Smokin’ Hot Dead Shot Habanero, by Sizzle Sauce

It’s my spicy pleasure to bring you a second review for this weekend! You can think of this as an extension of my normal Fiery Friday duties, or we can call it something different – Sizzlin’ Sunday, perhaps? If we go down that route, then it’s apropos to kick it off with another product from the Sizzle Sauce line. Astute readers will recall that I reviewed the company’s Blazin’ Wild Fire sauce recently, a chipotle-based sauce that turned out to be both spicy and delicious. Well, tonight’s product, the Smokin’ Hot Dead Shot, is a habanero-based sauce, which should logical mean an even greater level of heat than its sister sauce. Let’s see if this stuff lives up to its name.

Ingredients:

Water, Tomato Puree, Distilled Vinegar, Chili Pepper, Habanero Pepper, Salt, Sugar, Garlic, Spices, Onion, Xanthan Gum

The previous Sizzle Sauce was a great example of how a hot sauce product can have water as its first ingredient and still deliver in spades. But what concerns me more is the placement of the habanero peppers. Occupying roughly the middle spot in the list, they seem like they’re present in name only. Before the habanero peppers we get the generic (and likely not spicy) chili peppers. The other sauce had both chipotle and cayenne peppers, but this list doesn’t look quite as promising.

Appearance:

There’s not a whole lot of difference between the way this stuff looks and the way the other sauce looks. Basically, it looks like ketchup, though with a rustier hue to it. It’s very sticky, which means it should coat well on your meat, but it’s not quite as thick as it looks.

Smell and Taste:

The tomatoes and peppers make this smell sort of like a habanero salsa. That’s a good thing in my book. It tastes more like ketchup, though, albeit only slightly. The overall flavor is actually pretty subdued, and is nowhere near as strong as the Wild Fire variety.

Ratings:

FIRE	FLAVOR

It has a decent kick to it, but it isn’t very strong. At first I was wondering if I had somehow rated the Wild Fire too generously at a Mean, so I checked. As it turns out, maybe I did; neither one of these sauces is really giving me a fiery mouth right now. The Wild Fire has more of a vinegary bite to it, though, which actually gives it the edge, and may explain why I rated it as high as I did. As for the Dead Shot, I’m going to have to give it a Medium. It’s a little hot, but nowhere near what it should be. As for the flavor rating, I stick by my rating on the other sauce, but this one only merits a Nominal. It’s not bad, but the flavor just seems so weak that it’s hard for me to laud it. I just wish it tasted more like something, but it just tastes kind of… there.

Suggested Uses:

As with the other Sizzle Sauce, you should probably put this on some meat. If you’re feeling brave, though, you could take the “Dead Shot” challenge, as described on the label, which essentially means splashing Dead Shot and some honey into a shot of your favorite whiskey. I dunno. I’ve enjoyed a spicy whiskey here and there, but I’m not so sure about this one. Maybe I’ll give it a try and report back some day. If anyone else beats me to it, though, feel free to comment.

Final Word:

According to the label (but not the actual ingredients list), the “chili pepper” in this bottle is the venerable, but not at all spicy, Ancho chili. Those things are tasty, sure, but I wonder how this sauce would fare if they switched places (and therefore, prominence) with the habanero peppers.