Attention, chileheads! I now have a new favorite hot sauce! Torchbearer Tarnation be her name!

Ingredients: Habanero Peppers, Carrolts, Onions, Mandarin Oranges, Tomato Concentrate, Garlic, Salt, Chili Powder, Black Pepper

Label: Jarvis, one of the Alley Boys, could grow hair on request. Got the ability due to his high consumption of #37 is what folks say. He could pop a moustache or chest hair by squatting down and grunting two or three times. Word has it that on occasion he grunted too hard. You can go ahead and figure out the rest of that for yourself. World’s 2nd hottest natural sauce. Scoville rating 38,202.

Appearance: This sauce has a beautiful orange color, attributed to the Mandarin orange and carrot. The sauce is super-thick, standing up all on its own like a good sauce should!

Smell: The smell is nice and light, redolent of Hawaiian breezes, due to the melding of the orange and the Habanero. Very pleasing aroma!

Taste: This sauce is not for the faint-of-heart or light-of-stomach! Though it’s not nearly the hottest stuff I’ve ever had (Crazy Jerry’s Mustard Gas still holds that honor — for now!), it does rank a close second. The first taste of this wonderful concoction reached my waiting mouth riding atop an original Pringle. I wasn’t expecting the burst of flavor I received! The Mandarin orange in this sauce gives it a terrific fruity, light flavor. I can easily see using this on pork, chicken, or seafood. My first thought was of grilled shrimp on a skewer. As I reached for a second chip, the fire hit me. Hoo, baby, that hurt good! The pain wasn’t nearly bad enough to stop, and the flavor was very easy to enjoy above the heat. I tried it on my sub, but decided that the orange flavor didn’t really work with the Italian dressing I selected. Oh, well, I’ll do better next time… I did, though, kill the rest of the chips with it!

Conclusion: All in all, this is a very nice, well-rounded sauce. This is quite easily the best sauce I’ve ever tasted! As I mentioned atop this post, Torchbearer Tarnation Sauce has already become a must-have item, and I intend to stock my pantry with it, so as not to run out! Thanks, Nick, for giving me the chance to review this fabulous sauce!

5.0 out of 5.0!

Ingredients: sweet onions, ketchup, worcestershire sauce, brewed chicory coffee, cider vinegar, light brown sugar, yellow mustard, chili powder, garlic, smoked hot sauce, sea salt

Appearance: A nice, deep red color, with diced onion and garlic visible.

Consistency: A little runny, though it firms up a little on the grill.

Smell: A nice garlicky-spice smell, hits you first, quickly balanced by a less-sweet coffee smell.

Taste: This sauce is really good! I tried this on a couple of chicken breasts. I really enjoyed the melding of the flavors in this sauce. The onion, brown sugar, and garlic work very well together here, and the chicory coffee adds a dynamic I don’t think I’ve ever found in a BBQ sauce before. The coffee serves to even the sweetness of the sugar and the onion quite nicely! The sauce has a bit of spice, but personally I prefer a bit more. I ended up adding a bit of El Yucateo habanero sauce to it, just to give it a little extra boost.

Conclusion: A very nice sauce! I would prefer a thicker sauce to start (this one seemed a bit runny for basting on the grill), but overall the balance of flavors was really good!

4.0 out of 5

This has got to be one of my favorite recipes! It’s easy to put together, and always impresses! I usually do this during football season, as it’s a great tailgating/party dish. I usually double the recipe, because it goes fast! (Note: the recipe below is not doubled)

1 lb. Hot ground sausage (pork or turkey)
2 cups diced ham (pork or turkey)
1/2 red bell pepper, diced
1/2 green bell pepper, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1-2 small onions, diced
1-2 tbsp. olive oil
2 cups stuffing mix, any variety (I prefer chicken)
Your favorite hot sauce, to taste

Brown the sausage and ham together and set aside without draining. I generally throw this into a large crock pot, set to low.

Saute vegetables in olive oil until the onion is translucent.

Add this to the meat mixture and stir. When well mixed, add the stuffing mix and stir well. The longer this dish has to sit, the more the flavors are going to meld. Ever had a dish that’s even better the day after? This one definitely is!

Taste, and add your favorite Louisiana-style hot sauce as needed. I really like Panola’s Bat’s Brew for this recipe. It has a nice burn that comes on slow, and it adds a great “swampwater” flavor to the dish. When I serve this dish to a non-chilihead, they don’t even know it’s hot until after the third or fourth bite! Thanks and enjoy!

Big ups to Ryan O’Toole for this great salsa recipe! This salsa turned out to be quite amazing and it is painfully hot. It starts off with a very sweet, almost tangy flavor and then hits you like a falling brick with a blast of fiery heat.

Ingredients:
5 Plums (2 peeled)
1 Mango (peeled)
1 Cucumber
1 Red Onion
8 Jalapeno Peppers
1 Hot Hatch Pepper
1 Green Bell Pepper
1 Orange Bell Pepper
2 Habanero Peppers (1 red and 1 yellow)
1/8 Cup Chives
1/4 Cup Lemon Juice
1/4 Cup Cilantro
4 TBSP Sontava! Habanero XXX Hot Sauce
4 TBSP Coyote Cocina Tequila Habanero Grill Sauce
2 TBSP Sugar
2 TSP Salt
1 TSP Minced Ginger Root
2 Minced Garlic cloves

Directions:
Just throw the sliced cucumber, peppers, onion, chives, garlic, ginger root, and cilantro into a large food processor and blast it into a chunky goop, then pour into a large container. Cut the pits out of the plum and mango and remove skins. Place the meat of the fruit into the food processor with the rest of the ingredients and lightly chop until chunky. Pour into the large container and mix well. Refrigerate for 1-2 days, occasionally stirring to let the ingredients marinate, and serve.

If you’re afraid that it will be too hot, remove the Hatch pepper and one of the Habanero peppers. The recipe could probably also do without the two hot sauces and still taste great. If you have a mild chipotle or favorite barbeque sauce, you could use it instead of the Coyote Cocina Tequila Habanero Grill Sauce.

Ingredients: Jalapeno peppers, bell peppers, onions, vinegar, tomato paste, brown sugar, molasses, soy sauce, garlic, crushed red pepper, salt, herbs and seasonings

Label: “If you’re reading this then you probably love hot sauce as much as I do. I take great pride in preparing and making my sauces. This is a unique Chef D Rocks Style Jalapeno sauce. Use it on seafood, chicken, or pork to spice things up. Try it in a salsa or on a taco. With its bold and zesty flavor it’s also the perfect solution for an excellent steak sauce. And of course, it’s amazing on gator tail!”

Appearance: The sauce is a nice, deep red in color, with noticeable bits of spices and red pepper flakes afloat in it.

Consistency: Pours wonderfully, nice and slow. The sauce is quite thick, and seems to enjoy its trip from the bottle. The sauce holds together well, though it still has some leg to it.

Smell: Smells like a good barbecue sauce. The garlic is noticeable, though not overpowering.

Heat: Ummmm, yeah. Being a jalapeno-based sauce, it of course doesn’t have the heat of the habanero sauces out there. The bottle claims that this sauce is medium-hot, but I’d have to come down a little from there to low-medium. On a scale of 1-10, 10 being hottest, I’d probably give this somewhere between 3 and 4.

Taste: For my first taste of this sauce, I enlisted the help of a close friend of mine, Ryan. Ryan is a fellow chilihead, and makes a killer salsa with jalapenos and habaneros from his backyard garden. We decided to add this sauce to some authentic Cajun boudain while making gumbo. This sauce did add a nice smoky flavor to the boudain, though it’s much better suited to chicken, ribs, or pork; essentially, this sauce fits anywhere you would normally use a nice spicy barbecue sauce. As you can see in the pic, it sits atop the boudain quite nicely. We were going to try it in gumbo, but decided against it because of the full-on barbecue flavor.

After trying it on boudain, we tried it directly from a spoon, to get the full flavor of the sauce. Though the sauce contains vinegar, it doesn’t stand out obnoxiously, and the molasses and brown sugar give this sauce a nice, light sweetness. The heat doesn’t come on too strong. It starts as a nice tickle at the back of the throat, and slowly makes its way forward, delighting taste buds as it does. It leaves behind a good sting on the lips, too!

Conclusion: A great sauce to be sure, but it could use a touch more heat. The garlic, spices, molasses, and brown sugar meld together seamlessly. This sauce should be sold in a larger bottle, so that it could be used as liberally as you might use a normal barbecue sauce.

Overall rating: 4.5

Hello, and welcome to the first of my many incessant ramblings you’ll see here at HSB! Let the good times roll!

My name is Jim, and I currently live in Dallas-Ft. Worth, Texas. I’m originally from a small town in southwest Louisiana. I was born and bred Cajun, learning to love spicy food as I spent time with the adults around the stove. There was always something cooking: etoufee, seafood courtboullion (pronounced coo-bee-ohn), shrimp Creole, and my absolute favorite, my grandmother’s gumbo.

My first love was Tony Cachere’s seasoning salt, as it was readily available everywhere you went – home, my grandmother’s house, McDonald’s, etc. It’s not too spicy, but does add a little zing. It was a quick jump from that to Tabasco, and before I knew it, I was eating jalapenos straight from the jar.

I stuck with these favorites until one night about ten years ago. I was enjoying a gathering at a friend’s house, when someone suggested we make hot wings. Great idea, right? Little did I suspect I was in for a life-changing religious experience…

We doused the wings with Ass in the Tub sauce, and after the first batch, a few people were grumbling that they weren’t quite hot enough. Marshall, the owner of the house, steps out the back door, disappearing into the night, and returns a few minutes later with some of the most beautiful peppers I’ve ever seen. Turns out Marshall had quite a garden in the back, with serranos, chipotles, jalapenos, and habaneros.

Marshall sliced a handful of habaneros, added them to a blender with a little water and the rest of the Ass in the Tub. After blending this, he put it in a small pot on the stove and allowed it to heat. Once the wings came out, they were immediately added to the hot sauce bath for about five minutes. This resulted in a searing of my tongue and the roof of my mouth, the likes of which I had never felt. It was amazing!

Fast-forward to today. I’m single, no kids, and have just started a hot sauce collection of my own. I intend to take my family recipes and modify them a little, adding whatever I’m asked to review. I’ll include the recipes as part of my post, so that you may try a little bit of south Louisiana in your kitchen! I also intend to visit events here in my neck of the woods, such as local cook-offs and the like, and post on those. Thanks for taking the time to visit, and I hope to hear from you!