Review: Pepper’s Original Blue Crab Salsa
“Enjoy the bounty of the Chesapeake Bay! The sweet flavor of the blue crab combined with fresh ripe vegetables makes for an exquisite salsa. Use it as a dip or to enhance seafood dishes, omelets, salads and grilled meats.”
Pepper’s Original Blue Crab salsa has a very smooth, finely blended texture with visible strands of crab meat. It looks heavy on tomatoes and light on peppers, and smells strongly of crab. In fact, the smell is very similar to cocktail sauce.
Ingredients: Diced tomatoes, pasteurized crab meat, Diced green bell peppers, lime juice, chili peppers, natural flavors, a special blend of herbs and spices, salt.
On First Taste:
The first taste brings a strong wave of crab flavor, and follows with a saucy flavor that taste uncannily like cocktail sauce. It’s a nice, classic blend that goes together very nicely. Though, it is a little bit odd on a tortilla chip – not much like a salsa at all. There was no perceptible heat. And the taste of the peppers are very,very understated. Pepper’s Blue Crab salsa is a condiment that begs to be used with food, rather than eaten on its own.
On Food
I chose to use Pepper’s Original Blue Crab Salsa to accent a seafood dish. I took some mahi mahi, seasoned it with salt, pepper and a bit of white wine and broiled it for 7 minutes a side. I then added a spoonful of Brie to each fillet, and topped the whole thing with several spoonfuls of the salsa.
The flavor was excellent. The fish provided a mild, flavorful backdrop as the crab, tomato and brie blended sensuously. The Blue Crab salsa also excelled being warm; it brought some nice herby notes to the front. There was still no heat to speak of,the but flavor more than made up for it. If I had it to do over again, I’d probably add a touch of horseradish to the dish as well, since nothing goes better with cocktail sauce and crab than fresh horseradish.
I also tried Pepper’s Blue Crab Salsa on crackers with cream cheese, and it was fantastic. It would make a wonderful and simple appetizer to top some cream cheese with the blue crab salsa and serve with crackers.
In Conclusion:
Pepper’s Original Blue Crab Salsa brings the flavor, but leaves the heat behind. It’s not your run of the mill salsa, but it performs admirably in adding a great seafood flavor to dishes.
Packaging – Solid and attractive. 8.2 out of 10.0
Aroma – crab and cocktail sauce. 7.7 out of 10.0
Appearance – Thin, with visible crab meat. 7.6 out of 10.0
Taste – Strong crab flavor. 8.3 out of 10.0
Heat – Undetectable. 0.5 out of 10.0
Overall Rating: 7.8 out of 10.0
