Review: Ass Murdering Hot Sauce

Overview

Maker: Bisummo

Cost: $5.95 from Bisummo

Ingredients: Lime juice (lime juice from concentrate, sodium benzoate, lime oil, sodium metabisulfite), jalapeno peppers, serrano peppers, Dijon mustard (water, vinegar, mustard seed, salt, white wine, fruit pectin, citric acid, tartaric acid, sugar, spice) garlic, habanero peppers, vinegar, molasses, olive oil, turmeric, [the kitchen sink"¦]

Pepper: Habanero, Jalapeno

Label

Taste

Heat

Appearance

Aroma

Total Score

3/ 5

User Rating

no ratings yet

Posted February 15, 2008 by Brendan

Full Review

First Impression: I’m going to deviate a bit from my normal routine and just say up front that I am quite fond of this sauce. I do this now because this sauce is called Ass Murdering Hot Sauce. As such, I might say a few things in the course of this review that in other reviews would be considered negative, let alone distasteful, but ultimately I figure whoever makes or purchases a sauce called Ass Murdering Hot Sauce (or any rectal, fecal, or flatulent-themed sauces, for that matter) have a sense of [bathroom] humor and can appreciate the fact that, for instance, I was considering smearing this sauce on a piece of toilet paper for my stand-alone sauce picture (it’s a plate, I swear).

Very nice label. It’s colorful, and we also see a beautiful visual pun, whereby a donkey (ass) has been rendered dead (x-ed out eyes, gravestone, and all) by hot sauce. The pun defeats itself though, or perhaps strengthens itself depending on how you want to look at it, in that the ass’s ass is also ablaze. So in effect, the viewer is left with this paradoxical confusion as to thematic intent. That is to say, what are we murdering when we ingest this sauce, our asses or ourselves?

Appearance: You mean, besides the contents of an infant’s diaper? Oh, SNAP! Actually, if you can get past that last line, it’s actually a beautiful rich dark yellow, I believe Crayola called it maize. It’s almost golden. It’s thick and the texture is coarse, with little hard things interspersed about, probably a combo of chile and mustard seeds and maybe minced garlic.

Smell: Ha! The moment you’ve all been waiting for! Ass Murdering Hot Sauce smells like”¦garlic, primarily. Also, mustard, definitely. I don’t think a sauce can get this yellow without mustard playing a big role. Vinegar adds some acidic aroma which blends well with what I believe must be the lime. Maybe it’s the strong garlic, maybe it’s the flask-shaped bottle, but right now I’m reminded of the Pain is Good garlic offering, which used to be batch #37, may still be.

Taste: There are three very prominent flavors when I touch this sauce to my tongue: believe or not, the lime is the very first thing I taste. I’m thinking that the lime oil in the lime juice (see ingredients) might give the citrus that staying power. A few seconds after the lime, a very pungent, spicy garlic scourge sets in. The garlic is quickly elevated further by the distinctive mustard zest, which is both bold and warm somehow, possibly due to the sweetening effect of the molasses. I’m wondering if there are also cloves under the frustrating blanket term of “spice,” there is something mellow and comforting in there that I can’t quite place.

Heat: It’s pretty hot; I’d label it hot, but I think many would agree that they are exaggerating a bit for the sake of an admittedly very creative all-around sauce concept. The heat sets in in about 2-3 seconds and gradually builds into a moderately intense, mid to back-of-tongue sizzle (“Fa Shizzle,” as the label so eloquently articulates). I’m not really panting, certainly not sweating, and my nose has only a little fluidity. But it’s a pleasant, heat lover’s heat.

Now, in the interest of journalistic integrity, I’m afraid I do have to report, a day later, on the status of my ass: While it is not advisable, and certainly illegal, to harbor a living equine creature on a Harlem rooftop, we’ve been quartering a Harold, a donkey, for just over a month now (he was abandoned, it was Christmas). In the recent arctic blast, I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to mix some of this stuff into his oats; it would either stave off frostbite, or substantiate the claims on the bottle, so it was really a win-win. What happened? Harold is still alive, but suffering from a serious case of laminitis, a common donkey disease of the foot, often attributed to over-eating”¦so he must have really liked it! Just pray he gets better.

Overall: It’s great! Creative from both an artistic and culinary perspective. Not terribly impressed by the heat level (especially in respect to all the fanfare), but I think the intensity is perfect, in that it’s decently hot, yet does not mask the complex flavors. I baked this on top of chicken. For some reason the citrusy lime flavor was what really stood out, and to an extent the heat was baked away, but it was very good! And to answer the question I posed way earlier, clearly I am the ass that this sauce attempted to murder.

I know this is already a long review, but if you can bear with me a few more minutes, I have a few words, helpful I think, on hot sauce pairing. There are several approaches I take in picking the right sauce for the right food that have always worked out quite well for me. The first thing I usually think about is color. Like some people find with wine, I look at the color of my dish or my meat, and match it with a similarly hued hot sauce. This time, for instance, I took this approach and applied a golden sauce to a golden baked chicken. Another thing I like to do sometimes is to think regionally. For example, if I am making a Southwestern dish, I might look to a Southwestern-style sauce, or a sauce from the Southwest. Prominent ingredients are another way to make the call. Let’s say I have a dish that calls for lots of cinnamon (not that I encounter dishes like that very often, just hypothetical). Then I might scour my shelves for a sauce where cinnamon figures prominently (I might not have a sauce quite like that, but you get the point). The last approach I’ll mention, and it’s kind of obvious, which I’ve also heard applied to wine, is screw what anyone tells you, use the combination that works: do what you think tastes good!

AND”¦Happy Valentine’s Day ladies! Hope you like my habanero flower with the serrano stem! Sorry about the raw chicken, but seeing that flower burnt and shriveled-up might have sent the wrong message.