hot and Spicy, Szechwan Style, Thai Style Hot and Sour, and Peanut and Sesame. This particular example is their Szechwan Style which is supposed to be similar to their Hot and Spicy but with extra Sichuan Peppercorn to give more of numbing sensation and flavor.

In addition to the konjac these use a bevy of umami-rich ingredients. There’s the trio of isolated glutamates – monosodium glutamate (MSG) as well as the complimentary boosters of disodium guanylate and disodium inosinate plus hydrolyzed soy protein which is a precursor to chemically produced soy sauce and is often used in processed foods to give an umami boost. These also use yeast extract, another umami rich ingredient that’s often found in vegan foods and which gives a naturally meaty rich flavor. The spice mix consists of Sichuan peppercorns, ginger, garlic, and scallions but the flavor of these is also boosted by what the label lists as Broad Bean Paste. This paste, also known as doubanjiang, is the heart and soul of Sichuan cooking even more than the eponymous peppercorns. Made from broad beans (more commonly known as fava beans in the west), chile peppers, wheat, and oil it’s traditionally fermented for years to develop a rich umami flavor that compliments its spice.

Texturally these are a little bit less chewy and gelatinous than pure konjac jelly as they do contain some tapioca starch and soy fiber as well. They still have excellent chew to them and the closest western equivalent I could give to them would be sweated but still al dente onions, though these are chewier than those. The Sichuan peppercorn flavor is strong and at the forefront. It’s citrusy yet woodsy and piney all at the same time, similar to cedar with exotic citrus zest and a slight metallic flavor that comes from the numbing sensation. While these aren’t as numbing as something like the 50Hertz Tingly Peanuts they still have the effect especially if you eat two packs right after one another. Underneath that Sichuan peppercorn flavor there is a deep rich meaty taste. Despite these being vegan the bevy of umami ingredients gives the impression that these have been stewed in a non-specific animal stock which is very satisfying. The garlic and onion (or well, scallion) add to that meaty flavor as those ingredients are typically paired with meats and the ginger adds some freshness and a different kind of spice. These also include vinegar powder which adds a nice amount of tanginess to offset all of the rich umami flavors. The chile flavor is more subtle than the others. You can taste a bit of dried-fruit style dried chile taste in the very background but the chiles do make themselves known more in the heat. While not super hot, or even hot for that matter, these do give that characteristic mala numbing and spicy sensation where your lips and tongue go both numb and have a bit of chile burn.

Speaking of eating two packs (or more) in a row, the serving size of these is two packs and for that they’re remarkably healthy in a number of ways (as long as you’re not on a sodium restricted diet). While these aren’t zero calorie nor zero carb as they contain ingredients other than just the konjac two packets contain only 40 calories and three net carbs. Those two packets also unfortunately contain 430mg of sodium, almost 20% of the daily recommended intake. Still as a quick snack these are quite delicious and I’m happy to recommend them. I’m also excited to try their other flavors to see how much they differ in overall taste. If you enjoy Asian snacks and like something with a unique texture and flavor profile these are absolutely worth picking up.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Smoky, Rich, Earthy, Piquant

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium with nice chunks

Ingredients: Distilled vinegar, smoked serranos, smoked jalapenos, smoked onions, smoked onion juice, maple syrup, mustard seeds, figs (figs, rice flour), salt, sun dried tomatoes, horseradish, garlic, garlic scapes, black pepper

After previously trying Keith’s Taco Sauce and Keith’s Chicken Sauce it was time to open up the final of the trio from Keith Habersberger of the Try Guys (though he has now released a steak sauce and a lasagna sauce that I’ll have to pick up at some point). This one took a while for me to get to because I have a certain disdain for a trend amongst a lot of food YouTubers lately for “burger sauces” that end up being mostly ketchup and mayo (something I blame primarily on Joshua Weissman). Those often end up being slathered on “smash burgers” that are nothing more than meat, American cheese, and the sauce, another trend I very much dislike. For me a great burger has to be grilled over an actual fire, preferably charcoal or wood, and it has to have lots of vegetables – a big slice of raw onion, tomato, dill pickles (never sweet), and some good lettuce (not iceberg) along with a good sharp cheddar, muenster, swiss, or other nice strong cheese. Regardless, I think my internal dislike of those trends made me react negatively to even looking at this sauce for too long.

Like the other Keith’s sauces this one is made by Butterfly Bakery of Vermont which would have eased my misgivings about a burger sauce sauce in general. Once I actually looked at the ingredients I was intrigued. No mayo or ketchup to be seen, but instead a sauce that looks like it leans heavily into smokey, piquant, and umami flavors. While Butterfly Bakery of Vermont has sauces involving smoked onions, smoked serranos, and smoked jalapenos I don’t believe I’ve ever seen them release a sauce with all of those under their own brand. Keith’s Burger Sauce has all three plus smoked onion juice. Burgers need mustard and Keith’s Burger Sauce includes real mustard seeds, something I love as the texture of the seeds is always more pleasing than a finely ground prepared mustard. This sauce ups the piquancy by also including horseradish, not something I’ve tried on a burger before but an addition I now find intriguing. In addition to the (smoked) onions this also has both garlic scapes, a perennial favorite in sauces made by Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, plus actual garlic, something I don’t believe I’ve seen in a sauce produced by them before. Sun dried tomatoes are natural sources of umami and richness both of which are then supported by figs, not something I think I’ve seen in a hot sauce before, but which have a natural jammy earthy complex flavor that I could see going beautifully with everything else.

Opening up the bottle the smoky aroma is prominent in this sauce. Texturally I love that Keith’s Burger Sauce is very chunky. There are chewy bits of sun dried tomato and perhaps smoked onion, peppers, and figs all in the mix. That smoke is at the forefront of the flavor profile as well. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont typically uses maple wood for smoking and I believe that’s what’s being used here as while prominent the smoke flavor isn’t overpowering. The wave after the smoke is a complex combination of rich umami sun dried tomato flavor, piquancy from the mustard along with the natural bitterness of mustard seed mixing with the slight bitterness from the smoked onions and the horseradish, the earthy vegetal flavor of the smoked peppers, and the pungency of the garlic and black pepper. Keith’s Burger Sauce hits a lot of different notes at once yet somehow they all blend together. As the sauce is pretty chunky the flavor also changes some as you chew. Get a mustard seed and you get a pop of mustard, get a chunk of sun dried tomato and that flavor comes more to the forefront. While this sauce does have maple syrup plus the figs, a sweet fruit, the overall presentation is almost completely savory. Any sweetness in this sauce is so subtle it mainly serves to balance out the more bitter elements of the smoke, horseradish, and mustard. Keith’s Burger Sauce leans earthier than bright and has enough going on in it that it’s not vinegar forward but it does still have a solid amount of tang. Heat level is quite mild, neither jalapenos nor serranos being particularly spicy peppers, and with so much else going on in the sauce that heat is further diluted.

With this being called a burger sauce the first thing I had to try it with was, of course, a burger. In fact I tried it with two – one from fast food and one homemade. I went with a Burger King Whopper as, at least in my opinion, it’s the best of the fast food burgers out there as it’s one of the few that does have at least a hint of grilled flavor. The smokiness of the sauce was very appealing with it and enhanced that flame-broiled flavor to make it taste closer to having been cooked on an actual grill. I also liked how the mustard and bitter elements helped offset the sweetness of the ketchup. For my homemade burger I grilled it on my Weber kettle as I like with sharp cheddar, a super thick slice of onion, pickles, and a big slice of tomato. Again I found this sauce to be a great companion to it and really enjoyed the richer umami flavors and how they added contrast to the aggressive bite of the raw onion and the sweetness of the raw tomato. I also tried this with macaroni and cheese, something that always needs hot sauce in my opinion, and found it to be one of the better hot sauces for kicking it up. The tanginess of this sauce came out more when not competing with already tangy burger elements and helped cut through the richness and both smoke and tomato are always great combinations with cheese

As often happens the sauce that I put off for way too long ended up being one of my favorites, and as far as the Keith’s line of sauces go I enjoy this one more than his Taco Sauce or his Chicken Sauce, though I did find those tasty as well. If you’re looking for a unique hot sauce that happens to go great with burgers (plus many other things) this is definitely one to check out, and one that gets my recommendation. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors or thickeners.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Clean, fresh, malty, yeasty, hoppy, sweet

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium-thin with a few seeds

Ingredients: Honey Field Farm cayenne peppers, distilled white vinegar, The Alchemist’s “Farmer’s Daughter” Belgian style saison, Brookford Farm parsnips, salt, water

Sometimes I pick a new sauce to open because it looks interesting while I’m browsing through my collection and sometimes I pick a new sauce to open based on what I’m having for dinner that night and want to make sure it’s something that will pair well. This one is an example of the latter. I’d given in to a semi-annual craving of mine and picked up a container of fried chicken and Publix on the way home and well, I can’t have fried chicken without hot sauce. This one caught my eye not only because I love beer hot sauces but also because it’s a cayenne based sauce, so perfect for fried chicken, and I can’t recall having seen a cayenne based hot sauce from Butterfly Bakery of Vermont before.

While cayenne based sauces are some of the most common hot sauces out there – almost every Louisiana style sauce is cayenne based from Crystal to Frank’s Red Hot to Louisiana to the store brand sauce at Piggly Wiggly – they’re much more rare in the craft hot sauce world. Maybe that’s because the cayenne has such a pedestrian reputation or because many hot sauce aficionados seek out spicier peppers but aside from Hank Sauce, which uses it in their base and the Volcanic Peppers Scarlett line there are only a couple of odd here and there cayenne craft sauces I can recall. Personally I believe that’s a shame as the cayenne is a beautiful pepper with a nice clean quick heat that blends well with a ton of different foods. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont chose to pair this with Alchemist Brewery’s Farmer’s Daughter Saison. A Belgian style of beer Saisons were typically brewed over the winter for consumption in the summer and are effervescent, dry, citrusy, spicy, and one of my absolute favorite styles of beer. The final element are parsnips. Parsnips, which look like white carrots, are much more common in Europe than in the USA but have an earthier sweeter flavor than carrots with hints of warm spices. While Butterfly Bakery of Vermont typically allows their micro-batch releases to be more rustic in texture with more seeds and bits this one seems smoother than most with a medium-thin consistency. The earthy aroma of the parsnips and the malty hoppy smell of the beer come through in the nose.

Most cayenne sauces used aged cayenne peppers and
copious amounts of salt and not much other than that but vinegar, giving them a distinct salty, tangy, lightly fermented flavor. Butterfly Bakery went a completely different direction here with fresh cayenne peppers which gives this sauce a very different character than your typical Louisiana style sauce. The fresh cayenne peppers have a bright clean flavor with just hints of vegetal and juicy pepper taste. Saisons use a unique type of yeast which is very aggressive in gobbling up complex starches and sugars which results in a dryer beer with complex spicy and earthy notes from that action. Alchemist’s Farmer’s Daughter embraces the style and with the clean flavor of the cayennes is forward and shines in this sauce. There’s a malty yeasty element similar to the aroma of fresh-baked steakhouse bread rolls plus some bitterness and slightly woody piney notes from those hops all wrapped in the embrace of citrus and spice from the rest of the beer. With the cayennes playing treble and the Saison covering the midrange the parsnips bring the bass in this sauce with a sweet earthy foundation that also brings in grace notes of warming spice that blend with those same notes in the Farmer’s Daughter Saison. The resort is a clean, concise, yet also subtly complex sauce with a solid beer flavor and a gentle root vegetable sweetness. As you’d expect from a cayenne based sauce the heat level is minimal.

As I mentioned above my first order of business was putting this to work on some fried chicken. I loved Cayenne Parsnip Farmer’s Daughter Craft Beer Hot Sauce with the fried chicken, chicken and beer is such a classic combination the Koreans even have a slang work for it – chimaek. Plus, this sauce being considerably less salty than a typical Louisiana style hot sauce is a big plus with fried chicken as its salty on its own. This sauce is also amazing on seafood. Seafood steamed with beer is another classic and this was perfect to dip some shrimp and lobster tails in (along with the melted butter of course) with the clean cayenne flavor not overpowering the seafood and the sweetness of the parsnips playing very nicely with the natural sweetness of the shellfish. With one of Butterfly Bakery of Vermont’s other beer hot sauces, their Vienna Lager Mustard Hot Sauce, being my absolute favorite hot sauce ever to put on sausages I gave this one a go on some grilled brats with some sauteed onions and this is a home run there as well. While I missed the mustard flavor from the Vienna Lager Mustard Hot Sauce, the stronger beer flavor in this one combined with that subtle sweetness created an equally delightful combo.

As this is a micro-batch release I don’t know how much longer it will be available but as of right now it is and if you can tell by my write-up this is one I highly recommend. If you’re a lover of beer and and want to try fresh tasting cayenne sauce that’s different from many other cayenne based sauces on the market this is a great one to give a go. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Rich, salty, astringent

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium with some spice bits

Ingredients: Red Habanero Pepper Mash (Red Habanero Peppers, Salt), Apple Cider Vinegar, Distilled Vinegar, Water, Tomato Paste, Lemon Juice, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder

John Hard founded CaJohns in 1996 and was one of the earliest pioneers of both craft hot sauces and super hot sauces. He and his company were so influential he was inducted into the Hot Sauce Hall of Fame in the introductory class along with other such visionaries as Blaire Lazar of Blair’s Death Sauce fame, Dave Hirschkop of Dave’s Gourmet, Marie Sharp of the hot sauce company bearing her name, and Dave DeWitt who founded The National Fiery Foods Show in Albuquerque, NM which was the first major and longest-running hot sauce and spicy food exposition. The CaBoom! line came out as early as 1997 and has grown to include a range of sauces almost all at or near the top end of the heat scale and incorporating pepper extract except for this one. CaBoom! Gourmet Hot Sauce was initially developed using Red Savina habaneros, the hottest available pepper until super-hots like the ghost pepper, scorpion pepper, and Carolina reaper begun to enter the scene. While the bottle no longer specifies the use of Red Savina habaneros I was still excited to try it.

Caboom! Gourmet is marketed as using only the highest quality ingredients and being chef-developed to balance heat and flavor. Looking at this hot sauce online the ingredients list differs from what is printed on the bottle. Online the ingredients all list those Red Savina habaneros and list the garlic, tomato, and onion farther forward in the ingredients list. They also list the garlic and onion as whole ingredients instead of the powders listed here. John Hard sold his company to Hot Shots Distributing in 2018 following a cancer scare and many long time fans of the brand have felt the sauces have gone downhill since the change in ownership. Switching from genuine fresh Red Savina habaneros to a generic premade red habanero mash and from whole onions and garlic to onion and garlic powders certainly speaks of optimizing for cheapness of production rather than quality of sauce. Caboom! Gourmet does have a strong habanero aroma with hints of super-hot chile in the nose. The color is also an attractive red and though the sauce is mostly smooth with a medium thickness there are some spice bits inside.

The first taste reminded me a lot of hot sauces from Bravado Sauce Co, especially their Arbol Chili and Garlic hot sauce. Something that I’ve noticed with Bravado sauces, and that is true with CaBoom! Gourmet as well, is that they have a more heavily cooked flavor, similar to a tomato sauce that’s been cooked slowly all day vs a bright fresh one just heated through by tossing it with the pasta for less than a minute in the pan. It’s not that one is better than the other and both have their place. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont and Gindo’s epitomize that fresh pepper flavor in their sauces to me while Bravado and this particular CaJohn sauce have more of that slow-cooked richness. I’m sure that the tomato paste is playing a role here as well as that does add a ton of umami and richness to the sauce, but even the habanero flavor itself in CaJohn’s CaBoom! Gourmet is less the bright fruity light flavor that they sometimes have but rather a bit astringent and vegetal (though not nearly so much as orange habaneros). There’s still a bit of habanero fruit here, but that’s also blunted by what my biggest issue with this sauce is – it’s way saltier than it needs to be. At 170mg of sodium per teaspoon this sauce is one of the saltiest craft hot sauces on the market and that saltiness emphasizes those savory flavors over the fresher fruitier ones. With using garlic and onion powder there’s some flavor of both but as the powders don’t pop with the same freshness and complexity that real onions and garlic do that further pushes the earthy savory side of this sauce. In terms of heat this is a couple steps up from a basic hot sauce but still not as hot as something like Trader Joe’s Habanero or Microsaucerie Piko Pepper’s Volkano in terms of other habanero sauces. I have a feeling if this was using fresh Red Savina habaneros the heat level would be much higher.

I’ve been in the mood for wings lately so my first application of CaJohn’s CaBoom! Gourmet was with them. As a wing sauce this is very solid and with a blue cheese dip the astringency is balanced out and the saltiness doesn’t seem as prominent. When I tried this with a ham and cheese melt that saltiness reared its head much more prominently especially since ham is already a salty meat, though I did feel that the flavor of this sauce was a great match for the ham and the smokiness of the meat seemed to go well with the rich flavor of the sauce. One area I didn’t like this as much was with some shrimp alfredo pasta. While CaBoom! Gourmet isn’t dull tasting it’s also not super tangy so doesn’t cut through the creamy sauce as well as a brighter tangier sauce would.

If you’re a fan of richer heavier tasting sauces and those that trend towards the earthier side of things this is one you may very much enjoy, especially if you’re not turned off by sauces that are on the saltier side. I’ll go ahead and give this a recommendation because it is tasty overall and sometimes it’s a nice change of pace to have something other than the brighter tangier sauces that I usually gravitate towards. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Black pepper, fruity pepper, garlic, tangy

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium-thin with spice bits

Ingredients: Undisclosed but from my tasting and research I assume habanero, jalapeno, cayenne, distilled vinegar, lime or lemon juice, chopped garlic, onion powder, celery seed, and salt.

While I often review nationally available sauces (at least via online purchase) I thought this time I’d try something hyper-local. This sauce comes from House of Omelets a small local FL chain of breakfast restaurants (and somehow the other FL breakfast chain, First Watch, has been the one to blow up nationally even though House of Omelets is far superior when it comes to food). In operation since 2013 I’ve always been very impressed with their food, not in the least because of this wonderful house hot sauce that they have on every table and available for sale.

My interest in shop-special hot sauces began right after college when I moved to an apartment on the outer periphery of Amish country. There was an Amish-run sandwich shop that had a special called the “Bear Burger” which consisted of ground beef, pepperoni, Italian sausage, jalapenos, onions, cheese, and probably more all chopped together on a flat top and stuffed into a hoagie roll before being doused with their homemade hot sauce. It was fresh, green, vibrant, and surely came from peppers from some Amish garden. I was hooked. The House of Omelets hot sauce doesn’t actually list the ingredients on the label and as far as I can tell don’t post them on their website. The most I’ve been able to dig up is that it contains habaneros and jalapenos which seems to hold true based on the flavor, and I believe possibly some cayenne as well. There’s also a major black pepper kick, some onion, and plenty of garlic in this sauce. I believe the vinegar used is typical distilled as it has a strong vinegar tang, but I believe there’s also some citrus in this as there’s a sourness that’s not often found from vinegar alone. There’s also quite a lot of salt at 130mg per teaspoon. In consistency it’s medium-thin with a semi-rustic texture with lots of bit of spice but no real big pepper chunks. It comes with an orifice reducer by default which I remove as I always do.

From the first time I tasted this sauce at the House of Omelets restaurant it reminded me strongly of Gator Hammock Gator Sauce, but with a twist. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if this was co-packed by Gator Hammock as they’re a local Florida brand as well. The closest match of one of their sauces that I can find to this is their Lethal Gator which also uses habanero and jalapeno peppers plus lots of garlic, black pepper, onion, and key lime juice which would explain the tartness I get aside from the vinegar. The Gator Hammock sauces also all include celery seed which adds a certain umami savoriness to their sauces that I also pick up here. While the Gator Hammock sauces are all Louisiana Style hot sauce based I don’t get as much of that element in the House of Omelets hot sauce as I do from Gator Hammock so I believe this is a custom blend with less Louisiana base and more habanero and jalapeno. The fruity habanero flavor is present as is some vegetal background from the jalapenos and the celery seed. The black pepper gives this sauce a pungent punch with the garlic and onions filling in the base. With the habanero element this sauce has a nice little kick, though still on the milder side overall, but a step up from your basic Tabasco or Frank’s. It’s extremely tangy and high on the salt, but the flavors involved all seem perfectly designed to go with breakfast.

My first pairings with this sauce were at the House of Omelets restaurant and, now that I think about it, I’ve never actually ordered an omelet there. However this sauce is fantastic with their various Eggs Benedict options (I can’t not order Eggs Benedict if I’m ever at a restaurant that serves it). I’ve purchased bottles to take home several times and it’s a great companion with homemade breakfasts of bacon and eggs or breakfast burritos (I should learn to make hollandaise so that I can make Eggs Benedict myself). The black pepper, celery seed, and fruity habanero heat are always great breakfast companion flavors. Aside from breakfast this sauce is so tangy that it’s great for creamy soups and pastas with that black pepper and garlic being perfect with clam chowder or fettuccini alfredo. I also really enjoy this sauce with chicken salad sandwiches where it easily cuts through the mayo and again that celery seed flavor is a natural pairing with the celery in the salad.

If you’re ever in Florida and come upon an House of Omelets I can easily recommend it for a breakfast stop as well as recommend picking up a bottle of this sauce to go. If you’re not in Florida or don’t have plans to come by then Gator Hammock Lethal Gator or Swamp Gator are both very similar sauces and everything I’ve had from the brand has been delicious.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Mustard, vegetal, sweet

Recommended: Conditional

Texture: Medium and smooth

Ingredients: Pepper mash (yellow bell, pink lady apple, red bell, orange bell, salt), apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, cane sugar, water, spices, spicy brown mustard, yellow mustard, garlic powder, minced garlic, salt, xanthan gum

Crispy Kytti’s Cauldron out of Sioux City, IA is one of the first ultra-small-batch hot sauce companies I purchased a bunch of sauces from. Unfortunately it’s been a bit since I’ve done a review of one of them as I try to spread things around and sometimes I just get blind to sauces sitting right in front of me so I decided it was time to open another one up. This time I decided to go with Ko’s Adventure which brings up the question of “what is a hot sauce?” I tend to be pretty open minded in terms of heat levels (or lack thereof) so I was excited to give it a try.

What brought my “what is a hot sauce” question up about this sauce is that it doesn’t actually contain any peppers that contain capsaicin, so there’s no heat here. I have had other hot sauces designed to be zero heat and they can still be tasty. Some Caribbean hot sauce brands use the term “pepper sauce” so perhaps that would be more accurate as this does indeed contain peppers, several varieties of bell peppers to be exact. In addition this also has Pink Lady apples which are an Australian cultivar and a cross between the Golden Delicious and the Lady Williams apple. Crispy Kytti’s Cauldron mentions that their hot sauces are fermented which does add additional flavor and the acidity is boosted by apple cider vinegar and lemon juice. Garlic and some unnamed spices contribute towards flavor and the sauce is finished off with both spicy brown and yellow mustard. The consistency is medium with a smooth texture. The mustard aroma is the most prominent in this sauce with some hints of sweetness below.

The mustard dominates in the flavor of Crispy Kytti’s Cauldron Ko’s Adventure as well. In fact I’d also most classify this as a fancy mustard sauce more than a hot sauce. I happen to love mustard so that’s not a problem for me, but as bell peppers tend to have a relatively mild flavor compared to the more assertive mustard all that they contribute here is some bulk and a slight sweet vegetal background. With the garlic and the spicy brown mustard there’s just the tiniest bit of that brief nasal heat that can come from garlic and mustard seeds. The apples and the sugar in the sauce both give it a slightly-more-than-subtle sweetness without taking it all the way into sweet mustard or honey-mustard type of sweet territory. The acidity level is good, more than a standard mustard, and the lemon juice gives it a pleasant tartness. Ko’s Adventure also has a certain richness to it, perhaps the fermentation of the apples and bell peppers created some umami compounds which combined with the silky texture of this sauce give it a meaty indulgent finish.

As the mustard is so prominent in this sauce I predominantly used it as I would a mustard. It’s delicious on bratwursts and hamburgers, it adds depth and tang when added to macaroni and cheese, and it’s perfect spread on the bread for ham or turkey sandwiches. I did try it as a sauce for wings as well and while delicious wings with no heat did leave me wanting. It has convinced me to try adding some mustard to my next batch of homemade wing sauce however.

All of this brings up the questions – who is Ko’s Adventure for? If you’re the type that needs intense burn from all of your sauces and scoffs and anything that doesn’t list super-hot chiles at the first ingredient, this sauce won’t be for you. If you love mustard I think you’ll enjoy this one. This could also be a great sauce to have around if you have small children who want to copy you and use hot sauce but can’t handle heat yet, or if you need something for relatives who stop by with zero heat tolerance as well. Since this is a hot sauce without heat I’ll give this a conditional recommendation. The flavor is excellent, but as I know many people do look for some heat it may be disappointing to those of you who want that.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Coffee, cocoa, fruity, sweet

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium and smooth

Ingredients: Familia Farm red jalapeno, organic distilled white vinegar, cold brewed Carrier Roasting Company’s “Deep Thought” coffee, pure organic Vermont maple syrup, salt

Every so often I’ll go through the spare bedroom where I store my boxes of hot sauces searching for the next one to open and when I pull one out I’ll think “darn, I must’ve bought a duplicate of that, I reviewed it ages ago”. I don’t know how many times I did that with this bottle of Maple Coffee Hot Sauce before I finally searched through my review archive on my site and realized I hadn’t actually reviewed it. So not only is this a new review for a Butterfly Bakery of Vermont hot sauce that could’ve come out well before, this is one of one of their standard lineup sauces that’s always available instead of a microbatch that may or may not have been around when you got around to reading the review.

On their website Claire from Butterfly Bakery of Vermont mentions that this sauce had a particularly long development process as she tried to get it exactly right, being particularly picky about the coffee used in the sauce. I’m not a big coffee drinker myself, usually only having it a few times per year, but I do know it’s something that many people develop an obsessive love for. Claire decided to go with Deep Thought coffee from Carrier Coffee. Carrier began in 2015 in Northfield, VT and has grown from a humble CSA subscription model to having full cafes. Their Deep Thought coffee is a single-origin coffee from Guatemala with a dark roast that they say has chocolate and smoky notes. Complimenting the coffee Maple Coffee Hot Sauce uses Vermont Maple Syrup and ripe red jalapenos, from Familia Farm in West Pawlet, VT, one of the company’s first pepper suppliers. While this bottle, from 2024 according to the label, features the organic distilled white vinegar, the current one on the website lists simply distilled white vinegar. I do believe Claire had commented in the past that their previous organic distilled vinegar provider, Artesano, had gotten out of that business. Maple Coffee Hot Sauce is a bit thicker in texture than some other Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sauces, being medium instead of medium-thin and is blended smooth instead of the more rustic micro-batch releases. The coffee is very present in the aroma of the sauce.

I’ve tried a number of other hot sauces that contain coffee and this may have the strongest coffee flavor of any of them. In comparison Queen Majesty’s Red Habanero and Black Coffee hot sauce has an extremely subtle coffee flavor and while there’s more of a notable coffee presence in The Spicy Shark’s Thresher Shark Chipotle there’s also so much else going on in that sauce the coffee just blends in. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont Maple Coffee Hot Sauce by comparison is just four ingredients (or five if you include salt) so each stands out in the mix. Starting with the coffee the Carrier Deep Thought adds a strong but complex bitter element to this sauce. I can taste the cocoa that Carrier mentions as well as some very subtle smoke. Being a dark roast it has less of the acidity and citrus flavors that a lighter roast would have, but the Familia Farm red jalapenos bring plenty of juicy fruitiness in that both fill in those missing pieces lost in the roasting process as well as contrast to the dark chocolaty umami of the coffee. There’s some brilliance in how much restraint was shown with the maple syrup. Americans love their coffee sweet, just look at how many adult milkshakes Starbucks sells vs cups of black coffee, but Butterfly Bakery of Vermont chose to use just enough to provide a tiny bit of balance to the bitterness of the dark roast coffee without trying to hide it. That maple syrup also seems to bring out some of those chocolate notes more in the coffee. The resort of all of this is a hot sauce that unabashedly coffee and red jalapeno forward with just a touch of sweetness on the back end. This is also spicier than you’d expect from a jalapeno sauce. Familia Farms knows what they’re doing with those peppers.

The big question is – how do you pair a coffee hot sauce? My first thought was that since coffee is such a common breakfast drink that that would be the place to start. I then thought about red-eye gravy, which also uses coffee, so decided to fry up a ham steak with some scrambled eggs and toast. This sauce slaps with fried ham and eggs. That dark roasty bitter coffee element added a new dimension to the plate. My next thought was that these would be really great with some microwave steam-in-bag char siu bao that I’d picked up. Again that coffee flavor worked super well with the Chinese BBQ pork and the jalapenos gave them a nice little kick to offset their sweetness. I also thought that since coffee-rubbed steak is a thing that this sauce would be great as a steak sauce. I was again rewarded and found that this sauce is great with red meat, and that the coffee and maple both worked very well with the charred smoky skirt steak I grilled over charcoal and mesquite chunks.

While this isn’t a “put it on everything” sauce I was surprised by how well it goes with certain things. If you’re a coffee lover or if you like hot sauces that explore more bitter flavors this one is a must get. If you’re looking for something that has a distinctly different flavor from most hot sauces out there this is also a great one to try. I’m happy to give Butterfly Bakery of Vermont Maple Coffee Hot Sauce my full recommendation. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Fresh corn, black pepper, earthy, fresh

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium-thin with some small bits

Ingredients (corrected label version): Vinegar, Sweet Corn, Avocado Oil, Salt, Onion, Garlic, Ghost Pepper, Cilantro, Chile De Arbol, Nutritional Yeast, Raw Sugar, Black Pepper, Lemon.

Savir Foods was founded by chef Josue Rivas. Originally from Callao, Peru, a port area of Lima, he grew up with a family who loved to cook at home which gave him a great appreciation for food. After moving to Los Angeles he studied both computer engineering and attended culinary school where he had the opportunity to learn from the greats such as Julia Child, Wolfgang Puck, and Masaharu Morimoto. Rivas owned a number of Peruvian restaurants and catering companies over the years before going back into engineering. During the pandemic after relocating to Austin, TX he found himself missing cooking and started experimenting with hot sauces for his family and friends. Focusing on natural ingredients and flavor first he received such a great reception for his sauces he decided to turn it into a business. After his first sauce, Jala Pepa, appeared on Hot Ones seasons fifteen his company blew up with two other sauces appearing in later seasons. This particular sauce, Elotes Loco Fire Edition, appeared in season twenty-six in the number four position.

ELotes Loco Fire Edition is the second edition of Savir Foods Elotes Loco hot sauce. The original featured only chiles de arbol as the heat source while the Fire Edition adds ghost peppers. Both are based on the popular Mexican street food Elotes which is grilled corn typically seasoned with a mix of mayonnaise and/or Mexican crema, cotija cheese, ground chili, hot sauce, and lime juice. Savir Foods uses sweet corn in this sauce to bring the authentic corn flavor as well as a chile de arbol, traditional in Mexico, as well as ghost peppers to bring the heat. Nutritional yeast adds that umami cheesiness that would normally come from the cotija while keeping the sauce dairy free and avocado oil to give it the richness missing from the lack of cheese and mayo or crema. Garlic, onion, and cilantro are all present to add depth of flavor and are present in seasoning salt often used in elotes. Interestingly, I do believe the label on my particular bottle, which was one from the first run of this sauce, is incorrect. Mine for instance lists salt as the second ingredient by volume, and at only 45mg per serving there’s no way that’s correct. On the Savir Foods website they have an updated label that looks much more accurate and breaks out the “spices” into black pepper and sugar while also listening lemon juice, which seems to match a citrus flavor I can taste in the bottle. This isn’t the first time I’ve seen a label revision in a hot sauce, but I believe in this case it was just a matter of correcting an incorrect early label rather than a revision in the recipe.

I’ve always loved both corn and elotes, and in fact whenever driving through the Mexican area of town and seeing the women selling it out of the back of their minivans I’d stop for some. This isn’t the first corn-based hot sauce I’ve tried, that honor goes to Heartbeat Hot Sauce x Korn’s Here to Slay. While the corn was present in that sauce it’s sweeter and more fresh tasting in Elotes Loco Fire Edition. The earthy smoky ghost peppers and fruity nutty chiles de arbol both contrast that sweet corn flavor that help it stand out in this sauce. Compared to the Korn sauce Elotes Loco is also tangier which is something that I prefer and helps it pair better with more foods, and the use of the lemon juice keeps that tang fresh instead of having it be all from vinegar. Onion and garlic naturally pair well with both corn and peppers and do so in this sauce as well, filling in the flavor profile between the sweetness of the corn and the earthier pepper choices. I also like the inclusion of the avocado oil. While this sauce doesn’t have the emulsified consistency of some oil-rich sauces (and in fact it’s rather thin in consistency) the avocado oil does add richness and brings out the fat-soluble flavors in the peppers and vegetables in the sauce. Combined with the nutritional yeast, which is high in glutamates, there’s a surprising amount of umami in this sauce. The corn even comes through in the aroma of the sauce and while I wouldn’t say that it’s the taste of elotes bottled, it does hit the same notes of sweet corn plus chiles, tang, cheesiness, spice, smokiness, earthiness, and freshness. Heat level is medium with not much initial burn but one that builds over time as is common with sauces incorporating ghost peppers.

I had to go with tacos with this sauce first. I found a new place that makes amazing chicken tinga and loved them with this sauce, the sweetness of the corn is a great match with the smoky tomatoey tinga. I also tried this with some shrimp tacos and again corn and seafood is a match made in heaven and I loved the earthy bite of the ghost peppers with the shrimp. This sauce is also a great breakfast option and it mad me realize corn should play a bigger role in breakfast other than in grits and hoecakes. This goes extremely well with eggs and when some got into my biscuits in gravy, not something I normally eat with hot sauce, I found that it worked very well there too, perhaps its the strong black pepper flavor in the sauce that makes it a natural pairing.

This one is an easy recommend for me and another winner from Sean Evans or whoever it is that picks the hot sauces that appear on the Hot Ones. If you’re a fan of corn or just of hot sauces that do a great job balancing a wide range of flavors this one is a must try. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.

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Quick Flavor Notes: Rich, citrusy, warm, bright

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium-thin and emulsified with some spice bits

Ingredients: Red bell peppers, Onions, Cider Vinegar, Canola Oil, Lemon pulp and zest, Habanero peppers, Garlic, Salt, Cayenne peppers, Sumac, Cane Sugar, Spices

Monteal’s La Pimenterie has one of the more interesting hot sauce company origin stories I’ve read. Documentary filmmaker Julien Fréchette, the founder, had an interest in chile peppers from a young age when he’d watch his uncle turn red from using hot sauces and harissa paste with food. While making a documentary about western volunteers fighting with Kurdish soldiers against ISIS in Iraq one of the soldiers shared a quote from Hemingway that stuck with him: “Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” After returning and drinking too much wine he mused about starting a hot sauce company that featured oak aged sauces and true to the quote he committed to it. In addition to his documentary about the war Fréchette also traveled the world maki the French language documentary Chiliheads where he explored both the peppers and the people who love them.

Fogo, which is Portuguese for Fire, is La Pimenterie’s take on a Peri Peri sauce. Peri Peri was originally born out of Portuguese colonial expansion in South America and Africa. Portuguese explorers and merchants took the malagueta pepper from Brazil and transplanted them in Africa where they grew abundantly and evolved into what became known as the Piri Piri pepper or the African Birdseye. Interestingly despite the similarity in name the African Birdseye pepper and the Thai Birdseye chile are two different species – the African variety being Capsicum Frutescens while the Thai version being Capsicum Annuum. The Portuguese combined those African peppers with citrus, olive oil, and spices and Peri Peri sauce was born. From the beginning the Portuguese primarily used the sauce on grilled meats and poultry. Today one of the most common examples of the style is Nando’s brand, which is especially popular in the United Kingdom where the majority of their restaurants exist, though they’re also very popular in South Africa and Australia.

La Pimenterie took a non-traditional path with Fogo. Instead of using African Birdseye chiles they instead use a combination of habaneros and cayenne peppers for heat. Like traditional Peri Peri sauces Fogo does use lemon, in this case both the pulp and the zest, as well as garlic. There are some unnamed spices but traditional ones in Peri Peri include paprika, coriander seeds, ginger, and cardamom. They chose to use apple cider vinegar, which typically isn’t something I love in hot sauces, especially when combined with sugar as is the case here but in this sauce I didn’t find it objectionable in any way. While traditional Peri Peri sauces use olive oil La Pimenterie opted for Canola. Canola is obviously a cheaper option, but it’s also more neutral, and being a Canadian company I can give them a pass on using Canola as it is a Canadian product. For more food history, Canola stands for CANada Oil Low Acidity and was a marketing solution combined with a new cultivar of what is commonly known as rapeseed oil to make it more friendly to consumers. The most unique ingredient however, is Sumac. Sumac, the dried a ground berry of the Sumac shrub, has a fruity sour citrusy flavor similar to lemon and is commonly used in many African and Middle Eastern cuisines.

With all of the oil Fogo has a creamy emulsified texture yet still flows easily with a medium-thin consistency. The sauce is mostly smooth but you can see some spice bits. The aroma took me a while to place. There’s a maltiness that doesn’t seem to come from any of the ingredients but I couldn’t help but thing it smelled a lot like Grape Nuts cereal mixed with garlic and peppers. I’ve had Canola heavy sauces in the past where the oil tasted old or rancid and thankfully that’s not the case here. In fact, despite this being a creamy emulsified sauce it still tastes incredibly fresh and vibrant. The lemon comes through as do the fruity habaneros with another sour fruity flavor coming from the sumac. That combo of lemon plus habanero plus sumac seem to amplify each other to bring out the citrus and fruity flavors of each more than the sum of their parts would suggest. At the same time there is a strong garlic and onion flavor which gives this sauce a solid foundation. I can’t place all of the unnamed spices in this sauce, there’s some black pepper for sure, and I believe I can taste some cardamom and coriander, perhaps ginger as well, it’s a nice blend of warming spices with a nuttiness that both go well with the citrus from the lemon and sumac as well as with the aromatics and provide contrast to both. The acidity likewise is well balanced, not super tangy or vinegar forward, but enough to counteract the oil so that the sauce doesn’t taste oily or dull. Fogo as a result ends up being rich and full flavored with a great balance of flavors. Heat is on the low end of medium.

Being that Peri Peri sauces have traditionally been used with grilled chicken that had to be my first application. I threw some chicken leg quarters on the Weber kettle and brushed some of the sauce on as I grilled then used more afterwards. La Pimenterie Fogo goes amazingly well with grilled chicken as expected, the flavors all being a natural match and the oil adding to a nice crispy chicken crust from being brushed on while grilled. I also found this is a great sauce for sandwiches, I especially loved it with turkey sandwiches where it has just as much an affinity as it does with chicken. The bright citrus flavors of this sauce also worked very well on fish tacos with the spice blend also seeming like a perfect companion to seafood.

I’ve avoided Peri Peri style sauces in the past because after buying several varieties of Nando’s sauces at the grocery store over the years and never being in love with the flavor I thought I just didn’t like the style, but La Pimenterie Fogo has completely changed my mind. This sauce gets my strong recommendation, it’s delicious, well balanced, fresh, and obviously made from high quality ingredients. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.

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Heat: 🟡🟡○○○○○○○○

Quick Flavor Notes: Astringent, artificial, sweet

Recommended: No

Texture: Syrupy and mostly smooth

Ingredients: Water, Sugar Cane, Habanero Peppers, Pineapple, Lemon Juice, Salt, Spice And Colouring (Turmeric), Xanthan Gum (Stabilizer), Gellan Gum (Stabilizer), Acetic Acid (Ph Control Agent), Citric Acid (Acidulant), Natural Flavouring (Onion), And Sodium Benzoate As Preservative.

I’ve long been a fan of El Yucateco hot sauces. Not only are they a great value and easily available at almost every Mexican grocery store as well as many regular grocery stores they have a wide variety of flavors most featuring the habanero, one of my favorite peppers. In fact their XXX Hot probably holds the record for the hot sauce I’ve bought the most bottles of in my life, typically going through at least one a week before I got into the hot sauce reviewing game and saw the variety of my collection explode. Their Caribbean Style and their Habanero and Chiltepin from their newer expanded lineup have also been favorites of mine. Since I’ve opened up more to the idea of fruit based hot sauces I decided to give their Pineapple Habanero a try.

The first two ingredients in this sauce are water and sugar which is evident in the consistency which is very syrupy. Next come the namesake of the sauce, habanero and pineapple. This sauce uses both vinegar and lemon juice for acidity as well as citric acid for both tartness and additional acidity. Some unnamed spices and turmeric for color are present, and I’m glad to see them go with a natural coloring agent instead of the artificial colors used in many of their sauces. Of course this sauce is not close to an all natural one. It uses two industrially produced thickening agents with gellan gum and xanthan gum as well as an artificial preservative in sodium benzoate. Something that struck me a bit odd on the label is ‘natural flavoring (onion)’. That both suggests that onion is the only natural flavoring added but also that they’re not using real onions, but rather some industrially flavoring derived from real onions. This sauce smells more savory than I’d expect for a pineapple hot sauce and has a mostly smooth texture though there are some little bits floating inside.

Have you ever been to a churrascaria such as Rodizio Grill or Fogo de Chao where they bring out the pineapple they’ve grilled on the same spits as the meat, all caramelized and tasting simultaneously sweet, roasty, and little smoky? That’s what I was hoping for with El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple. Instead I was greeted by one of the most artificial tasting hot sauces I’ve had the misfortune to consume in quite a while. This is easily the worst El Yucateco flavor that I’ve ever had. It starts off harsh with an unpleasant habanero flavor that’s all astringency instead of the sweet fruitiness you get from high quality habaneros. The cheap vinegar and lemon juice combine for an unpleasant harsh aggressive acidity. The pineapple flavor tastes like the cheap pineapple filling from a no-name brand confectionary you buy at a gas station for one dollar. The sweetness is cloying compounded by the unpleasant syrupy gelatinous texture. The worst part is the onion. I love onions. I don’t particularly want onions in my sweet pineapple hot sauce and I definitely don’t want “natural flavor (onion)” as opposed to real onions because whatever they’re using in this sauce just leaves an unpleasant vaguely-oniony-but-worse aftertaste in your mouth. There’s also no flavor of the pineapple being grilled – no smoke, no caramelized flavors, no hints of char. This sauce isn’t very hot, a step above the basic Louisana style sauces, but I wasn’t expecting blazing heat here.

Perhaps, I thought, this would be better with food. I tried it first with some egg rolls from my favorite Chinese takeout spot. This sauce reminded me vaguely of duck sauce so I thought perhaps that might work, though I believe it was more the color and consistency than the flavor. It doesn’t work well, the flavor fights the egg-rolls, but the unpleasant faux-onion aftertaste was at least not as present there. Chinese restaurant packet duck sauce is also awful, tasting mostly of starch and corn syrup, but this was awful in equally bad but different ways with that harshness from the peppers and lemon plus vinegar still coming through. I also discovered this is one of the few sauces that just doesn’t work on wings – again it’s just cloying and harsh at the same time, and sweet plus astringent with no complexity or depth to back it up just doesn’t work. I decided to risk ruining one more dish with this and tried it on some pepperoni pizza – after all, pineapple and pizza can be a classic combination. The sweetness and syrupy texture just don’t work, it became pizza slime, and the artificial nature of the pineapple flavor here didn’t do it any favors.

It pains me to say it, but El Yucateco completely whiffed with this one. I believe this is the first sauce of theirs that I’ve found completely unpalatable. It reminds me of some of the cheaper La Anita hot sauces I’ve tried which shared that highly astringent chemically flavor. If you’re looking for a tasty fruity hot sauce it appears this is a case where spending more for something craft made with high quality ingredients is absolutely worth it.

Bitter: 🟡🟡○○○

Salty: 🟡🟡🟡○○

Sour/Tangy:🟡○○○○

Sweet: 🟡🟡○○○

Umami: 🟡🟡🟡🟡○

Heat: 🟡○○○○○○○○○

Quick Flavor Notes: Earthy, umami, rich, toasty

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Medium with some small bits

Ingredients: Rice vinegar, Honey Field Farm red serranos*,* Honey Field Farm cucumbers, water, Pete’s Greens garlic scapes, Northwoods Apiaries honey, Rhapsody Natural Foods red and white miso, salt, sesame oil.

Breaking my normal first-in-first-out (or at least as close to it as I can estimate) for sauce reviews rule again I wanted to get to this Butterfly Bakery of Vermont micro-batch early both because I wanted to review it while it was still available and because I really love miso so I was excited to try this one. I’ve tried a number of miso hot sauces in the past, including a previous one from Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, and always enjoyed them so I went into this one with high hopes.

Butterfly Bakery of Vermont must have a perpetual bumper crop of red serranos because they end up in a ton of their sauces. It’s not something I’m complaining about in the least as I love that pepper and find it to have a great flavor with an easily accessible heat level. This sauce also uses rice wine vinegar instead of the distilled common in most of their sauces, so clearly going with an Asian direction here. Cucumbers may not be something you’d immediately associate with hot sauce (though they do exist) but there are a number of Asian dishes that combine it with miso (or in the case of Korean banchan dishes with doenjang, essentially Korean miso) and with sesame oil. Pete’s Greens garlic scapes are another constant favorite ingredient. As far as I can recall I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Butterfly Bakery of Vermont hot sauce that uses traditional garlic cloves, just the garlic scapes. After some honey to add some sweetness with come to the miso and this sauce uses both red and white. Miso is made from soybeans (usually, other versions exist) fermented with koji (Aspergillus Oryzae). White miso is sweet and nutty and is typically fermented for 1-3 months. Red miso, also known as aka miso, is fermented for at least six months but can be fermented for years and has an earthy and umami reach flavor. That sauce finishes off with sesame oil, always a great aromatic flavor to add to an Asian dish though a little goes a long way.

Cucumber Sesame Miso Hot Sauce is more rustic in texture like most micro-batch hot sauces but it’s also creamier due to the miso and sesame oil with a medium consistency. The earthy aroma of the miso is prominent when you open the bottle as well as that toasty sesame oil scent. Up front this is one of the earthiest hot sauces that I’ve tasted in a long time. That ties in, and is because of, the miso flavor being very strong in this sauce. That’s not a bad thing as I’ve wanted more miso flavor from some other miso hot sauces such as Bravado’s Aka Miso Ghost Reaper. I was surprised at the lack of sweetness initially but after having a few more spoonfulls some of the other flavors began to come out. The cucumbers bring a freshness that’s a necessary foil to the earthy miso. The white miso and honey give a very subtle sweetness that helps to balance the intense umami and savory earthiness of the red miso. The sesame oil is an accent flavor in this, bringing a nutty, toasty, and indescribable sesame taste to the table primarily at the back of the palate. This sauce is much less tangy than most Butterfly Bakery of Vermont hot sauces. I believe part of that is the choice to go with rice wine vinegar instead of of distilled as rice wine vinegar has a softer acidity and less “bite” with the rest being due to the earthy miso. The serrano flavor is mostly covered up by the stronger flavors in the rest of the sauce and there’s very little heat.

Since the bottle suggested using this as a dumpling sauce, and I had some frozen gyoza in the freezer, I went with that first. While I thought it was a solid combination I think I prefer the typical soy and vinegar dipping sauce when it comes to those. Much more successful for me was pairing this with some raw sliced bell peppers, broccoli, and cauliflower. The umami richness of the sauce and sesame toastiness was perfect with the raw fresh vegetables. I also liked adding a glug of this to some instant ramen, turning a pack of Shin Ramyun Black into something almost like miso ramen. One of the best uses I found was when grilling chicken. I brushed some of this one after marinating it with some chopped garlic, oil, fresh lime, and cilantro and found this sauce gave it a great caramelization on the grill plus those umami rich miso notes still came through.

If you’re a miso fan this is one you should absolutely pick up, especially if you’re looking for a hot sauce that goes great with Asian food and vegetables. This is also a great sauce for those who aren’t fans of strong vinegar tang as it’s subdued compared to many of their sauces. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.