Bottle Description: Warning! This sauce is as vicious as the creature portrayed on the label! It’s a tasty blend, made with the World’s two hottest chiles This raptoreque elizir will devour your tastebuds, leave a fiery trail through your system and bite once more when leaving. Watch Out! It could leave you with a SoreAss.

Ingredients: Chiles (red Savina, Naga Jolokia), vinegar, onion, tomatoes, lemon juice, garlic, salt, spices.

Container: Very fierce dinosaur. RAR! I didn’t get the Soreass part of the title until I read the description. Soreass get it? Like dino-SAUR except SORE-ASS! If this sauce were on the shelves I’d have a hard time telling what this was. No mention of the peppers used in this sauce or that it is hot. To be honest if I had no prior knowledge of the sauce I might pass it up.

Appearance: This sauce has the Cajon’s look. The pepper mash is clearly visible and you can tell there is a ton of chiles in this sauce. Looks like an orangey brown concoction of mash peppers.

Smell: Vinegary but there’s also the strong punch of peppers. The aromas culminate in a strong wind of garlic. Tasty.

Consistency: This is a thick sauce and like many thick sauces it clogs the neck of the bottle. You might have to stick a chopstick into the neck every once in a while to unclog it.

Taste: The taste is very much akin to many of CaJohn’s other sauces. Vinegary with lots and lots of chile pepper flavor. This sauce starts with the tartness of the vinegar but mellows out into the chile pepper flavor. The chile flavor is quite quick however and it precedes a heavy dose of garlic and spices to round things off. This sauce has a lot of chile flavor but it fades quickly. Imagine a one-two punch of vinegar then chile and then you get knocked out onto a canvas of garlic and spices.

Heat: (9.0/10) Not suicide hot but it’s pretty damn close. I would be careful with this sauce. I took a quick swig for the tasting and now my heart hurts. Soreass tomorrow.

Field Test: This sauce is a flavor enhancer and I don’t think you should add too much of this stuff to anything because it can be quite overpowering. It’s best to use this sauce in conjunction with a food that is heavily flavored. I haven’t stopped using this sauce since I’ve gotten it.

Final Word: Tasty and hot as hell. I’ve been blowing through this stuff on every meal.

Overall: 9.2/10.

CaJohns Fiery Foods
Columbus, Ohio
888-703-FIRE

Captain Spongefoot Trading Company- Sriracha Table Sauce

Bottle Description: Embark on a far eastern adventure with the Captain’s “Z” sauce. Legendary flavor with the mystery of the orient for buffalo wings wit extra zip just fry or bake, add sauce and shake.

Ingredients: Sriracha peppers, chipotle peppers, water, vinegar, clarified butter, salt, sugar, garlic, natural flavors and spices.

Container: Classy. Very restaurant appropriate. Not a lot of graphics that invoke flames or death or thankfully…rectal pain.

Appearance: A very uniform red/orange that is occasionally spotted with seeds and bits of chile skins.

Smell: The distinctive smell of garlic is the first smell to hit you and later the peppers. Towards the end of the smell is a biting vinegar odor.

Consistency: No complaints. The flow you’d look for. Easy without killing your food.

Taste: The chile flavor is very hidden in this sauce. Most of the time all you can taste is vinegar and some garlic. I don’t like being mean but this sauce honestly tastes like pickle juice, brine. I’m not sure what about the combination of peppers and garlic with vinegar can make this sauce very briney but it’ll make your mouth pucker. Straight from the bottle this sauce can be…umm not charming.

Heat: (4.2/10) A very light sauce when it comes to the heat. Softball. It is however a table sauce, so take that into account. You aren’t gonna load popular restaurant tables with Blair’s.

Field Test: The sauce fairs a lot better on food. The flavor of the peppers is drawn out a bit more with saltier foods and the brine flavor is not as overwhelming when you mix it with other flavors. I would recommend going to a fast food Chinese restaurant with this sauce. Splash this on your chowmein.

Final Word: This isn’t a delicious sauce and I’m not too sure what Captain Spongefoot is trying to do. I’m assuming they are trying to corner a market in fancy-ish table sauces, which is fine. However if they are trying to corner a market based on flavor they will be destroyed by Huy Fong Food Inc.’s Sriracha sauce which, is the mother of all Asian hot sauces. Huy Fong Food Inc.’s sauce tastes better is cheap. For flavor sake, there is absolutely no reason to switch to Captain Spongefoot’s sauce.

Overall: 4.0/10.

Captain Spongefoot Sauces
2222 County RD 57
Granby, CO 80446

Tahiti Joe- Ahi of Kahuna XX Hot Sauce with cheese

Bottle Description: One day while Tahiti Joe was cooling under a coconut palm, he heard voices in his head: his tastebuds were talking to him. They wanted him to make a sauce so “hot” and flavorful, it would please any chilihead’s addiction for heat, and the tastebuds wanted it with cheese. So Tahiti Joe asked the great Polynesian Fire God for help, and at the urging of Tahiti Joe’s kahine (sister) Kimblalayawanalaya, Tahiti Joe gives you “Ahi of Kahuna XX Hot Sauce with Cheese” (her favorite sauce). Warning! 4 out of 5 proctologists recommend not to use this sauce. The 5th is a chilihead!

Ingredients: Aged red peppers, red wine vinegar, concentrated vegetables juices, Worcestershire, Honey, Key Lime Juice, clam juice, parmesan cheese, romano cheese, fresh carrots, fresh garlic in water, fresh habaneros, fresh onions, spices

Container: Sticks to the Tahiti motif, the character on the label has a chin that could crush a Buick.

Appearance: Amber brown with a lot of chunks. Pepper skins, seeds, cheese and a whole lot of other solids. A chunky chunky sauce.

Smell: This sauce smells exactly like a pizza with hot sauce on it. The pizza part must be from the cheese and the hot sauce scent is comprised of predominantly habanero and peppers aromas. Vinegar is NOT a major issue with this sauce and the other spices come out very nicely.

Taste: The beginning of the flavors is a habanero strong hot sauce flavor that is quite delicious. Imagine your average habanero sauce then up the habanero and keep the vinegar down. There’s a hint of sweetness after the habanero flavor. This alone would have been a fantastic sauce but in addition you get a delicious cheese flavor. This adds a lot of the saltiness of the sauce and gives the sauce a really fat flavorful ending. You can differentiate the two phases of the sauce but if you try hard enough but they blend together well. The spices are in their right places and they help to add to the flavor, neither distracting from the cheese nor the habanero. Imagine a roller coaster where there is no going up part and all you get is the thrill of the freefall.

Heat: (8.0/10) You’d think a sauce with cheese in it would be mild but no this sauce is quite hot. I usually test hot sauces by swigging them out of a bottle. I had to do this very carefully with this sauce, tipping it very slowly. Not for noobies.

Field Test: This is an all purpose sauce of the best variety. It goes well on pretty much everything. That being said, this sauce is very flavor heavy and if you are trying to preserve the taste of a delicate food then this sauce would completely dominate it. However if your aim is to enhance your food then this sauce is utterly fantastic. OR, crack this baby open and just swig it, it’s still delicious.

Final Word: It has got to be the cheese but this sauce is one of the few sauces that has really really caught my attention in the last couple of months. Go buy it now.

Overall: 10/10

Tahiti’s Hot Sauces
Joe & Charlotte Turner
(561) 439 - 7832
Fax (561) 965 - 4909
4310 State Drive
West Palm Beach, FL 33406

Monty’s Gourmet Foods- Fire Lizard Habanero Hot Sauce

Bottle Description: Monty’s Fire Lizard Habanero Hot Sauce is a masterful blend of all natural ingredients. Red Savina habanero Peppers have been identified as the hottest peppers in the world. Enjoy the Burn!

Ingredients: Peppers (may contain Red Savina Habanero, Red Habanero), Vinegar, Horseradish, Ginger, Other Spices, Xanthan Gum.

Container: Bottle doesn’t look like it is being marketed to chile heads but rather “gourmet food” shoppers. Looks like a bottle of hot sauce from Whole Foods. Fancy fonts mixed with “edginess” from the badass lizard.

Appearance: Dark brown with a few seeds, opaque, this stuff has been blended a lot t make a thick sauce.

Smell: Peppers and vinegar play together nicely and do not overwhelm the olfactory senses like many sauces do (vinegary ones). There’s a hint of horseradish and ginger that also gives it a bit of a bite but the overall smell is rather tame.

Taste: My initial thought is that there was a bit too tangy, the vinegar and peppers are a little sour. On second taste they are complemented well by the horseradish and ginger. The ginger really comes through after the peppers and vinegar and such a strong ginger flavor is not something I have encountered very often.

Heat: (7.2/10) this sauce will give you a light scorch. It won’t light you.

Field Test: This sauce is an excellent addition to any food that is already tart. This sauce works well with tomato based sauces. I wouldn’t recommend that you put this stuff on your lunch if it’s a burrito or fries because the taste of ginger and horseradish do not exactly mesh well with those foods. You’ll have to experiment to your liking but I found this sauce delicious on eggs and tomatoes.

Final Word: Temperamental sauce but tasty.

Overall: 7.2/10

Monty’s Gourmet Foods L.L.C
516 N Main Ottawa, KS 66067-1923 USA
TOLL FREE 877-274-7428

The Salsa King - Cool Breeze Blazin’ Hot Sauce

Bottle Description: Fiery heat from Chili Pequins, a cool breeze of flavor added with juniper berries! A truly unique taste sensation.

Ingredients: Vinegar, chili, pequins, garlic, spices, juniper berries, salt

Container: All the sauces in the Salsa King sauce line pretty much look the same and I have no complaints about the packaging. It isn’t marketed to hardcore chili heads so you’ll most likely see this bottle at Gelson’s or Trader Joe’s

Appearance: Brown. The sauce looks kind of like Chinese fish paste with specks of pepper. This stuff has been blended a lot probably leading to it’s current color.

Smell: It kind of does smell like a cool breeze. You can smell the peppers, garlic and spices but lingering behind all those scents is the soft biting of the juniper berries that make the sauce smell more….effervescent I guess. It’s like how you smell a bottle of booze and how that always smells kind of thin and airy.

Consistency: Thick. This sauce unfortunately spends a lot of time in the neck of the bottle rubbernecking before it makes it to your plate.

Taste: The first line of flavor is your usual garlic, pepper and salt. But slowly the juniper berries creep into the flavor along with the vinegar. This creates the cool breeze that’s indicated in the name of the sauce. It comes on as a relatively heavy sauce but then tiptoes off. As nice as that is, the berries or vinegar or possible even the pequins make this sauce a little too bitter for the most discerning mouths. The taste is not mind-blowing but it’s tasty enough.

Heat: (6.6/10) This sauce will give you a light scorch. It won’t light you up and the heat seems to dissipate readily.

Field Test: If you’ve read the taste section you might be worried about the bitterness of the sauce. Counteracting it with salty foods will do you wonders. I discovered the bitterness when I first took a swig of the stuff for this review. On food I hardly noticed it at all. That being said, this sauce is pretty much an all purpose sauce. Light enough to go on anything. I love it on Italian food.

Final Word: Not too shabby. It’s a kind of sauce you’d carry around to eat with but you’re definitely not going to fall in love.

Overall: 7.0/10

The SalsaKing Fine SouthWestern Foods
P.O. Box 39005
Phoenix AZ 85069

Pepper Pete’s- Mean & Green

Bottle Description: The devilish, but pleasantly nice tasting, hot sauce will make your friends’ tables green with envy. The only thing mean about it is, once you try it, you are addicted to it for life. From tacos to scrambled eggs, your food never tasted so good! 2006 2nd place Amateur Fiery Foods Scovie Award

Ingredients: Fresh roasted jalapeno peppers and other selected peppers, distilled vinegar, fresh garlic, natural spices.

Container: I’m going to be honest. I don’t like this label at all. BUT of course labels don’t make the sauce. Still the black and green don’t exactly say heat and mean. Maybe throw some red in there. I dunno I’m no artist.

Appearance: Green with large pieces of skin and peppers floating about.

Smell: Ahh smokey jalapenos indeed and the nice punch of garlic makes this a sauce that is quite easy on the olfactory bulb (smell doohickies). The vinegar is light and airy. Nice complement.

Consistency: I usually don’t include this section because most sauces have the relatively same consistency but this stuff is thicker than the average rabid Oprah fan. Expect a fair amount of shaking to get this on your food. Not a minus, I like a sauce that sticks to my food in a clump then running all over the place.

Taste: Ahhhh that’s why it’s so thick. Full kick to the mouth of the taste of the peppers. Combined with the vinegar, the sauce is really pretty tart. The garlic and spices try to complement but the full pepper flavor steals the show.

Heat: 7.8/10 Sure it may be jalapenos but its got a decent bit of kick. I’m swigging it from the bottle right now so it may just be that.

Field Test: I tried this stuff with a nice tasty piece of KFC regular recipe. Fantastic. The sodium in the chicken balances the tartness of the sauce a lot so there isn’t the overwhelming tartness of the peppers. I highly suggest going with food that has a decent salt content when using this sauce. Used it on eggs straight and it wasn’t as successful until I added the NaCl.

Final Word: Pepper Pete’s - Mean & Green Hot Sauce is a good sauce that needs some salt. I don’t like the label but who cares. Enjoy the taste.

Overall: 8.0/10

Bottle Description: No matter how bad or good you think you are, everything you do for now on, after using RECTUM RIPPER, will be “half ass”. So be careful using this very delicious, very hot, mustard and ginger sauce, Because the RECTUM RIPPER will send your ass to an early grave.

Ingredients: Habanero peppers, apply cider, vinegar, crushed tomatoes, key lime juice, clam juice, worchestershire, honey, carrots, mustard, ginger, garlic in water, onions, spices, tic gum.

Container: Nothing wrong with the label or bottle but…Rectum Ripper? Well maybe this sauce will be as good as it’s sister sauces. Eyeball Gouger and Penis Smasher.

Appearance: Normal hot sauce looking but a light brown rather than a strong red or brown. Seeds float about and so to pepper flakes.

Smell: You can smell hints of ginger and the habaneros but I don’t really sense any strong mustard smell. The worchestershire makes itself known, you’ll get a nose-full of it when you take a long hard sniff.

Taste: The name of the sauce comes through on the first taste. Part 1, you get hit with a noticeable but not a strong taste of the mustard and ginger combined which is different for a hot sauce but works well. Part 2, a rather large dose of worchestershire, cider and vinegar hit your palette pretty hard. Part 3, the sauce’s taste culminates in a generous amount of the regular garlic, pepper and salt flavors that I’m more accustomed to.

Heat: (8.6/10) Pretty damn hot but not unbearable. Definitely not a newbie sauce.

Field Test: The ginger and mustard limits the use of this sauce. I would but it on food that is relatively singular in taste. This sauce doesn’t fare well on food items with complex tastes like a burrito with all the fixings. However it’s pretty damn good on a piece of beef or chicken. Add this sauce to anything that needs a little flavor.

Final Word: A good sauce but I think that the worchestershire tends to overpower the overall taste of the sauce. You really don’t get a lot of ginger and mustard and I believe it’s kind of misleading to call it that. I think it should be marketed as a hot as hell worchestershire hot sauce.

Overall: 7.9/10. Tastes pretty good but the name is misleading and this sauce can be situational.

Tahiti’s Hot Sauces
4310 State St
West Palm Beach, FL.
33406
1-888-244-8456

Bottle Description: It’s the fresh pureed strawberries that give this strawberry hot sauce its truly unique taste. In fact, over 25% of the ingredients are strawberries. With the first bite you’ll taste the SWEET of the fresh strawberries and the then the HEAT from the fresh habaneros. Afterwards the heat simply fades and you are read for another.

Ingredients: Water, fresh strawberries, red wine vinegar, tomato paste, fresh habaneras, chiles, lemon juice, kosher salt, cornstarch, dried garlic and dried red pepper flakes.

Container: Simple small time company type graphics. That isn’t knocking it of course. It’s quaint.

Appearance: Looks like a puree with a kind of jam-like consistency.

Smell: From the smell of it you don’t really sense hot sauce at all. Strong strawberry scent with hints of garlic and pepper as a bit of an after note but not an after thought. Really unique smell that you don’t really get from most sauces.

Taste: I would reverse the bottle description. You really taste the hot sauce elements of the sauce first. A little rugged with some peppers and garlic but after getting to know it for a while it softens up and is almost as sweet as jam. This sauce REALLY tastes like strawberries. Usually the use of fruit is kind of gimmicky in the sauce but I think this stuff is the real deal. Delicious stuff. It will surprise you because it is such a sweet hot sauce but still has the charisma of a pure pepper sauce.

Heat: (6.4/10) Not hot at all but it’ll leave a little heat in the mouth.

Field Test: Delicious but a specific application sauce. I’d use this sauce like you’d use a cranberry sauce at Thanksgiving, over slabs of lighter meats. I added this to a dish of salmon and rice and it was fantastic, it worked many times better than a regular pepper sauce. The sweetness really can’t be paired with everything but if you’re imaginative you’ll really find yourself reaching for it.

Final Word: I’ve used this sauce for three meals. The rest of the time I’ve been drinking it straight from the bottle. Nuff said.

Overall: 8.6/10. Delicious. I would also check out Scotty B’s Berries in Heat for addition sweet sauce goodness.

Carlsbad Gourmet
Russ@carlsbadgourmet.com
Phone: 760-730-3423

Crazy Mother Puckers- Liquid Lava Hot Sauce (XXX-Hot )

Bottle Description: If you like your hot sauce “super hot”, you’ll love Liquid Lava. It’s the perfect combination of flavor and heat featuring aged red peppers, garlic and chili pepper extract. CAUTION “It’ll Pucker Your Pecker!”

Ingredients: Aged red peppers, distilled vinegar, salt, garlic, chile extract and xantham gum.

Container: I don’t know what the animation is on the bottle but I like it. Very nice looking label
that isn’t cheaply done. Flask bottles are awesome.

Appearance: Uniformly red with a few seeds here and there.

Smell: Whoo spicy. Lots of garlic and vinegar but the bite of the peppers will let you know that something is pretty hot inside.

Consistency: The consistency of this sauce is pretty thin. You really have to be careful about how you pour this sauce if you want just a little bit.

Taste: Taste-wise there isn’t too too too much going for this sauce. It tastes good but it certainly is not a new taste. You really get the flavor from the peppers and garlic with a twinge of vinegar. It’s like any other red sauce you’ve ever had. There isn’t anything annoying about the flavor but there isn’t anything that will have you spinning off into the hemisphere and a taste bud shaped cloud either.

Heat: 9.5/10. This stuff is hot. First time I got this bottle from Nick I did what I always do when I get a new sauce….took a swig. Bad idea. I didn’t know this stuff had extract. I felt the heat in my ears and they started whistling like a tea kettle.

Field Test: This sauce is a 100% all around sauce. The flavor of this basic red sauce allows it to go on everything. I’ve had it on my eggs, fried rice, veggies & soup. There really isn’t much you can’t do with this sauce. Well it might suck on pineapple.

Final Word: I love this sauce. Best I’ve had in a while. My only complain still is that since this sauce is runny it’s a bit tough to control your flow, getting it spilled all over the place is not fun.

Overall: 9.4/10 Great sauce. Hot as hell. Get it

Distributed by:
“Crazy” Mother Pucker’s Hot Sauce
20001-A Emerald Coast Pkwy
Destin, FL 32541
Ya ain’t Been Pucked till
Ya Been Mother Pucked!

Flavor Before Fire - Sweet Sunshine Chili Sauce (Roasted Shallot and Garlic)

Bottle Description: We believe in flavor before fire that is why SWEET SUNSHINE CHILI SUACE is not just spice and vinegar like some hot sauces. We blend th unique flavor of SWEET SUNSHINE from the best of ingredients and an assortment of the finest chilies to rightin everything you put it on. For flavor and heat we use the FINEST RED SAVINA HABANEROS. WE NEVER USE PEPPER EXTRACT.

Ingredients: Sugar, Water, Vinegar, Roasted Shallots, Mustard Seed, Tomato, Roasted Garlic, Ancho Peppers, Corn Syrup, Cayenne Peppers, Habanero Peppers, Molasses, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Worcestershire Sauce, Extra Virgin Olive Oil, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Onion, Spices, less than 1/10 of 1% Sodium Benzonate and Potassium Sorbate.

Container: The grooves cut in this bottle kind of makes it look like an item out of the 70s. The design is fine but unassuming. Though “flavor before fire” is a daring statement in the current hot sauce market where something like “BURN YO BITCH!!!” is more likely to make it on a sauce than the promise of flavor.

Appearance: Looks like BBQ sauce with seeds.

Smell: Very very sweet smelling with a heavy shallot fragrance. The garlic peaks through but it’s a it of an afterthought. The only fault I can find with the sauce is that I smell no peppers.

Consistency: I used to have this section but later took it out because most of the time consistency doesn’t matter. But I have to say that this sauce is THICK. It is literally upside down as I type this, look I’m holding it over my carpet without fear. (Please don’t try this, I can’t guarantee that this works for you.)

Taste: This sauce is chunky and when I say that I mean there are whole pieces of shallot in here. As I type this I’m literally chewing a chunk of shallot. This sauce is quite tasty. It isn’t really a hot sauce at all and I think that chili sauce is a much more apt description. The primary flavors are sweetness from the molasses that is bolstered by the shallots and garlic. This sauce has a taste that is the distant cousin of the sauce that they slather on Chinese Orange Chicken.

Heat: (5.5/10) Warm indeed.

Field Test: This is not to be used as a hot sauce in the conventional sense. I believe that you should treat this sauce as you would a ketchup or BBQ sauce. It belongs on more American food. This sauce is terrible on Mexican for example, but terrific on fries and pork.

Final Word: Pleasant sauce. Very sweet and works with some food. I won’t be picking this sauce up very often to use with my usual meals but I also won’t mind using it on the meals that it’s good on.

Overall: 7.4/10

Sweet Sunshine
615-469-6847