ROY'S HOT BLOGGY

Grace - Jerk Flavored Hot Pepper Sauce

Mmmm hot sauce plus jerk seasoning.  Sounds awesome right?  Turns out its not so good.  Its an OK hot sauce, not very spicy.  The jerk though comes through almost as this weird after taste.  Not the worst sauce I've had, but I'd skip this one.

Melinda's - Original Habanero Hot Sauce

Melenda's was the first habanero hot sauce introduced in the States, debuting around 25 years ago in 1989.  I believe its still the #1 habanero sauce in the US and isn't too hard to find.  It's imported from Costa Rica but still only runs around $3 or less a bottle.

The number one ingredient is carrots, giving it a nice sweet taste without covering up the peppers.  The sauce has a strong flavor and a good bite but not all that hot, so you can use a lot if you want.  I've had other habanero sauces I like better but this one is still a solid winner. If you are looking for something spicier, there are three grades of "hotter" above this one.

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Amazon.com

Ukava iAfrica - Swazi Mamma Mamba Hot Sauce

I was pretty intrigued by this hot sauce, both due to the cool bottle design and also the fact it contains small amounts of coffee and chicory.  However, the sauce did live up to the bottle!

I don't even think I would call this a hot sauce.  The sauce makers suggest using it with fish, so it's sounds more like a marinade. The taste is fairly mild - not bad, but hard to put my finger on.  If you eat lots of fish, it might be worth a go, but otherwise I'd say pass on this one.

Would I buy it again: no

Tabasco holster, just in case you need to carry hot sauce around on your belt.

I bought this at a local store here in NYC.  Looks to be a product of a NY company, although it is listed as a product of Belize.  Anyway, not much to say about this hot sauce.  It's definitely got some heat but almost 0 flavor.  It's almost like hot salty vinegar.  Bleh!

Would I buy it again:  no

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Deer Camp  - Camp Fire Wing Sauce

I decided to try another sauce from Deer Camp, a small hot sauce maker based out of Maine.  This time around its their Camp Fire Wing Sauce.

The first thing you notice about this sauce is that it seems a little runny for a wing sauce.  It doesn't have that typical thickness due to the addition of an oily ingredient such as butter.  I'm unsure how good this sauce would stick to actual wings.  It does have a small amount of butter but you may have to add more.  However, the fact that it doesn't stick too much might mean to end up with a flavorful wing that's not too hot.

The ingredients include cayenne peppers and Habanero, so you get a mix of a more traditional wing sauce taste with a hint of Habanero.  It also has a hint of sweetness, perhaps due to the addition of honey in the mix.

At first I thought the sauce was a little too hot after trying it on some sandwiches, but then I put it on a burrito and it was just right.  So I ended up enjoying it despite my initial misgivings.

Deer Camp - 10 Point Plum Hot Sauce

10 Point Plum Hot Sauce is a delicious hot sauce from Deer Camp, a line of hot sauces created by the restaurant Buen Appetito in Waterville, Maine.  The first thing you will notice about this sauce is that it has a really pleasant smell.  The plum is very fragrant - you can somewhat smell the sweetness even before tasting it. 

The sauce is thick and pours out easily without risk of dousing your food.  You can taste the habanero peppers, which impart of respectable heat, but they don't overpower the sauce.  I'd place this somewhere as a mild to medium heat. 

Besides the plum preserves and habanero, there is carrot, apple cider vinegar, onion, lime juice, agave nectar, garlic, coriander and salt.  The creators of this sauce did a really good job of balancing the ingredients; they blended well and complimented the plum flavor.  There's some other habanero sauces I like better, but this is still a really good one.  I especially recommend it if you want a good flavorful sauce, or like sweet sauces.

Would I buy it again:  yes

Scrumptious Pantry - Heirloom Hot Sauce

I recently came across some hot sauces at Whole Foods from Scrumptious Pantry, all made with heirloom peppers.  I was really excited to try them, so my disappointment was all the greater when I finally did.

All three sauces were surprisingly non-distinct, which is part of the reason I am reviewing them all together.  Of the three, I thought the Chiltepin was the best, but I am having a hard time finding anything special to say about these sauces.

Water and vinegar are the number one ingredients, and while that's not an automatic disqualification, in this case it accounted for the fact that the taste of the vinegar seemed to overwhelm any other ingredient. Maybe these should have been sold as flavored vinegars!

The sauces were also very watery, and I ended up accidentally dousing my food several times by accident.  Inexplicably, the sauces are bottled without any kind of orifice reducer on the bottle opening.  I ended up grabbing reducers off of other empty bottles and snapping them on.  That helped some, but even then it was a little touch and go.

Would I buy it again: no

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