After a very good experience with Must-Have-Mango, I was eagerly anticipating my next experience. I chose the Smokey Sear-Acha, with it’s dark red complexion and visible seeds in the sauce.

Ingredients: Thai chiles peppers, cane vingear, onions, garlic, tomato paste, salt, sugar, herbs, Chipotles

On First Taste
Smokey Sear Acha starts off with a strong backbone of tomato, with a strong chili component and a bit of vinegar. There is a good bit of smoke, slightly delayed but quickly dominating the flavor. The Thai Chile peppers are rather non-descript; their flavor gets lost in the mix. The smell of this sauce reminds me an adobo sauce. The flavor is similar to adobo, but with less smoke and a bit more vinegar. There’s not too much complexity in flavor; what you get on the first taste persists, bite after bite. The heat is moderate, enough to get a rise out of the average heat tolerance but not bad at all for an experienced chilihead. The consistency is a bit thin; highly pourable, but it doesn’t stick to food well. It’s probably best suited for food that’s eaten with a fork.

On Food
One of my most important uses of hot sauce is to bring new and invigorated life to leftovers. I decided to use Smokey Sear-Acha on leftover pasta - linguine with ground sausage, mushrooms and artichokes in a tomato sauce.

The Smokey Sear-Acha brought a whole new dimension to the dish. It integrated perfectly with the tomato sauce, and added a good deal of pepper flavor and smokiness. It transformed a ho-hum marinara base into a much more flavorful, potent and vibrant arrabiata sauce with an unexpected kick of smoke.

Hungry for a snack during the Pistons game, I took Napoleon’s Grandma’s advice and made myself a dang quesadilla. I spread cream cheese on a tortilla, added hot sauce and voila! A quick, tasty snack. Smokey Sear-Acha added a very nice flavor to the cream cheese, but it was overly messy, as the sauce didn’t stick well. It probably would have been much better to premix the cream cheese and sauce.

I think Smokey Sear-Acha would also be excellent as a marinade, as a flavor and heat enhancer for any tomato based sauce or chili. It makes for a flavor upgrade anywhere adobo sauce would be required. But be careful using it on food to be eaten with the hands - it doesn’t stick well to food.

Overall Rating: 8.1 out of 10