Zane & Zack’s
Honey Chipotle Gourmet Sauce

First impression: As soon as I saw the 6 sided jar, I was immediately thinking ‘apple butter’! lol Where I make my products, they package this apple butter in the same container. So wiping this image out of my head, I take a look at what I have been sent to review! A smoky-sweet Honey-Chipotle hot sauce from WA! Nifty label, with probably the owners small children, smiling with glee that I’m about it eat some of this sauce on my food!

Ingredients: jalapeño peppers, honey, water, vinegar, garlic, salt, spices.

I like the list of ingredients thus far. Nothing artificial or evil, which is a very good thing. I like it when other people make their food products with ingredients they too would eat. It’s a very short, yet simple mixture. Let’s see how it holds up?!?

Appearance/Smell/Taste: I twist the cap off the small squat jar, and partake in a hearty inhale. It has a very smoky-sweet smell, almost like a barbecue sauce, but not quite. My nose is somewhat perplexed at what I smell. But I again read the ingredients to only find, Jalapeños, honey, vinegar, garlic, etc… Mounting a heaping teaspoon of the sauce I take a closer inspection. It’s very thick and very dark, with little bits of seeds, pepper flesh and spices. It’s apparent to me now that the manufacturer is using chipotle peppers, and not chipotle powder, even though the ingredients only say ‘jalapeños’. I could be very wrong about this assumption.

Prepared meal: I decided on the last minute to cook up a chicken and vegetable stir fry using Zane and Zack’s Honey-Chipotle sauce as the base. Which such a nice thick consistency from all that honey, I’m going to have to add some chicken stock to get some kind of a sauciness to it. For this recipe you will need..

1 – 11 oz. jar Zane and Zack’s Honey-Chipotle Gourmet Sauce

1 – 1 ¼ lbs. free range chicken breast tenders

5-6 large cloves of garlic (coarsely chopped)

½ large sweet onion (coarsely chopped)

1 tsp coarse black pepper

½ tsp coarse sea salt

2 dozen fresh string beans (cut into 1” pieces)

1 cup basmati rice

2 tsp fresh ground paprika

¾ cup broccoli florets

½ cup kernel corn

½ cup green peas

1/8 cup peanut oil

4 oz. chicken stock

Add 2 cups of water to a covered pot and bring to a boil. Add 1 cup basmati rice and fresh ground paprika to boiling water. Cover pot and simmer on low for 18- 20 minutes. In a large heated skillet add peanut oil and onions. Stirring occasionally saute onions for roughly 8-10 minutes until they become soft. While onions are cooking, take a meat cleaver and mince the chicken breast tenders. It should look almost like ground meat, but slightly finer. Add garlic to pan and saute for 2-3 minutes careful not to burn the garlic. Add minced chicken and using a wooden spoon, break up chicken in pan while cooking. Almost like you do when you brown ground beef. Add sea salt and black pepper. On medium heat, cook chicken for roughly 7 minutes. Add vegetables and continue to heat for another 2-3 minutes while gently stirring mixture in pan. Add entire jar of Zane and Zack’s and chicken stock. Stir everything together until well mixed while bringing to a boil. Boil for another 2 minutes until sauce and stock get well heated through.

Complement to meal: I added a nice mound of red rice (thanks to the paprika) to my plate, then topped it off with some chicken and vegetable honey-chipotle stir fry! The initial smell was still there! It still had that ‘almost’ barbecue sauce smell. It’s got to be the chipotle that is making me associate this. Everything looks and smells really good! Let’s see how it tastes. Initially I get that sweet honey flavor, then the smoky kicks in. Added up behind it with some nice zing from the jalapenos. As I’m eating my meal, I’m starting to sweat pretty good. My mouth isn’t really on fire, but it sure is making me sweat! Whew! Gotta love spicy foods! Overall I’d say that this is a very interesting, different tasting hot sauce. Yes, I used the ENTIRE jar in the preparation of this stir fry. I can see this going really well with a hamburger, or even topped on a slice of pizza! It doesn’t have a harsh vinegar flavor, in fact I really didn’t get any vinegar tang in my food at all. I didn’t try the sauce straight up this time, so it might be more noticeable eating it that way. As a cooking sauce, I’d say that it performed pretty well. It had a great thick consistency which is very good for getting creative with other ingredients and actually cooking something different for a change. Using a chicken stock or a beef stock would do this sauce wonders on all kinds of foods. Heck, I bet it would be great on some fried fish!

Initial impression: 7/10

Ingredient quality/content: 9/10

Flavor/texture/smell: 7/10

Heat: 7/10

Overall: 7.5/10

Zane and Zack’s
Renton, WA
www.zandzhoneyco.com