Hot sauce is usually an afterthought condiment. We slather it on tacos, chips, sandwiches, chicken, and anything else that calls out for a vinegary, pepper-laced kick. Even with super hot sauces the usage is often the same if the rest of a sauce's components lend themselves to use as a condiment.
But once you cross a certain heat threshold, the balance of flavor and heat is more difficult to justify as it oozes over your burrito and slips into the realm of cooking sauces: Sauces utilized in the final moments of cooking, or in marinating, to impart their magic in a present but tempered capacity. I've finally found a sauce I simply cannot eat on its own, not just because the heat rips through my senses like a machine gun, but because it doesn't really do much else culinarily. This doesn't mean it's bad, but it has changed how I use and think about simple hot sauces.
You're in for a treat this month as I'm doing two Fuego Box reviews and a recipe (maybe, I'm still trying to decide if I want to admit to some of my cooking habits). Anyway, much delayed due to a shortage of sauces and Christmas, I present the December Fuego Box and two very different sauce experiences.
Few sauces and even sauce labels deliver a sense of place like this.
Name: Caribbean Hot Sauce
Made By: Char Man Brand
Primary Pepper: Habanero
After the strawberry hot sauce fiasco (a sauce I haven't even been able to give away) I've been hesitant to dive into another fruity sauce. This Char Man concoction blends mango and pineapple with garlic and onion to contort the tropical flavor into something more appealing in savory applications. Blessedly, both mango and pineapple are known to pair well with savory dishes so already the fruit aspect is better than Pex Pepper's Atomic Purple.
Mixing these fruit in particular is a good move as the funky depth of mango helps mask the often skunky nature of habaneros and the zing of pineapple uplifts both. Mangoes are heavy on the palate for me, their flavor lingering longer than it should, but citrus notes help impede mango's worst qualities. Just as mango fights off that prevalent acidity in pineapple. Sometimes fruit are meant to be together and that's definitely in Char Man's favor.
Caribbean is definitivelyas "finishing" sauce as I mentioned above. The flavors don't hold up to much manipulation and that's for the best. You want citrus sauces to offer up an often cool, refreshing zing with their heat. I rarely ever enjoy pineapple sauces but after drowning several fish tacos in the stuff, Char Man's made a believer out of me. I personally have a sensitivity to citric acid, something that rears its ugly head when I'm least expecting it. Caribbean toes a line with being too much for me while encouraging me to eat through the tenderness in my mouth.
My only real qualm is that the peppers used are not listed in the ingredients list. Given the name and tropical trappings, you'd expect scotch bonnet peppers in the mix, and Char Man delivers their close relative, the habanero. But you wouldn't know that without looking up the information. You honestly wouldn't have much idea how hot this sauce is without tasting it (I never judge based on those 'heat meters' on the side of bottles because they're almost always overly ambitious), something super hot connoisseurs likely won't mind. The same can't be said for the average Joe looking for a tropical but not blazingly hot condiment. Not naming the pepper on the bottle isn't the end of the world but I prefer it in a day and age where extracts slip by with vague names and heat from batch to batch can vary so widely.
Caribbean is a tangy, hot but not overwhelming, sauce I'd happily keep on hand. I even used it to punch up chicken marinated in Nando's seasoning because I found the finish so refreshing juxtaposed with peri-peri peppers. Char Man has no idea how rare it is for me to like a fruity sauce that isn't made with stone fruit but I'm glad I enjoy this. I need variety.
Probably the most tasteful reaper packaging I’ve seen. I once had a bottle of sauce called The Ass Reaper that was topped with a plastic skeleton head wearing a little hood. Sauce was shit though.
Name: The Reaper
Made By: Puckerbutt Pepper Company
Primary Pepper: Carolina Reaper
Ah the Carolina r, a pepper that tastes like a dressed up habanero anointing itself in perfume oil while stewing in its capsaicin. Of the peppers vying for the title of "world's hottest" the reaper consistently holds its own against pepper x and 7 pot challengers, but I'm not sure that unrelenting heat is worth the hype. I don't mean to harp on habaneros, they're a wonderful pepper and the key to many phenomenal cultivars, but that tell-tale flavor is difficult to get past in certain applications. The Reaper tastes like a science experiment. It mimics all the super hots before it without truly standing out on its own in any way beyond that heat.
Which may be why I find Puckerbutt's commitment to simple sauces well-meaning but ultimately not enjoyable in a finishing sauce capacity. No, The Reaper is a healthy but sadistically simple mixture of blended reapers (seeds and all) and vinegar. Oh, and xanthan gum, but that has no impact on the fiendish clarity of the reapers. This sauce is 100% for cooking after I foolishly sampled it on the cracker above. Three monthly boxes in and I continue to sample sauces in the worst ways possible. I must use rice in the future, it would have helped ease some of the red-hot needles that refused to dislodge from my taste buds.
The Reaper conveys how confused the Carolina reaper flavor is. You get floral notes like the ghost pepper, twangy and funky notes like habaneros, and little earthiness or balance found in other super hots. I know for many people seeking power over flavor you don't consider taste but I'm tremendously fond of fiery sauces with actual flavor. Puckerbutt certainly delivers a flavor here, and it is true to the source pepper, but it isn't one I like.
I think I just don't like the Carolina reaper much because of its jumbled components.
This sauce is too hot to use on a finished product. I tried it on pizza with disastrous results. I carefully blended it into a dip and still the pepper was unrelenting. My last effort was to whip up a batch of nutritional yeast mac and cheese, stirring this in while heating coconut milk, garlic, and black pepper to make a base for the nutritional yeast. That hint of garlic tamed the funky notes I'd wanted to avoid and cooking this concoction down didn't diminish the reaper's uncompromising intensity. Once I'd killed the flavors I didn't enjoy, I found The Reaper much more versatile. It delivers intense heat swiftly and assimilates with food once incorporated. It's a fine example of a cooking sauce, something you're better off using in small but impactful ways than ever trying to eat drizzled over food.
I’m not in love with this sauce but they don’t skimp on the peppers. Such a small drop of sauce and so full of seeds.
Partially because the seeds and xanthan gum make for one chunky super hot sauce and that spells disaster in delicate applications. In cooking, you can always do something to dampen heat where you'll have a harder time removing the burn from a finished dish.
I certainly don't hate this sauce. I'm more in disagreement with its utilization but I now have a quite hot alternative when I'm rushing around my kitchen trying to find the last ingredient to make a dish truly pop. That's the whole reason I add hot sauce to nutritional yeast in the first place, be it sauce or as a popcorn topping. It needs that vinegary bite and heat to sear through the "healthy" connotations.
Later this week I'll post my slapdash nutritional yeast mac and cheese recipe. It's lazy as I like incorporating vegan and vegetarian dishes but hate the lengths vegans often go to add depth to sauces. It always come down to "here's this very expensive nut you should always have on hand" and that betrays a real problem with clean eating and the like. It's inherently privileged and I, for the most part, do not have the freedom to stock pounds upon pounds of almonds and cashews for various sauces and condiments.
Anyway, if you want to melt your face off, I recommend putting The Reaper on food. If you want to experience the flavor more comfortably (but still make food far too spicy for most humans) add it in the late stages of cooking.
I doubt it was Fuego Box's intention to offer up two perfect examples of the extremes in hot sauces but the December box is a great teaching aid. Char Man's sauce is nuanced and delicate and deserves careful application to preserve and savor its flavors. The Puckerbutt sauce is unrefined, simplistic, and dangerous if used like most people might be tempted to use a random bottle of sauce. Both are well worth trying but you have to know what you're buying before you make a terrible mistake.
Here's to hoping January's box is just as delightful.