Posted September 15, 2007 by Lars in Reviews

Review: Batten Island Gourmet Sauce – HOT

Batten Island Gourmet Sauce
Hot

First impression: This one is going to be rough for me. I can tell just from the list of ingredients. It has nothing to do with artificial colors, flavors, or preservatives. Batten Island Hot Sauce is 100% natural and should be proud to be so. There is no high fructose corn syrup or xanthan gum used as thickeners. Batten Island gets a real nice large THUMBS UP for this! No on to what I’m talking about as far as ingredient content”¦

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.

Appearance/Smell/Taste: I crack open the lid and take a hefty whiff of this strange concoction of a hot sauce. The first thing that hits my brain receptors is an odd mix of steak sauce and apple pie?!? I shit you not folks”¦ lol This one is definitely DIFFERENT! What is most annoying about the ingredients is the ‘and/or’ and ‘one or more of the following’?!? Seriously, I do not know why food manufacturers label products this way. I for one as a consumer would like to know what I’m eating. Labeling this way just leads to too many ‘for instances’ for my liking. Aside from this little bitch about what’s actually in the bottle, let’s look closer shall we?!? The sauce has a muddy brown color with a slight hint of orange-ish red kinda hue. Almost like the surface of Mars, but not exactly. You can see a myriad of dried spices mixed together pleasure. So let’s find out. Hmmm, it tastes almost exactly as it smells. Sort of an odd mixture between steak sauce and apple pie. The sauce almost has a slight gritty texture. Looking closer at the ingredients there is listed ‘habanero and cayenne PEPPER’. Does this mean powders are used instead of fresh or IQF frozen pods?!? If someone can correct me on this I’d like to know. The sauce itself is a nice thick consistency. It flows nicely from the bottle into large collected globs. I’m glad that I’m not actually cooking anything for this review. I haven’t had pizzeria pizza in months, so I was desperately jonesin’ for a slice of heaven. I started off the food test with a slice of white pizza”¦

Prepared meal: White Pizza ““ ricotta cheese, mozzarella cheese, and lots of garlic!

There isn’t a hot sauce that I have come across that didn’t go well on pizza. As you can see from above, I placed a hearty portion of Batten Island HOT Hot Sauce on my pizza to give it the food test. Well, perhaps we have a first here folks.

Complement to meal: Just the smell of this sauce going onto the pizza was, strange. It’s not bad mind you, just not something that I’m accustomed to in a hot sauce. The smell of the steak sauce kinda shows up very lightly. Still not sure if this is going to be a good match here. ‘Chew, chew, chew, chew'”¦ Strange. There isn’t much heat, and it tastes like I have steak sauce and apple pie filling on my pizza.. lol I detect a hint of raisins and/or dates & prunes, but I’m really not sure since the list of ingredients is just as confused as my taste buds currently are. It’s got a very sweet after taste. Not too sweet, actually that is as a good level I suppose for a hot sauce of this type. I suppose since this is supposed to be the hottest of the Batten Island Sauces, I’m a little disappointed in the heat level of this one. It could be plenty hotter and still be bearable to an uninitiated tongue. I have to give Batten Island Sauces credit where credit is due. This hot sauce is DIFFERENT and UNIQUE. There is no funny stuff or phony bologna either, which is very important coming from a manufacturers stand point. I would say try this sauce with some kind of meat or fish. I bet it would taste better if it were cooked a little with some food, that might help the flavors come out a little better than just blopped onto a slice of pizza. ““Lars-