Front Label:
Red Chile Ketchup
“Refrigerate after opening”
www.bitandspur.com

Ingredients: Fire Roasted Tomatoes, Smoked Chilies, Sugar, Vinegar, Salt, Seasonings.

Packaging: Bit & Spur’s Red Chile Ketchup comes in a low key clear glass bottle with a white cap. The front is adorned with a small black and tan label. There is no back label.

Color: Orange/Red color with dark specks floating around.

Smell: Surprisingly, Red Chile Ketchup smells like nothing so much as spaghetti sauce. No real hints of smoked peppers, no vinegar burst…nothing but tomato and Italian seasonings. I have to admit that I was a taken aback, given the name and ingredient list. I was expecting more of a smokey, chipotle experience.

Consistency: This was a thick sauce, not unlike a well blended salsa. On a tilted paper plate there was a good amount of runoff, but also a substantial quantity of thicker stuff.

Taste: Tasting a tablespoonful, the spaghetti sauce impression continues. This is definitely a mild, mild sauce, and if I were served this on a plate of pasta and told it was homemade, I’d probably not bat an eye. Over the course of the next few days I tested Red Chile Ketchup a variety of foods, including a barbecued cheeseburger, fish, and a grilled chicken breast. On one item after another and the flavor vanished. I dumped more and more of the sauce on to my food, attempting to get enough on there to simply taste it, but always seemed to come up empty. As a condiment, I’m afraid Red Chile Ketchup isn’t bringing much to the table.

Texture: Smooth-to-lumpy. Some vegetable crunch when eaten straight up, but nothing noticeable when used on food.

Heat: This is a profoundly mild sauce, probably one step above a green bell pepper. On a heat scale of 1 to 10, I rate Red Chile Ketchup 1.5.

Overall Impressions: This is the sort of sauce that has you reaching for something else within seconds of your first bite. The smell is pleasant, unique, and promising, but the seasonings simply don’t pack enough oral punch for you to be aware that a condiment is even being used. Someone could literally sneak this sauce on your burger without telling you and you’d probably not know it. It tastes nothing like ketchup, and that leads me to wonder why this name was chosen.