Triple Dog Dare Ya’ from Backyard Texas Sauce

Today I’m celebrating my rights as a ‘Murican to burning my face when and where I want to, by taste testing the Triple Dog Dare Ya’ Jolokia Pepper Sauce from the folks at Backyard Texas Sauce. I’m out here in Galveston, Texas just a few hours away from the start of the annual parade and fireworks show along their seawall. As part of my state and national patriotism, I’ve saved their hottest sauce they sent for last, so that I could experience fireworks in my mouth for the 4th of July without actually sticking fireworks in my mouth. If that were part of the review, you’d have John for today and not me. Time to tear in to this mouth burner and see if it will just leave me hurting or if it will restore my pride in sauces that have a lot of flame and can show of with explosions of flavor as well.

Ingredients:

True to a few of their other sauce, they are bringing the heat with a nice variety of chiles instead of just one, which should hopefully lend towards a volley of two or three waves of heat base on the chiles in play. Here’s what’s going down the gullet today: Water, Sugar, Salt, Jolokia, Cayenne, Habanero, Chipotle, Spices, Onion, Garlic, and Xanthan Gum

Aroma/Color/Texture:

The aroma is fairly smokey, but not as aggressively as the previous sauce, with big representation from the jolokia, chipotle, and a savory spiced base. This sauce’s color is a deep reddish brown, quite similar to a majority of the mainstream BBQ sauces on the market. It pours pretty smoothly, but not thin. It has some grip to it and should toss on something like chicken wings quite easily.

Taste/Ratings:

FIRE	FLAVOR

This sauce is a little sweet and smokey to start, with a little habanero burn and mostly chipotle flavor. You get a Mild first wave of heat, and then about 20 seconds in to it, there is a second subtle wave of heat that amps it up towards being a strong Mild to a weak Medium. As far as flavoring goes, it’s primarily the natural flavors of the chiles, with just a little of the spice base in the background. After having a little bit more than a touch of this, you can feel the heat stacking a bit, and it becomes more of a Medium sauce. If you like the natural flavors of chiles, this should be up your alley. Most of the flavor is the familiarity of chipotle up front and then it slowly transforms towards a jolokia sauce as your mouth becomes more accustomed to the heat and can interpret the flavor of the hotter chiles. It’s an all around well-balanced sauce, and while the sour and tart elements are missing, I like that they are missing. Cuisine-wise, it leans a little towards the Tex-Mex or Mexican space based on the chipotle flavor in it, but it could be used for just about anything in which a slightly smokey chile flavor is desired. As I mentioned before in the texture area, it has a little cling to it, and could do quite well for some hotter hot wings. Now, this might be the delusions from lots of sunburn and beer talking to me here, but I’m also thinking this might be on the crabs I caught and boiled last night. It might be a bit aggressive for such a light meat, so it will need to go on sparingly, but it certainly has potential for seafood if used lightly. It ends up being quite a Nice sauce, and of the 3 that I tried from them in the last few weeks, it feels the most versatile and I would keep it around and use it the most.