Ingredients: Tomato concentrate made from Red Ripe Tomatoes, Distilled Vinegar, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Salt, Spice, Onion powder, Natural Flavoring. All with a Drip Free Valve!

I used to teach high school history, so when I was walking by this bottle in the grocery store I just stopped: Here was a sauce that’s been made since 1869, a piece of Americana, so I just had to grab it. I’ll admit I was more drawn to the deep red color of it, and the handy convenience of a “drip free” valve (a genius innovation whose time is way over due). But I have to tell you, after so much anticipation and getting this sauce home, I was more than a little disappointed.

When I got home, I took out me trusty tasting spoon and just poured it on. This sauce is thick, thick like mustard, and it held well to the spoon. The first whiff I got when I smelled it was a combination of sugar and vinegar. Skeptical, I poured on, taking advantage of the Stay Clean Cap/Drip Free Valve. Now here was a shining light: You can use this cap to write messages, or draw funny faces to entertain your kids. But the real beauty of this cap is that with the right amount of pressure you can send streams of this sauce up to eight feet long. Which is what I found out after I tasted this stuff.

If you’ve ever read my reviews in the past then you know I’m a Hardened Habbie Head, the guy who once ate a fresh habanero for a jar of mayonnaise (don’t ask, alcohol was involved). Long story short, I like my sauces hot. This sauce wasn’t the case. True traditional ketchup (kats-up, or sometimes spelled cats-chup) is a tomato based, heavily seasoned sauce that is thought to have originated from India. The initial flavors that I got from this were tomato, then sugar, then vinegar, with a hint of salt. So I took another taste of my spoon and tasted, again, tomato (though more ripe), sugar, vinegar, and followed by salt. No onion, and certainly no spice, as listed on the label. What the Hell?

Now I understand that some producers are out there making milder sauces for the hot sauce newbies, but this is a step beyond ridiculous. Granted, this did taste ok on French fries, and pretty good on onion rings, but I had to add other hot sauces to this just to get a meager kick from it. What are they trying to push here? I don’t know, but my kids put this stuff on just about everything, and my wife says it tastes pretty good on hash browns. I guess each their own (but that doesn’t always make them right). So on to my Five Point Scale.

Appearance: 4-Certainly a good looking sauce in a nice, very squeezy plastic bottle. Again, with the right amount of pressure you can get streams of up to (but not limited to when using a Ford Taurus) eight feet. I also like the blood red color.

Aroma: 3-Almost like tomatoes, except I smell a lot of sweetness also. There is lingering vinegar when I sniff really hard. Oh wait, scratch that one. We just had our kitchen cleaned (tomato stains).

Taste: 3- If it wasn’t for the ingredients list, I’d swear I was tasting just tomatoes and sugar. Albeit red ripe tomatoes-look at the color again-but a little too sweet for my veteran palate.

Heat: 0-I try took look for an upside in everything, even the Police Academy movies, but I’m sorry, this sauce sucked for heat. My two year old daughter often enjoys a little taste or two of hot sauces, but this one she just ate up like it was nothing. What does that tell you? I’d get more heat if I were to lick an ice cube.

Overall: 3.3- For a sauce that’s been around since 1869, you would think these people had a clue as to what they were doing. But they don’t. It’s a decent sauce, for what it’s worth ($1.89 for 20 ounces), and you can buy it anywhere. I guess this would be the ultimate sauce for newbies. And contrary to popular belief, the “57” that adorns this bottle is not the 57th attempt at making it. No, the truth in the matter was in 1870 Heinz founder H. J. Heinz predicted that there would someday be 57 states in America that his sauce would be sold and bought in. Little piece of trivia for ya. So until next time, treat every meal like it was your last!

H.J. Heinz Co., L.P.
Pittsburgh, PA. 15222
www.heinz.com

Ingredients: Scotch Bonnets, Black Pepper, Soy sauce, olive oil, spices, onions, vinegar, raspberries, honey, molasses, vanilla extract, sugar.

Winters here in Wisconsin (State motto: “It ain’t Here, Whatever It Is”) range from 85 degrees Fahrenheit to -273 degrees depending on the day (if it has an “r” in it, you’re Ok) and the hour (if it has a number in it, you’re screwed). So when Nick sent me JD’s From Hell Honey Jerk Sauce, I got really excited. I’ve been to Jamaica, and I’ve has as authentic as jerk foods can get. And the weather sucks, so anything that heats things up floats my frozen boat.

Jerk seasoning is to the Caribbean what hamburgers are to America-simple, easy ways to make comfort food, with everybody having their own recipe. The key ingredient to any jerk seasoning is the Scotch Bonnet chile. The Scotch Bonnet, one of my all time favorite chiles, is the first cousin of the mighty Habanero. The Scotch Bonnet, though lesser in heat than the Hab, has many of the same aromas (citrusy, floral), and flavors (strong lime with a mango-like finish). An over all great, great chile. So when I saw the list of ingredients, I could feel the cold outside just melt away.

I opened the jar right out of the box. Most jerk sauces I’ve used in the past have been thick, but this one was actually runny and thin. Looking at the ingredients list again, well yeah, soy sauce will do that. A very beautiful dark brown color with specks of spices and what I hoped was the Scotch bonnet. And the aroma is just indescribable- leaning on the soy sauce with undertones of molasses, honey, and vinegar with just hints of raspberry and vanilla. Just fantastic-wait a minute! Why didn’t I smell any Scotch B?

Suddenly, I felt it getting cold again outside.

So out came my trusty tasting spoon and into the jar. My heart was pounding from excitement as my tongue was getting ready for the Scotch B and!…Something was wrong here, really, really wrong here. What I had just tasted was, essentially, flavored soy sauce. Granted a really well flavored soy sauce, but one with absolutely no heat what so ever. Possibly the heat would come out with some cooking? I doubted it, but I marinated both chicken wings and pork steaks in it for eight hours any way. I baked the chicken wings for 40 minutes at 395, and I have to say: Even though there was no heat, this is the best chicken wing marinade I’ve ever used. All I had to do was roll the baked-off wings in my own hot sauce and I was set. The flavor more than made up for the lack of heat.

I grilled the pork, and set it over a salad of bitter greens. The flavor wasn’t as intense as the chicken (I did grill after all) but it was good. Again, the lack of heat impressed my two year old so much that she shoveled it down. Over all, not bad with the pork. So how does JD’s From Hell Honey Jerk Sauce rank? On to my Five Point Scale.

Appearance: 3-This is runny for a jerk sauce, but it did cover well the target foods I used it on, and clung to them. Deep, rich brown color.
Aroma: 4.5- Very rich, crisp, heavy on the soy, finishing on vanilla. I could shower in this.
Heat: 0- Scotch Bonnet is the first listed ingredient, yet there was no heat what so ever. Somebody please tell me I received a mislabeled bottle?
Flavor: 5- With chicken, you will not go wrong-this is a must have if you use it for a marinade. Soy base with hints of honey, sugar, vanilla, and onions. With pork, not too bad, either.
Overall: 3.25- This sauce obviously would have scored higher if it weren’t for the lack of heat. But again, this is the best marinade for chicken that I’ve ever used. I can easily recommend this for that use; just add your own heat (like an extract). So get some if you like to experiment, and JD, who ever you are, take another look at your recipe. Until next time, treat every meal like it was your last!

Land & Sea Enterprises, LLC.
Marlboro, NY 12542

Dear Pyrate Louie,
I’ve been in a relationship for awhile with, well, a bottle, and I don’t know what to do. At first it was exciting and spicy, but lately everything has just gone mild and sputtered off. I need some Heat, but I don’t want to jump into anything too fast and get burned. And while I’m at it, I also want to help save the World. What should I do?
Signed-Tasteless in Wisconsin.

Gentle Reader,
We’ve all been at some point in our lives where we find ourselves stuck in a rut, and sometimes it is because we can’t let go of old bottles. You have to know: It’s not your fault. You want to try something new, but you don’t want to get scorched. YOU ARE NOT ALONE! So I recommend you go out and buy yourself something nice, like for example Golden Toad’s Chipotle Pepper Sauce. It’s hot, it’s sweet (sorta), and in the end, it won’t burn you too bad. Read on, Gentle Reader, read on.

Ingredients: Vinegar (White and apple cider), Canned Chipotle peppers (chipotle peppers, water, tomato puree, vegetable oil [corn or safflower], flour, salt, vinegar, onion powder, garlic powder and spices), fresh red onion, chipotle peppers, fresh garlic, cilantro, salt and spices.
First of all, I have to confess that I was using this sauce for awhile after Nick sent it to me, forgetting that I was supposed to review it. That’s how at home in my fridge it felt, like it was always there. When my wife asked one day where it came from that’s when I remembered I was supposed to review it. Whoops on my part.
If chile peppers were royalty, the Habanero would be King, and the Chipotle would be the Clown Prince-never taken too seriously, but always fun to have around. The Chipotle, the smoked ripe jalapeno, is a flavorful chile with a good degree of heat. The problem for most people though is that it’s usually sold in its dried form, and when its sold en adobo (a vinegar tomato brine) it often tastes metallic. Golden Toad has taken this pepper and made one heck of a sauce out of it.
As soon as you open up the bottle you smell the vinegar/tomato base with chipotles (read the ingredients list again-Golden Toad used chipotles en adobo). There’s a hint of garlic, but I couldn’t detect any cilantro (which is near last on the list). I poured this love juice on my trusty tasting spoon, and even though the bottle has a flow control, the stuff pours smoothly. Again, on the spoon you could smell the vinegar/tomato base.

As far as heat goes, this is the Chipotle, which doesn’t attack for a couple of seconds, and when it does it’s in the back. This sauce did exactly that as when I sampled it I got the sweet-tangy flavor of the vinegar/tomato base, then chipotle, then heat. I couldn’t really taste any garlic or cilantro, though, which is disappointing. But this sauce does cover all the taste buds, and it really explodes with all around flavor. I’ve been using this on just about everything, which says a lot, being a devoted Hardened Habbie Head. The one food this really goes well on is just about everything breakfast, as in eggs and bacon, or even better, a B.L.T. with fried egg. And what’s weird is that it really washes down well with coffee, I don’t know why.

AND as an added bonus, by purchasing this product you’re doing your part in saving the world. The tag line on the label reads “Saving the Planet One Tongue at a Time. A portion of our annual proceeds is donated towards wildlife habitat conservation efforts”. How cool is that? These people have obviously been to my work place! (huzzah!).

So, my Five Point Scale.
Appearance:4-I’ve always loved toads on bottles. But the sauce is good, too: deep brown with pieces of chipotle and seeds.
Aroma: 3-Again, vinegar, tomato, repeat. Vinegar, tomato, repeat. Then chipotles.
Heat: 3-This is not the hottest sauce out there, not even the hottest chipotle sauce I’ve ever had. But for newbies this would be fantastic as it does have a kick you’ll notice without dying for.
Flavor: 4-This is essentially liquid chipotle. The entire smoky, citrus, earthy flavor without all the hassle.
Overall: 3.75-This is the sauce you’re going to be using without even knowing it. It’s such a great all-around sauce, and if you need more heat, here’s my simple formula: One drop 500,000 SHU extract per four tablespoons Golden Toad. I will be ordering more when I run out. Get some, Gentle Reader, it’s only $5.95 a bottle and remember-Treat every meal like it was your last!

Golden Toad Chipotle Pepper Sauce
Golden Toad Inc.
P.O. Box 261699, Littleton, CO 80163-1699

This is the tale of two sauces…When I first laid my eyes on this wonder, I was impressed how simple yet cool-looking the label was. I was reminded of like an Old Skool style chopper, one taken out of the early 70s. In fact, my first thought was “Man, this would make one killer-looking gas tank”. Bright, eye catching, but not full of all the extras that every one seems to be doing lately. Very, very slick.

Ingredients: Habanero pepper, Dry mustard, onion, garlic, flake sea salt, lemon, lime and orange juice, Tumeric, Spanish paprika, vinegar.

After I was done staring at the bottle, I actually opened it up. The first whiff I got was a combination of garlic and Tumeric, which though I do like, I thought it was odd because the first ingredient is habanero. I had a feeling this wasn’t going to be the hottest mustard sauce. So I poured it onto my trusty tasting spoon to see a beautiful sea of orange with nice sized bits of habanero. I mean, these pieces of habbie stood out like pepperoni on a pizza. My hope that this would be mean-ass was slowly being restored. I took some more whiffs, and the onion and dry mustard were coming out, followed along side the garlic and Tumeric. Tumeric reminds me of fresh ginger, most often used in Indian curries, and I was happy to see it in here. It’s also used a lot in prepared mustards, so I knew these guys were really aiming at a more mustard sauce than just regular mustard kicked with habanero. That’s a tough trick to pull off, and I’m skeptical until proven otherwise.

I took the taste, and I was just blown away. I can’t remember the last time I had a sauce where more that one flavor attacked as one. The habanero and orange juice hit together, followed right behind with onion, mustard and Tumeric. The finish was garlic and the paprika, with a real faint hint of vinegar. Very well orchestrated. And what was really cool was when my whole tongue was covered with flavor the heat came. It was a slow build, but when it peaked, it hits you. So I grabbed a handful of pretzels, and just doused them. Awesome. Then I made chicken cakes (ground chicken, bread crumbs, parsley and egg) pan-fried them and served them with garlic mashed potatoes. This is where the mustard stood out, bringing out the flavor of the chicken, and the orange, lemon and lime rounded out the sauce’s flavor. And again, the habanero joined the party finishing each bite with a well placed right-hook. I was really having fun with this sauce, so I started putting it on everything, from scrambled eggs to hot dogs (killer), pasta and my kid’s chicken nuggets (I even tossed a little on fresh banana, not too bad). Very rounded, well constructed, and beautifully finished.

So on to my Five Point Scale.
Appearance: From the label design to the sauce itself, a thing of beauty. The colors are outstanding.
Smell: 5-If you took fresh orange, habanero, garlic and Tumeric, tossed them in a blender, this is what you’d get. Very fresh, very crisp with over-tones of garlic and Tumeric.
Flavor: 4.5-Straight out of the bottle you taste more of the habanero. Heated up, you get the mustard. Either way, it packs.
Heat: 4-The label says it’s a “7”, but I’m going to say its more like a higher “5”. To my grandmother, it’s a “10”.
Overall: 4.75-This is a true all-around hot sauce that delivers flavor while kicking you a bit in the rump with heat. If I could afford it this would be the sauce I’d be giving away to my friends to try who are afraid of high-end hot sauces. Yeah, the heat is there, but the flavor gets there first like a tidal wave. Great stuff to have, so get some, and as always, treat every meal like it was your last!

Droolin’ Devil Fine Foods
Saskatoon, Saskatchewan S7K 2V5
306-244-2205
www.droolindevil.com

Ingredients: Water, salt, Acetic acid, Cascabel peppers, Arbol peppers, spices, natural flavors, preservatives (potassium sorbate, sodium benzoate), Ancho peppers, Guar gum, Yellow 5, Red 40, garlic powder.

Where I live here in the Great State of Wisconsin (State Motto: “Providing America with the Latest Trends since Whenever”) there are a handful of authentic Mexican restaurants. And each one has their own house-made specialty sauce that if you don’t know to ask for it, you ain’t never gonna get it. The thing is, they’re all really great sauces that you can never duplicate. Well, San Luis has solved that problem, for me at least.
There is always something about those restaurant-made hot sauces that I could never put my finger on; they almost always have chile de Arbol (as this one does), but there was always something I was missing. Then I read the ingredients list here. The first pepper listed is the Cascabel, an often disregarded chile with a long history in Mexican cuisine. This small, round chile (often mislabeled as Cherry pepper) has a rich, nutty flavor that lends itself well to all traditional Mexican sauces. It’s not too hard to find, but in this day and age of the Mighty Habanero many sauce makers neglect it.

And that’s too bad, because San Luis has made a sauce that not only captures the flavor of the Cascabel, but also exploits it while adding heat with the chile de Arbol. The bottle itself is a basic plastic squeeze, with a top that you have to puncture. I’m not too hip on that since most often you don’t get the cleanest hole and the sauce goes in all different directions. But once it did make it onto my trusty tasting spoon, the strong smell of the peppers gets you. The sauce flows easy, just a bit thick and not runny, and the color is an intense brick red. It looks like they literally took cascabels, de arbols and anchos and ground the living hell out of them (which is probably the case).

The flavor itself is very intense and tight; the focus here is the Cascabel with hotter notes coming from the de Arbol, and a nice roundness from the Ancho. Very, very flavorful with a nice clean finish. So the first thing I tried it one was home-made duck enchiladas. I started the duck by smoking it for awhile, then finishing it off by baking it in its own fat (style confit). This brought out its natural deep, rich flavor, so I was hoping that this sauce would be able to stand up to it. Using corn tortillas, I built the enchiladas, and doused them with this sauce. My wife got some, my 13 year old daughter got some, and my two year old daughter got some. No one complained about the heat, and everybody finished their plates. I enjoyed how this sauce balanced everything together and how it stood up to the heat of being cooked. I also used it on tacos- I think I may have found a favorite taco sauce.

One quick thing before my Five Point Scale: it’s printed at the top of the bottle “Best Before October 07”. The day of my initial tasting was October 7th, and it was still good. So there you go.

My Five Point Scale:
Appearance: 3-Cheap plastic bottle with generic printing was saved by a colorful sauce inside. Get rid of the top and cork it.
Smell: 4-Almost pure chile aroma; earthy, smoky, distant hint of garlic. Like a Mexican grocery store.
Flavor: 4-This is a combination of all of the Mexican sauces I’ve been trying to copy for years. It would be nice to see more makers use the cascabel.
Heat: 1.5 to 2: Low on the scale, but the flavor makes that forgiving. Cooked with the heat increases, but right out of the fridge this is comparable to Grandma’s strawberry sundaes.
Overall: A solid 3-This is not the sauce for the hardened habbie head, but a great intro sauce to newbies that want to experiment. If flavor is what you’re looking for, and you’re not afraid of too many preservatives and “colors”, get your hands on it.
So until next time, keep searching for those sauces, and treat every meal like it was your last!

Imported by:
PanAmerican International, INC.
7903 Mines Road
Laredo TX, 78041
(956) 727-8874
Made by Detersol S.A. DE C.V.

Dips for Dips: Review of Big Dawg Fire Department’s Garlic-Onion Dip Mix and Chipotle Dip Mix

Ingredients:
Garlic Onion Dip Mix-Garlic powder, onion flakes, onion powder, sea salt, and other spices.
Chipotle Dip Mix-Chipotle flakes, garlic powder, Paprika, sea salt MSG (monosodium Glutamate), and other spices.

Here in Wisconsin (state motto: “Hey America, Come Smell Our Dairy Air!”) its fall, which means all things vital to the survival of our fair people is stopped. Yes, it is that time of year when reasonable men and women lose their minds so they can worship at the altar of Brett Favre and the Green Bay Packers. I’m being serious here, Wisconsinites lose their minds. Sample every-day conversation: Person A-“So did you here that Congress is going to outlaw the use of vowels when used in reference to driving laws?”. Person B-“But did you see Farve in the fourth quarter?? Is he God or what???”.

What sucks for me is that I’m a bartender, and I deal with idiots like that every Sunday. What doesn’t suck is the best way to shut them up is with food, and Big Dawg Fire Department makes it easy with these two dip mixes. All you do is mix the mix with two cups sour cream, stir, refrigerate overnight, and then tell everybody the next day you made it from scratch. And this stuff is good. The Garlic-Onion tastes strong on the garlic, which helps keep the Packer-heads out of your personal space, and I love when people use sea salt. Sea salt brings out the natural flavor of other foods, like regular salt, but doesn’t have that overly salty flavor itself. A bit of warning: the garlic-onion flavor will linger for a while (read: hours).

Chipotle Dip Mix

The Chipotle dip mix was surprisingly strong on heat. When you consider that sour cream is so dairy fat heavy, you would think that the heat would be stifled, but it is detectable, and really takes a drunken football fan by force. The flavor was there, with the sea salt doing its job again, and unlike its Garlic-Onion counterpart didn’t linger. And I was putting the chipotle dip on everything from chips and pretzels to fresh veggies and cheese&crackers. So unlike Packer fans, this dip can multi-task (ha!).

Garlic Onion Dip Mix

Overall these are both fun things to have in your pantry, and at $3.00 a pop, affordable, too. So let’s go to the scoreboard for my Five Point Scale-
Appearance: Touchdown! Good graphics with fire-fighting facts on the back of the label.
Taste: Touchdown! Makes sour cream taste palpable again.
Heat: Field goal (for Chipotle only). Its detectable for seasoned vets, killer for rookies.
Over-all: Touchdown! These dips are ones for the books. Easy to make, easy to use, easy to acquire. Get some.

So until next time, treat every meal like it was your last. And to all you Packer fans out there remember: I’m from Wisconsin, too, and I’m only ribbing you and your un-dying fanaticism for our home state team. I wish you all and your team well, and always remember: the Bears beat the Pack. Go Bears!

Big Dawg Fire Department
P.O. Box 821623 North Richland Hills, TX. 76182.
www.bigdawgsalsa.com.

Ingredients: Here’s a riddle: The product is called “Habanero Horseradish”. One of the ingredients is horseradish. The other is not. (Actually, there is no ingredient list, but basically, its habanero and horseradish).

I believe it says in the Bible that the third Commandment stated “Defcon Creator Is Wing Sauce”, so I was more than excited when I got this in the mail from Nick. In fact, I opened it right away just to smell it. When I came-to from passing out I immediately took a huge spoonful. Man, what a kick in the rump. The balance is on the horseradish side, with a heavy kick from the red habanero. This is essentially grated horseradish with habanero. So the first culinary use I did with it was making some Bloody Marys. Yowza! What a touch! And around Wisconsin (State motto: “If It’s Not Bland, It’s Not Here!”) horseradish is used primarily for roast beef. So I decided to use it with Jambalaya.

I make my jambalaya from scratch, using beef, chicken, and Guillermo sausage, with red bell pepper rice. Now with all of those ingredients you would think the horseradish would drown itself out. Waaaaayyyy wrong. In fact, the blend really complimented to whole dish with a sharp, fresh tone I was expecting from the horseradish. So, satisfied with that, I added it to some pasta Alfredo the next day. This stuff really made the flavor of the cheeses ring out, and really improved the dish. Other foods I tried it on were scrambled eggs, a burger, and tacos (outstanding).

And what do you do if you have a cold/slight hangover? Mix a tablespoon of this in hot water, stir it up, and drink it like tea. No joke, your sinuses clear right the hell up.

This is fun stuff. So onto my Five Point Scale:
Appearance- Every time I look at this, the theme song from the movie “Terminator” pops in my head. Just gnarly, gnarly stuff.
Smell: 4- Every time I take a whiff of this I see a faint light at the end of a dark tunnel. So strong, wakes you up like hyper-coffee. I just love this, but I also love the smell of raw horseradish.
Taste: 4-I’m really impressed how this stuff lent itself to other flavors without over taking the dishes it was in. Great fresh flavor, lingering heat, clean finish. Strangely reminds me of white Burgundy.
Heat: 3.5-Surprisingly not as hot as I would expect from the Creator, but enough heat to satisfy this habbie-head.
Overall: 4-Even if it’s not a super-hot condiment from Defcon, it still is a great thing to reach for in the fridge. Great to experiment with, fun to eat, and just cool packaging. Remember, this is a Defcon product, so you’re not going to go wrong with this stuff.

Until next time, treat every meal like it was your last!

Defcon Sauces
908-665-2141

Being a hardened habbie-head, its natural to go for Cajun foods, or atleast the seasoning used in that cuisine. And I really dig it when a company puts out a product that not only is simple in it’s ingredients, but makes cooking that said food simple. Case in point: “Slap Ya Mama” white pepper blend seasoning. Is it a rub, is it a mix, is it a seasoning? It really doesn’t matter because you can use it for anything.

Made in the heart of Cajun Louisiana, this seasoning packs a serious one-two punch: First you get hit by the red pepper (I’m guessing cayenne), then a back-throat hit by the white pepper. When I first got it I was using it like I would use regular salt, shaking it on pasta, nachos, hot dogs, and even in salad dressings. So it can cover those bases, but I wanted to try it as a rub, so my wife went out and bought some pork steaks. I liberally rubbed this all over the pork, and grilled it.

The picture can’t begin to do the justice this seasoning deserves for bringing such flavor from the pork. It was absolutely divine, and what was really cool was how the individual flavors came out. First you taste the salt, then the cayenne, then the white pepper, without a heavy after-taste. Very flavorful, very crisp. Once you get it you’re going to find yourself using it on your dinner table.

So here’s my five point scale, where applicable.
Appearance: N/A- Looks like red salt. Deceivingly simple.
Smell: 3- Like pepper, with a hint of cayenne.
Taste: 4- It makes simple foods taste “fuller”, giving more depth.
Heat: 2.5- It’s in there, but if you like the hotter you may be disappointed.
Overall: 3.75-This is an all-around seasoning that does wonders on bland foods. Try it on the above mentioned, but it also works great on eggs and fried chicken, too.

Go out and get some, cook a meal for your friends and watch them marvel in your kitchen prowess. Until next time, treat every meal like it was your last!

Walker & Sons, Inc.
5722 U.S. Hwy 167 N. P.O. Box 1016 Ville Platte, LA. 70586.
(337)363-6904, or (337)461-2341
www.walkerandsons.com

The first thing I noticed on this bottle, somehow, was the lack of the word “vinegar” in the ingredients list. Could it be possible that someone was making an all natural hot sauce the Old Skool way? Come on, let’s go for a ride!

Ingredients: Fresh Carrots, Selected red peppers, Fresh onions, Key lime juice, Garlic, Salt. If you can’t have this memorized by the end of this review, oh man. Oh man.

Here’s the thing: Making a sauce without the use of vinegar is tough. Vinegar acts not only as a tart flavor agent, it also pulls duty as a natural preservative. But what our hot sauce making fore-fathers and mothers knew over 4, 000 years ago is that citrus juice (ala lemon or good ole lime) worked just as well, but for a shorter period of time. I was more than excited to try this sauce because this is how the stuff was made years ago before mass-production sauces were the norm. As a history buff, this was taking a gastronomical step back in time. And this sauce takes you on a trip.

Out of the bottle, right onto my tasting spoon. A bright orange, very smooth with specks of what I’m guessing to be chile seeds. And the smell I can only describe as the perfect balance of sweet carrots, fresh chiles, garlic and lime, with the onion speaking up in the way back. I could tell this sauce was going to rock. Then I tasted it. I was left speechless. I tried another spoonful, really letting it coat my tongue. So much flavor, like I just threw the ingredients into a blender and poured it right into my mouth. And the heat was there: this was not a knock your socks off, but enough heat that balanced-dare I say it?-PERFECTLY with the flavor. I literally consumed half the bottle before I remembered this was made for food.

So I decided to commit sacrilege: I mixed Texas-style chili with pasta. I know, I know: true chili and pasta go together like the Middle East and Peace, but I wanted to see if there would be a contrast with the spice of this sauce and the chili, and how the starch of the pasta would temper it. I was not disappointed. This sauce held up to both, complimenting without over taking, which is what hot sauce is supposed to do (in my opinion). Let me just say, I had Crazy Ed’s Chili Beer over ten years ago when it first came out. I thought it tasted like spicy water. These guys have really come around.

So here’s my Five Points Scale:
Appearance: 5. Yes, that high. This sauce is so bright and smooth, it pours very well, and it’s not too thin.
Smell: 5. Yep another 5, this smells like you fell into a garden. The only smell missing is dirt.
Flavor: 5. I can justify this by telling you after I had it on chili and pasta, the sauce went on everything else I ate for the next three meals. That’s how long the bottle lasted. It always complimented, never over powered.
Heat: 4.5. The heat was there from the beginning to the end, without a lingering burn (which affects the overall flavor). The heat won’t last forever, which I like, but it lasts for the whole meal it’s used on, which I think is more important.
Overall: 4.95. This sauce speaks for itself. The label says “the best hot sauce you ever tasted”. All natural, with a shelf life printed on it. Nice touch. Clean, smooth, full flavor, all I can say is get this sauce. Even a Hardened Habbie Head will like this.

Until next time, treat every meal like it was your last!

Buying info: Order online at www.chilibeer.com
Mexico ph: 52-844-427-0070
USA ph: 1-866-762-1395
Imported by Black Mountain Brewing Company Cave Creek, AZ USA

Ingredients: Vinegar, Mango, Sugar, Apple juice, Honey, Habanero, Sea Salt, Natural Spices.

After nearly ruining my taste buds with Batten Island Gourmet Sauce (see my review) it was a welcome return to a quality sauce. I had already reviewed Tahiti Joe’s original Maui Pepper Co. Mango Meltdown, and loved it. This is the amped-up version, X-Treme Heat, and I gotta say this guy knows what he’s doing.

The ingredients are the same as the original, but there is an obvious doubling of the habanero. As I said in my first review, I am not a fruit-based hot sauce lover, but this stuff just rocks. The sweet aroma, the waves of flavor, and now more heat. And all natural, too.

The first thing I could smell was mango and apple juice. The first time I reviewed the original I compared it to walking through a florists shop. This time I felt like I was walking through an orchard. After whiffing it some more, you can smell the habanero and the honey. Man, this stuff just rocks.

Then onto my trusty tasting spoon. This pours well, and looks great, with pieces of habanero throughout. And the flavor is there. Mango first, then habanero, then honey, and then the sea salt, with the apple sauce as the finish. Beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Knowing what I already loved about this sauce, I decided to try it on my wife’s chili. Chili? A fruit based sauce on chili? Well, here’s my logic: Mango is a fruit, habanero is a fruit; habanero goes into my wife’s chili, ergo this should all work together, right? Heather (the before said wife) makes her chili in true Texas style-no beans or tomatoes, just meat, garlic, and plenty of chili powder and chiles. So with a ring of chips, we doused X-Treme Heat on (you can see it by the little black dots). It worked. The sharp, earthiness of the chili was a perfect contrast to the mango and honey. And the habanero stood out, I mean you could really tell the increase in heat. And it lingered like a sweet memory of sauces gone by. Man, I’m telling you, this stuff just ROCKS.

So without further adieu, my Five Points Scale:

Appearance: 5. This is a habanero-specked deep orange love juice. Gorgeous.

Smell: 5. Like a fruit orchard in the morning when the dew is just starting to evaporate.

Flavor: 5. So crisp, so clean, so well balanced with mango and honey with the heavy hit of habanero and hints of apple and salt.

Heat: 4. There’s the obvious increase in habanero, but the heat doesn’t over-shadow the flavor of it. The heat tingle lasted awhile, which is what I’d expect. Awesome.

Overall: 4.75. This is up there with Danny Cash’s Naga Sabi Bomb as to being the nearly perfect sauce. Its everything the original is, only with real heat, and if it had more heat this would be the perfect sauce. I’ve used it from chili, to pretzels to chicken now, and it works with it all. I can’t wait to try it on fish, if it this bottle lasts that long. I really can’t think of what this would not work with.

Until next time, treat every meal like it was your last, and if it was my last, I’d have this bottle with me.

Oh yeah, one more thing. There have been a couple of questions as to why I’m using a “Five Point Scale”, instead of the HSB 1 through 10. First, I’ll confess that I was inspired to use a five point scale when I thought about the “Pain Signs” you see in emergency rooms and dentist offices. It’s very basic, really: at the bottom of the sign you see a Zero with a smiling face, indicating no pain. At the top of the sign there’s a Five with a face that looks like it’s getting a root canal through the nose, indicating extreme pain. Zero through Five, each levels a different measure of pain. Get it? Also, I’ve noticed that most restaurant reviews are done on a five point scale, and I figure that’s the easiest, most basic way for non-chile heads to understand what they’re getting into. And last, I’m an old skool pyrate, and everyone knows pirates have a hard time following directions given by authority (Nick). Thanks, and see ya!

Packed exclusively for Tahiti Joe’s Hot Sauce.
4310 State Dr., West Palm Beach, Fl 33406
1-88-TahitiJo. www.tahitijoeshotsauces.com