I usually do not buy just anything that has “Habanero” in its name, especially when I’m at the grocery store. But, I’ll be honest, this was on sale, so I took a look. It’s made in Wisconsin (my bland home state), and my family and I took a visit to the Mustard Capital in Mount Horeb (WI), so, what the hey, why not???

Ingredients: Distilled vinegar, Water, Ground Mustard Seed, green chili peppers, Habanero Peppers, salt, Paprika, spices, dehydrated garlic, calcium chloride, sodium benzoate (preservative).

Essentially, by looking at this list, this is basically a grain mustard with chiles added. I poured some on my trusty tasting spoon, took a whiff, and smelled…..mustard. Just regular mustard. I took another look at it: no visible pieces of chiles, no seeds. I took one more sniff and LO AND BEHOLD! All I got was plain mustard. Habanero mustard my !**!

Then I took the taste. Yeah, mustard, and then out of the blue: POW! It hits you blind-sided. The heat didn’t really stick around, but what it did do was accentuate the clean flavor of the grain mustard. I was really taken aback-this was some pretty decent mustard!

I needed a food item that was truly made to pair with this, so I started with the standard pretzels. I bought pretzel sticks (dipping kind), gave a handful to my two year old daughter, and went to town. And I gotta say: pretty good. The saltiness of the pretzels complimented the saltiness and vinegar of the mustard while bringing out the crisp taste of the mustard grain. Then I took it to a hallowed Wisconsin tradition, an institution so sacred that the mere mention of it brings awe and confusion to those outside of this fine mid-west state. Yes my dear friends, I’m talking about: The Bratwurst. Yes, the fat little sausage that German immigrants made this region famous for. Famous if you’re a Wisconsinite, I guess.

Anyway, I grilled off some fresh brats, sautéed some onions, and put it all together. In a word: Divine. The fattiness of the brat and onions played well against the sharp mustard/habanero contrast, all the while without losing too much heat from the chile duo. This stuff was really going down well, so I cooked off another brat for a friend of mine, didn’t tell him about the mustard, and just watched him eat. My friend isn’t a chile head, so after a few choice words and gulps of drink, I concluded that to the uninitiated, this mustard delivers what it says.

So let’s get to my Five Points Scale:
Appearance: 3. This is a mustard first, and there would be no warning if you didn’t know there were chiles in here. Ask my friend!
Smell: Again a 3. See above.
Flavor: I’m going to give this a solid 4, only because-again-this is a mustard first with chiles added. The habanero adds secondary notes, and is not the main star in this. But a great, clean mustard flavor.
Heat:4.5. This mustard was made for the masses looking to spice things up a little. For the masses, this wouldn’t spice things up, it would blow things up.
Overall: 3.75. This is a really good mustard (and remember, mustard is a sauce). Silver Spring Gardens did what they intended to do-for regular folks. For the rest of us, this would be a slightly spicier mustard, which I like every now and then. Try it with fatty sausages, cheeses, and especially cold-cut sandwiches.

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

Silver Spring Gardens, Inc.
Eau Claire, WI 54701-0360
www.silverspringfoods.com

Is “FLSauce” the company who makes this? Or is Batten Island the company?

Ingredients: Raisins and/or dates & prunes, vinegar, apple, (one or more of the following: pears, papaya, mango), Habanero & Cayenne pepper, tomato paste, brown sugar, garlic, onion, salt, and other exotic herbs & spices.

After learning my lesson from a certain fruit-based hot sauce not to judge a sauce by its ingredient list, I went ahead and tore the cape off of this one. It was disgusting. Not only was the bottle mucked up (which in all fairness does happen sometimes), the smell emanating from it was just, frankly, putrid. So I read the ingredients list again. Now, at the store, any time I see “and/or”, or worse “one or more of the following” I put that product right down (I have kids, so reading labels is a force of habit). “And/or”? “One or more of the following”?

Question #1 before I continue: Why couldn’t someone decide what the hell was going into this?

Question #2 before I continue: How much longer will I go on before this review turns into a mad rant?

But I digress. I poured the sauce onto a plate, well, really I shook the heck out of it, and it fell out in a big “glop”. I thought to myself how this wasn’t going well already, and walked away. A couple minutes later my six year old stepson asked me (I swear to God I’m not making this up) “Why is there cat poop on the counter?”. To make matters worse, I eventually got the courage to actually try the stuff, and…I have no idea what it was I was tasting. Was it raisins and/or dates? Or was it one or more of the pears, papaya or mango? It sure wasn’t habanero or cayenne (my two year old daughter licked my trusty tasting spoon clean). Or was it “other exotic herbs and spices? And by the way, what if I’m allergic to those “other” exotic herbs and spices? All I could taste was a pasty, some kind of fruit mix (like a fruit roll). Mild sauce? Gourmet sauce??

Ok, here comes the rant. This was labeled as a “mild” sauce. Doesn’t there have to be some kind, any kind, of heat source? The ingredients list clearly says there’s habanero and cayenne. Where? I should point out that the ingredients list is printed in the smallest font on the whole label, and on the side of the bottle, in bold black letters, it reads “MIGHT AS WELL HAVE THE BEST” Well honey, it ain’t coming from this bottle. I really have no idea what these people were thinking when they constructed this sauce. At first I thought maybe I got a tainted bottle (it happens), but after tasting it multiple times, I knew this is what they were going for (and yes, I have consumed tainted hot sauces).

You know, I’m all for a free economy, where anyone can sell anything. But has the hot sauce industry come to a point where anyone can just pump something out without market testing it first? And what was the consumer market this bottle was targeted at?

So here I am, making the call out to all of the producers that give a rat’s ass about hot sauce, that actually take the patient time and care required to produce a quality product. Italy and France have laws (laws!) about what can or cannot be labeled as a quality wine, and cheese. The California olive oil industry has very strict codes as far as quality in labels, also. Shouldn’t we, in our industry, recognize that hot sauce is not just “sauce”, but its own viable ingredient, a food itself? I sell my own brand (Old Skool Pyrate) around Wisconsin, a pure habanero blend, and the first question I’m asked is-you guessed it-“Is it hot?”. You all have been asked that question, how many times? No, I am not implying that we need to educate the public about quality sauces, I’m saying that its because of “gourmet” sauces like this one that people don’t know what quality is. There needs to be something, dare I say a governing body, that regulates what is good sauce, and what is really great sauce, decided on by ingredients, handling, and production. Maybe there already is something like the D.O.C.G., or the A.O.C. (Italy and France), or the California Olive Oil Council. I don’t know. I’m just tired of seeing slop like this on the market.

So here’s my Five Points Scale:
Appearance: 0. Read again what my step son asked.
Smell: 0. I have no idea what I was supposed to be smelling in the first place. Raisins and/or what?
Taste: 0. Again, I don’t know what I was supposed to be tasting, since I don’t know what the hell is in this.
Heat:0. Do I really need to go on?

I always end by saying to treat every meal like it was your last. Don’t do it with this sauce.

Batten Island Gourmet Sauce
10418 New Berlin Road Suite 224
Jacksonville, Fl 32226
1-877-FLSauce

Ingredients: Diced tomatoes, blue crab, sweet yellow corn, finely chopped green bell peppers, lime juice, smoked chipotle peppers, minced green chili peppers, Worcestershire sauce, a special blend of herbs and spices.

I LOVE CRABS. Ok, that may not be the way to start this review…What I meant to say is that I really enjoy partaking in fine food that comes from water, particularly crustacean type animals. I also love chipotles and sweet yellow corn. But I’ve never had them together, so when Nick sent me this bottle, I was excited to go tongue surfing with this Chipotle Blue Crab Salsa!

The secret to making really good salsa is watching the salt. The reason you have to be careful with it is because what’s the #1 vessel salsa uses to get to your gums? Chips, and 99% of store bought chips are salted. So you want a salsa that’s not too high in the sodium with enough to bring out the flavors of the other ingredients. This salsa delivers that fine balance. What really impressed me with this salsa is that they took, essentially, “sweet” ingredients (blue crab, yellow corn) and married them with very subtle chipotles.

And the aroma is great. My instructions were to chill this before using, so that somewhat muted (is that the right term?) the smell, but I got a great whiff of the green chiles. And this is a nice chunky salsa. Why doesn’t anybody make salsa this way, where you can actually SEE what’s in it?

But what’s important is taste. Again, I chilled it before using, and with my trusty tasting spoon I took a huge bite. To say it is mild is like saying the Pacific Ocean is wet. Very, very mild, almost to the point of being sweet. Almost too sweet for me. So yeah, I did the chip thing, store bought tortillas. Good. Not great, but good. Then I thought: Pasta. And when I think of seafood and pasta I think of Ramen noodles (hey, what the hell). After adding just a touch of sea salt, I had a gourmet meal, it really worked. When you add a little bit of heat to this, all the flavors really come to life. This is a fun salsa.

So here is my Five Points Scale:
Appearance: A clear 5. I like seeing what I’m chipping.
Smell: 4. Clean, fresh green chile smell.
Taste: 3. OK chilled, but I think this is a better topping on hot foods.
Heat: .05. And that’s really pushing it.
Overall: 3. This is a nice salsa for everyone. Just add your own heat, that’s really all it needs.

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

Awards:
2005 NBBQA National Champion! Won 1st Place – Best Salsa
2004 National Barbecue Association Award of Excellence, National Champion in the Salsa / Any Thing Goes Category.

Peppers
1815 Ocean Outlets Seaside,
Rehoboth Beach, DE 19971

Ingredients: Go grab a beer or a soda and sit down. You’re gonna be here awhile. Chocolate habanero puree (water, chocolate habanero peppers), tomato sauce (water, tomato paste, salt, high fructose corn syrup, citric acid, garlic powder, spices), brown sugar (sugar, molasses), honey, vinegar, molasses, spices and coloring, Worcestershire sauce (you’re a damned fool if you think I’m going to list all those ingredients) , soy sauce (water, wheat, soybeans, salt, sodium benzoate-less then 1/10 of 1% as a preservative), liquid smoke, salt, granulated garlic, lime juice, and lemon juice. Carpal tunnel just set in.

About ten years ago I was working in an upscale (meaning over priced) BBQ restaurant as a sous chef, and one of my duties was making the ‘Q sauce. The executive chef had his secret recipe, of which I altered greatly, and it was a pretty well respected sauce. I only wish I had this sauce back then, or was able to recreate it.

My love is chocolate habaneros. As you could see, that’s the first ingredient. Score 1 for Rick. Smell it, oh yeah, go ahead and smell it: Worcestershire sauce with a tone of smoke and molasses. And thick, oh man, nice and thick that just poured onto my trusty tasting spoon. This is a true Texas-style ‘Q sauce based with tomatoes, and it just has this dark, sexy reddish brown color that a picture can’t do justice.

And then there was the taste.
OH…MY…GOD. This stuff is incredible. The heat just comes at you like a Texas long horn, and takes you for the drag of your life (the burn for me lasted 38 minutes. Yes, I timed it). The flavors of chocolate habbies, tomatoes, and molasses just blended together like a fine tuned orchestra, hitting all the right notes while covering the tongue with heat and salt. I’m in Heat Heaven.

The first thing I tried it on was grilled mini-burgers. All ground-chuck, with a touch of salt, these burgers were meant to be simple so the flavor of the sauce could speak. Absolutely fantastic. The sauce thinned out considerably with the heat of the burgers, but I never minded a little mess. That was too easy, grilled burgers I thought, so I took the ‘Q sauce with me to work. I work at a bar with a grill, and have access to anything. First up-potato pan cakes. The starch of the potato tamed the heat somewhat, but didn’t hinder the flavor. Buffalo burger-same as the grilled mini-burgers: great. Last, steak salad. Fantastic.
This is a fantastic sauce. Of course, I don’t have any pictures of the food from work (no camera), but let’s just say you were missing out.

So let’s go to my Five Point Scales:
Appearance: 4.5. Dark red and smooth, with bits of habanero.
Smell: 4. Worcestershire sauce first, then smoke, then molasses, then habanero. This is fine if you like the smell of Worcestershire sauce. And if I have to type out that word one more time…
Taste: 5. Incredible choco habbie flavor followed by tomato and molasses, finished with salt, pepper, and heat.
Heat: 5. Choco habbies, my all-time favorites. Chocolate habanero will still be King in my book after the Bhut and Nagas go away. Think Shelby Cobra, ’67.
Overall: 4.95. This is the kind of ‘Q sauce that if I was having a party I would put it in a different bottle and tell everyone I made it. You could heat this up and eat it like soup.

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

Rick’s Test Kitchen TM
1415 S. 11^th St.
Lincoln, NE 68502-2203
Rick@rickstestkitchen.com

Ingredients: Vinegar, Mango, Sugar, Apple juice, Honey, Habanero, sea salt, natural spices. “The sweet heat with a tropical tingle” (their words).

Well. A mango habanero “hot sauce”.
Let me start this again: when I received this bottle from Nick, my initial thought was “Damn. A mango hot sauce?”. You see, I’m a savory hot sauce kinda a guy, not some fruity-tooty skirt wearin’ MANGO sauce guy. Let me be thy example of just why we do not judge a book by its cover, nor by its ingredients list.

I tore the cap off and poured a sample into my trusty tasting spoon. This bottle has a wider top than most 5 ouncers, and for a liquid sauce like this, it helps. With vinegar being the first ingredient, it flowed freely. Off the tasting spoon I could smell a great bouquet of honey and habanero. Did I say “bouquet”? You bet I did, b’cause this stuff smelled great, like I was walking through a florists shop. After smelling it, and looking over this golden concoction (sprinkled with bits of habanero), I finally tasted it.

At first all I tasted was the mango and apple juice, which quickly went away. Then I was taken aback by the impressive heat this thing packs, with a nice finish from the sea salt. I couldn’t believe it, so I took another spoonful. Same thing: sweet flavor quickly taken over by spicy/salty finish.

Damn! What a mango hot sauce!

I was excited to try this one out now. So I took a couple more spoonfuls right out of the bottle. Oh yeah, I gotta try this on food, too (damn!). First up: margaritas. It was my youngest daughter’s first birthday, so to show how grateful I was to my wife I whipped up a couple a ‘ritas, one with a healthy dose of Mango Meltdown, the other with a weaker dose. The obvious happened: my margarita (healthy) rocked, whereas my wife’s (weaker) was ok (so I put more booze in it).

Next up I took the traditional Italian salad of buffalo mozzarella, tomatoes, and basil. Instead of the traditional dressing of olive oil and balsamic vinegar, I used this sauce. I didn’t realize I had just created (sit down as you read this) perhaps the best darn snack food my house will ever see or taste, ever! The tomatoes, heirlooms from our garden, could not have worked better with this sauce, it was perfection. The buffalo mozzarella, with its high fat content, cooled the heat but really, really complimented the mango, honey, and sea salt. The basil just added a fourth dimension to it all. This was near perfect summer food. This sauce will stand up to hardy vegetables, lighter meats, and milder cheeses. Oh, and of course other fruit dishes.

Let me end with this: Do you remember that friend you had in high school, kind of dorky, kind of weird, and you were kind of embarrassed to be seen in public with him? And then, when no one else was around, you two were near about the best of friends? I don’t either (I was kind to all), and that’s what this sauce reminds me of. Great stuff, but if you’re a hardened habbie head, kind of reluctant to admit it.

The Five Points Scale:
Appearance: 4 Smooth and golden, flecked with bits of habanero and seeds.
Aroma: 4. Floral with undertones of apple and vinegar.
Heat: 2. I’m guessing around the 5,000 SHU range.
Flavor: 5, and a worthy 5-this stuff is addictive.
Overall: 4.7. This is really good stuff to have if the $8.00 price tag doesn’t scare you.

Go get a bottle of this, and until next time, treat every meal like it was you’re last!
Louie (ChileLouie).

Tahiti Joe
The Kahuna of Hot Sauces
4310 State Drive
W.P.B.,Fl.33406
561-439-7832
Fax: 561-965-4909
Toll Free: 1-88-Tahitijo
http://www.tahitijoeshotsauces.com

http://www.mauipepper.com

Our thoughts & prayers are with you Tahiti…

CHARLOTTE C. FINOCHIO TURNER Age 68 of West Palm Beach, FL; formerly of Flushing, NY, succumbed Friday, August 3, 2007 following a brief, courageous battle with cancer. She was employed by Hertz Rent-a-Car for 19 years and then retired from the U.S. Postal Service in 2004. She and her husband Joe started and operate a successful business, Tahiti Joe’s Hot Sauces, in West Palm Beach in 1996. She is survived by her beloved husband whom she married 16 years ago in Bora Bora, Tahiti, Joseph K. Turner Jr. and his family; both her caring mother Kathryn Finochio of Queens Village, NY and her mother-in-law, Floe Tress of Tequesta FL; two loving brothers, Frank and Steve Finochio and their families of NY; one adoring daughter, Karen Duva and her husband Richard; two cherished grandchildren, Krystina and Nicholas; and a host of valued family and friends. At her request, no services are to be conducted, but a ‘Celebration of Life’ for her will be announced at a later date. Those who wish may contribute to the Charlotte C. Turner Foundation, a soon to be established non-profit organization, that will provide financial assistance for natural and holistic healing at Hipocrates in West Palm Beach. Donations or contributions may be directed through Joseph Turner

To express condolences and/or make donations Visit PalmBeachPost.com/obituaries

Published in The Palm Beach Post on 8/6/2007.

I’ll start right off the bat as admitting I am not a huge fan of mass-produced sauces. They tend to have an overly processed taste (or lack of) with poor consistency and no discernable aroma. But every now and then I buy a sauce I know is mass-produced (I live in Wisconsin-the Bland Hole of the Flavor Universe) and WHOA! Surprise, surprise, surprise. This sauce is just that case.

Salsa Kutbil-ik de Chile Habanero is El Yucateco’s hottest in their garden of habanero sauces. The first thing I do with every new sauce I try is pour it on a spoon, right out of the bottle, and taste it. A good habanero sauce will have three characteristics:
1-A clean, citrus-y, almost smoky-earthy aroma.
2-Flavor that tastes like fresh habanero, not vinegar.
3-Heat that starts at the tip of the tongue, and slowly flows all the way to the back of the throat. This sauce hits two out of three.

Salsa Kutbil-ik smells like I just picked a habbie right out of my garden. Fresh, very fresh. Doesn’t smell like a mass-produced sauce. Doesn’t pour like one, either; very smooth and constant.

The flavor of the sauce right out of the bottle took me right to the Yucatan-very fresh, very full, and it just coats the tongue with the flavor of a just-picked habbie. If it weren’t for the salt and “spices” it would taste like a slice of the real thing.

The heat? Here’s where I was taken back to reality. The heat hits you right away, and then…completely disappears. I mean, it completely disappeared. This is a habanero sauce?

Any good hot sauce can be applied to any type of cuisine. I decided to use this sauce with something obviously non-Mexican, pepperoni pizza. I made the pizza at my job (I work at a bar/restaurant), brought it home, threw the sauce on, and then reheated it. Remember what I said about the aroma and flavor about this sauce? It wasn’t there anymore. But here’s the thing: the heat was. So I took some left over pizza, reheated it, and then put the sauce on. Result: flavor’s back, aroma’s back, and the heat again stood out (if only for a couple of minutes). Acceptable, considering the cost of this four ounce bottle. This is a finishing sauce, not a cooking sauce.

Overall, this is a good, middle of the road kind of sauce. If I had a friend that was just wandering in to the Wonderful World of Habanero, this just fits the bill. Not too hot, not too dull, and enough flavor to keep around the house.

My Five Star Scales:
Aroma: 4 ½. Literal garden fresh smell with a hint of vinegar.
Flavor: 4. It’s almost all there, but still missing something.
Heat: 2. That’s stretching it, too. For hardened habbie-heads, this sauce is child’s play.
Verdict: 3. I’d buy this sauce again, not only for its flavor, but also for its affordability. If this sauce was a car, it would be a Cadillac.

Until next time, treat every meal like it’s your last, and make it a full one!