Category: sauce

Mama Mary’s Soul Food, New Haven, CT

I don’t know what you’re doing to celebrate the return of Our Lord Jesus Christ in his much-hyped 2011 Rapture tour, but Swagger and I went into New Haven to toast one of our last three meals on earth with some soul food at Mama Mary’s.
Mama Mary’s Soul Food, predecesed by Sandra’s, is a surprisingly upscale establishment on Whalley Avenue, a restaurant in muted earth tones and metals with quirky, blasphemous touches one notices mid-bite. Some are funky, like sitting in refurbished pews and taking menus out of the hymn book racks, and some a little strange, like the haphazard mismatched living room set tables to the right, where plush armchairs crowd each other around small bar tables, flanked by booth seats three feet away from the tables they are supposed to occupy. Michael Jackson, gospel, and soft R&B plays softly above as the fans whir and a steady stream of people filter in and out.

The service, though painstakingly slow, is worth the shift from a hectic schedule to soul food time. Upon ordering, we were promptly served our respective drinks, a delicious homemade sweet tea and lemonade, and two thick slices of the most tender, fresh cornbread I have ever been privy to consume, the top half inch of it soaked in butter. When the Rapture comes, it would do you wise to wander around Mama Mary’s. Remember, when the looting begins, the cornbread can be yours. This is a side dish that I would gladly come back for. Not only is it free, but it is laced with just a slight sweetness and a soft, moist crumble that falls apart at the slightest fork prod.With this as a small tease in mind, I expected nothing short of mind-blowing entrees and sides. We took a sweeping approach to their menu, taking advantage of the easily customizable dishes to order the maximum number of different items we could possibly sample. Swagger dove right into the scarier parts, ordering chitterlings with collard greens and candied yams and I opted for a more prosaic, yet blatantly Southern dish, fried catfish with macaroni and cheese and fried okra.The small plate, roughly the size of a small watermelon, was heaped with orbs of fried okra and a large pile of pasta. The star of the plate, the catfish, occupied a scant quarter of the plate, but was piled high. After sampling pieces of each dish, it was apparent that this was a restaurant where one would go for the chicken (or fish) but stay for the sides. The catfish wasn’t particularly outstanding on its own, but with a few squirts of the well-loved Kurtz hot sauce, present at all tables, it was transformed into a vinegar-heavy, spicy fish with a delicate crunch and buttery, flaky texture.

Both sets of sides were even more sumptuous, the fried okra my new alternative for popcorn chicken. That was a flavorful snack, with a light batter that belied its weighty center, with a slight heat and a heavy crunch. This was the first time I’d ever eaten okra, and it was an absolutely perfect example. The vegetable inside was firm and fresh and needed no seasoning to eat, simply providing an earthy, salty flavor on its own. It stayed crispy for a few hours and made an excellent afternoon snack. The macaroni and cheese was regrettably unimpressive, with a cheese-heavy yet flavorless texture and a presence that seemed only to serve the purpose of filling rather than sating the palate. Wholly ignored by all.Swagger says, “I, on the other hand decided to go for a more exotic and possibly more authentic dish at Mama Mary’s. From the moment when I was essentially challenged by the menu by it saying “for a true Southerner”, I felt that it was my duty as a former Southerner to get the chitterlings or as I was taught to pronounce “chit’lins”. For the people who don’t know, chit’lins are pig intestine. The chit’lins at Mama Mary’s was absolutely delicious. They had the smarmy distinctive stink of what a good chit’lin should have. (Note from Foodette: They carry the pungent odor of boiled human skin.) It had a soft melt in your mouth texture with a little bit of chewiness. They were cooked in a spicy sauce with just the right amount of heat and flavor as to not overtake the natural taste of the chit’lins.

The sides I opted to get were the candied yams and collard greens. The collard greens were nothing too special but the candied yams were a whole different story. When biting into a piece of heaven that was the candied yam, I may have literally saw Jesus’s eyes. This type of sensation has only happened on one other occasion. The yams were cooked to a soft melt in your mouth softness in light cinnamon flavored syrup. I could probably eat these yams all day and every day. Candied is an understatement here. These were more like dessert yams, with a caramelized sauce and a fork-tender yield. They brought the ignoble tater to a beautiful place, where the starches were melted down to a pudding-like consistency, married to the very sugar molecules themselves. Just for the candied yams I would go back again. The candied yams and cornbread at Mama Mary’s are possibly the best things ever. (Note from Foodette: Swagger let me eat his last yam and now I must name my first born after him.)“

If the world ends, we’ll probably be around until October 21st. After all, this blog is a sure sign of hell on earth and none of us are going up with Jesus, unless it’s to slip him some whipped cream vodka for whatever heaven-tastic party he’s planning up there. See you on the other side of the Rapture, folks. It’s been a good run.

Special Happy Lucky Bonus Mi Tierra Salsa Verde Master Race Gloat

This post is mainly for the three people I’ve told on multiple occasions while driving past Mi Tierra on Route 9, “Someday I’m going to go in there with a squeeze bottle and ask them to put their salsa verde in it.” And I haven’t, and it’s 100% because I was embarrassed to do it while in the company of someone who respected me, or at one point, respected me prior to reading this tell-all article.
AND NOW I HAVE.

Hell yes. Opportunity struck and I was left with a car and a chunk of free time between Amherst and Northampton. I originally just planned to stop at the Walmarts and get a new brand of poop-inspired frosting, but then, brilliance struck and I took the plunge.

They were confused but amused by my gringa request and filled my bottle for a mere $2. I tipped 150% because I WAS SO FUCKING EXCITED. It was better than peeing on their carpet.
I’ve waxed upon this before, but I swear upon Hilary Swank’s muscular, tanned body in Million Dollar Baby that this is the best salsa I have ever consumed. If you know of a better one, don’t tell me because I honestly don’t give a fuck. This is the best salsa. My next step is the recipe. I have no idea what’s in it because if I give an inkling of thought to the notion of a recipe, I will spend upwards of $100 and useless kitchen supplies attempting to and failing to recreate it.

It’s the best.
I ate it for dinner tonight with homemade tortilla chips and it recreated the joy filled, orgasmic experience of eating at Mi Tierra coupled with the eventual downfall and sadness of realizing I was eating the chips for dinner and was not going to enjoy a hot entree within the next ten minutes. So then I squirted more salsa into my mouth and I was happy.
The eventual left side upwards trend of salsa is from my fingers. When I finish this bottle, I will be back for more. That shot glass wasn’t just for show. I downed that sucker when I ran out of chips. Yes, I signed away my dignity and clean shirts a long time ago. Feels so fucking good.

Philly Cooking Creme Italian Cheese and Herb

I am not a busy mom. I don’t find myself waiting hand and foot on a hungry husband and rushing my children to oodles of activities. My entire life is one big “me time” and I rarely find myself in a dilemma when the time comes to cook dinner for more than one person.

And yet, I found myself drawn to Philadelphia Cooking Creme.Maybe it’s because I’m a college student, but I never blink at the opportunity to add cream cheese to food. And being that this was one of Philadelphia’s biggest advertising campaigns yet, how could I not try it? The marketing really confines it to a very specific demographic: if you’re incompetent at cooking and find yourself literally paralyzed by anxiety over reading a cookbook, this supplement is for you. I can’t bring myself to call it a sauce, nor can I call it a creme, because thick, white, gooey stuff that smells funny just doesn’t do it for me.
Philly’s phinest comes in four flavors, Italian Cheese and Herb (herb singular), Santa Fe Blend, Savory Garlic, and Original. My grocery store only carried two of the four, so I opted to try the Italian Cheese and Herb. Upon opening the package, only one thought entered my mind: is it possible this has gone bad? It couldn’t have been- it had only been released less than a week ago. It made no sense. And yet, the texture was grainy and inconsistent, too wet and too pungent. When we tasted it, it was acerbic- that generic herb blend rearing its ugly head, and the “Italian cheese” was mainly just cream cheese. Cream-a chees-a, if you will.
However, it goes without saying that you have to cook with it before you eat it, thus damning this to the unitasking products we so loathe here at Foodette Reviews. It’s a one trick pony. You can’t spread this on your bagel or mix it in with your quiche. It’s a sauce, damn it, and it’s not going to pander to anyone else’s needs. So with that in mind, we tried it in three applications- as a breakfast food in eggs, as a lunch with a chicken burrito, and as dinner, with homemade gnocchi and meatballs. All three of them vastly disappointed us.
The eggs were probably the biggest failure, as we love to mix a little sour cream or cream cheese into our morning omelettes to make them creamy and fluffy. Cooking creme, however, made us feel like we were being molested by our morning eggs, rendering them grainy and seizing them up, tasting more like school lunch eggs from a military issued brown box than Mark Bittman’s low and slow method. The herbs overpowered all other flavors, the scariest being the smoky paprika I added at the end. If a chemical, er, supplement is so powerful that it overwhelms DJ Smoky P, we’re in serious trouble. All “creamy” elements of the sauce disappeared or dissolved into the eggs, leaving nothing more but a slimy trail at the bottom of the pan.With the burrito, the cooking creme was the most successful. Granted, that’s like giving an award to the best five inch penis in the world, but I digress. I cooked up some chicken in a pan and added about a tablespoon of cooking creme. It cooked and sizzled with the chicken, but ended up browning at the edges. In the minute or so that I sauteed it for, it managed to reduce itself to a milky, watery liquid that barely adhered to the chicken at all. This completely defeated the purpose of being a sauce, because a sauce is supposed to stick to whatever you’re using it on, and made it more of a marinade. That being said, a bulk of the graininess was cooked off, and it seemed more mild in a burrito setting. My main complaint, aside from the texture, was how bland it made everything look. That’s partially our fault because we think that keeping vegetables around the house is a carnal sin, but it wouldn’t hurt to have some small pieces of green and red peppers to enhance the creme. This may provide comfort for people with bland dietary restrictions or infants, but it was rather unpalatable for us.
The pasta and meatballs was a toss-up, because we only added a tablespoon to an entire pound of gnocchi along with a whole jar of pasta sauce. Any effects the creme had were negative. It blended in with the sauce until it was relatively unoffensive, yet still retaining that dastardly generic herb bitterness, and made the leftovers strangely clumpy. It really seems to defeat the purpose of using it as a sauce when you add a mere tablespoon and it still does nothing but screw up your food.

I feel like this is gimmicky in every sense of the word, and preys upon the self-sufficiency of harried consumers. It tastes fake, it’s basically useless, and it markets itself as an upscale alternative to many, many other sufficient sauce boosters. This product practically fosters a dependency on packaged products. It’s not the mommy bloggers’ faults that they’re busy, but it is their faults if they can’t learn basic cooking skills or memorize the digits to their favorite Chinese joint. For $3.69, you could buy some cream cheese or make a whole mess of bechamel, both of which would provide the desired effect without the extraneous additions. Leave the Cooking Creme behind and order a pizza for your progeny.

Domino’s New Boneless Chicken Wings with Mango Habanero Dipping Sauce

Whew, talk about a blast from the past. I think it’s been at least a year since I’ve had Domino’s polygontastic boxes fill my dormitory. I like to order from these chains as a rare treat- when I’m not cooking my own food at home, it’s fun to see what kinds of expansion delivery places are offering. After seeing Grub Grade report the news about not only a new sauce, but new chicken, I knew I had to forgo the ‘zza for an order of wings. Boneless wings, that is. Domino’s has been making a lot of positive changes to their food, and after a relatively successful pizza reformulation, they’ve moved onto their chicken.
So how do they taste? Actually, I’m not sure. I have my timer set for exactly a half hour for delivery. If they tout that kind of service, I expect at least one high speed car chase down Route 9 to bring me my wings. So far, I’m a little wary. Domino’s says their new chicken wings are “new and tasty,” two modifiers, yet only one of which delivers a murky idea of what the flavor could be. New implies they’re not made from elderly chicken, which is good because I like them young, and tasty implies that they’re liberally applying Mrs. Dash with each winglet. Hell, at least they’re not spelled “wyngz.”They came early. Damn. An order of eight wings will set you back around $10 total if you’re a good tipper. Without the tip, it came to $8.36, a hair above what I like to pay for standard, fast food wings. Out of the box, they look pretty good. I always appreciate places that put dipping sauce on the side because twenty minutes in a car can mean the difference between stunning and slimy skin. There were eight pieces, but I don’t quite think it justifies being called eight wings as they are drastically differing in size, some of them looking to be at least twice as small as others. As far as value goes, I’m not sure if these were worth paying over $1 per wing.The chicken is crispy, with a thick coating of breading. I wouldn’t go as far as to call them crunchy like Popeye’s of KFC, but more on a Wendy’s scale of a softer crust. The chicken inside is a little chewy, but for the most part, tender. On their own, the chicken bites taste pretty good. They’re savory and taste like there’s some garlic and paprika in them, but I came for the sauce. Sauce masks all imperfections. Adding fruit to sauces can be daunting because you never know what you’ll get, but I’m pleased to report that the new mango habanero sauce is balanced and well-spiced, possibly one of the tastiest sauces on the fast food market today.
The sauce worried me at first. The container was filled only halfway up- would this cover eight smallish wings? But my fears were all for naught. The sauce is thick, but not gummy, with a nice orange color and obvious pieces of pepper throughout. It smells mainly of dried mango and assorted spices, and doesn’t hint to any obvious heat. However, upon tasting, it’s clear that Domino’s researched their peppers and researched them well. The heat from the sauce is persistent yet never burning hot, a combination that both satisfies my inner hot head and that of the general public, I’m guessing. It had a nice, smoky paprika flavor with a clean burn that definitely lingered, but kept me wanting more. The texture was a great peppery jamminess that adhered to the chicken and left me wishing I’d ordered more chicken to dip it in. I originally ordered two sauces, fearing I’d run out mid-way, but ended up only using one. Maybe I’ll slather the other on a sandwich.Overall, this might just become my new standard, assuming I try to order Domino’s more than once a year. They probably wouldn’t satiate the average college student, but they were enough for me. If they turned this into a specialty pizza, I’d definitely make an effort to make my way over there more often. If you love heat and fruit, this is something you should check out.

SPICY WEEK PART 5: Spicy Ketchups

Keepitcoming and I just returned from a little vacation, so that explains for the lag in posts. But never fear, Spicy Week will persevere! Before we left, we made a batch of fries for dinner and tested out our five spicy ketchup contenders.
Surprisingly, none of the national brand ketchup manufacturers, like Heinz and Hunt, opt to sell a commercially viable spicy ketchup. The closest I could find to a widely recognized brand was the UK subsidiary of Heinz, which makes a “twisted” ketchup with both mild and spicy chilies, but since that wasn’t easy to procure, I turned to the smaller brands.To test our ketchups on, we made a mild, baked fry with a flavor that balanced out the ketchups. We chose a blue and white cornmeal crusted french fry, and they turned out to be quite tasty and served as a good base for our testing.
Our first ketchup was a jalapeno ketchup from Spice It Up. It smelled good and was very thick, but had a bland, salty flavor with a small heat at the start and little depth. It didn’t compliment nor enhance the fries and toned down to a plain ketchup flavor by the end of the bite. The heat gradually grew, but the seasoning stayed the same, and in the end, it just tasted a little too plain.
Heat- 2
Flavor- 1
Appearance- 2
Label- 1
OVERALL- 6We then moved on to a ketchup from Intensity Academy. With a name like that, it could deliver any number of things. To our surprise, the ketchup we tried didn’t live up to its moniker. This was the chai chipotle ‘chup, and it has to be consumed immediately upon pouring. We learned this the hard way, for as soon as we looked the other way, the ketchup separated. The flavor was nice, if a little mild, but didn’t really taste of chipotle or chai, and was pretty soupy.
Heat- 1
Flavor- 2
Appearance- 0
Label- 1
OVERALL- 4
The next ketchup came in a different bottle from the others, and that was Big Paw ketchup. Strange name and a moderately strange ketchup. It was extremely difficult to extract this from the bottle. It was a very thick ketchup, but somehow had issues adhering to the french fries. I suspect this is from a high oil content that did not mix very well. The flavor was delicious, though, with a strong, smoky chipotle flavor and a bold fruitiness from the ‘mato. Too bad the texture makes it impossible to dip with.
Heat- 3
Flavor- 3
Appearance- 0
Label- 1
OVERALL- 7We were nearing the last of our test subjects. This next ketchup featured not hot peppers, but more of an Indian spice selection. Maya Kaimal’s ketchup informed us that this would be “a little sweet, a little spicy, and a little Indian.” It had a zesty bite of curry at the beginning of the taste, and a really nicely defined, sweet cumin flavor. Unfortunately, the lines defining “spice” and “spicy” seemed to have been slightly blurred. This was more of a spice-heavy sauce than a heat intensive one, but still delicious nonetheless.
Heat- 1
Flavor- 3
Appearance- 3
Label- 1
OVERALL- 8The last ketchup of the night was Juan’s Fiesta Ketchup. This was a no-brainer as far as our favorite, because it was perfectly scoopable and smearable in its texture, with a distinctly peppery and distinctly tomatoey flavor within its overall composition. This was the ketchup we kept dipping in over and over after our testing and dredging up the final smears because it was so good. It was smoky, but not overbearing, and had a natural, sweet base. The burn was fantastic, because it was built up and then cooled down by the tomato. Really tasty and really well-crafted.
Heat- 2
Flavor- 3
Appearance- 3
Label- 1
OVERALL- 9

TOP SPICY KETCHUPS
Juan’s Fiesta Ketchup (9)
Maya Kaimal’s Spicy Ketchup (8)

SPICY WEEK PART 3: Death Level Sauces

Swagger here to review the group of sauces no one else dares to try, “Death Level” sauces. Supposedly there are the ones that are the hottest of the hot and the best of the best. These are supposed to be the Delta Force Navy SEAL Black Ops Tier One Operators of the hot sauce world.


Keeping consistent with the regular sauces reviews the control base will be the glorious McNugget and the sauces will be judged in the same criteria and on a similar scale without consideration to the label, that shit’s totally arbitrary and kind of gay (Heat, Flavor, and Appearance). Each category can get a max of 3 points with an extra point for going above and beyond the call of duty.

Up first is the Blue’s BBQ Habanero Reserve sauce. The sauce emits a sweet smoky sauce with a strong hint of heat. Smells very much like what a great BBQ sauce does. Coming out of the bottle the sauce was a bit more watery than what I expected. It starts out tasting sweet but delivers a very high amount of heat. It’s not a deadly level heat that pushes you away but a high enough heat to make you come back for more. It does not leave too much of an afterburn so one could keep using it.

Heat – 3
Flavor – 3
Appearance – 2
OVERALL – 8


This is Blair’s After Death XXX hot sauce. It smells of a very light smoky flavor. Upon tasting it one discovers there is not much flavor just a lot of burning heat. It’s a very high heat burn with a quite long lasting afterburn. It’s just your run of the mill death level sauce. Nothing too special.

Heat – 3
Flavor – 1
Appearance – 1
OVERALL – 4

Here we have Blair’s Sudden Death Hottest sauce. At first opening the bottle there was no noticeable odor at all. It was indeed a quite ominous sign of things to come. It sauce itself looked slightly like death. It was dark crimson red with swirls of pure black. I assume that the black portion of the sauce was what was going to kill me at the end of the day. The taste was of this sauce was actually quite sweet, almost like a syrup sweetness at first then the heat would kick in. The heat and burn of this sauce was one that was extremely hot and was also one that lasted a very long time. I prefer this sauce over its counterpart, the After Death sauce. This had a sweeter flavor and overall more enjoyable experience.

Heat – 3
Flavor – 2
Appearance – 1
OVERALL – 6

Here is Wing It Buffalo Sauce. Upon opening the bottle one it smell just like the buffalo wings one could get at their favorite bar or tavern. It had that special vinegar smell that all buffalo sauces have. The taste of this buffalo sauce was quite good. They definitely went to extreme lengths to get a very blend of spices to make the buffalo flavor taste great. This sauce fails hard in its attempt to be considered a “Death” level sauce. There was very little heat to this sauce compared to the other big boys at this level. The heat can be best compared to a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot or something of that caliber. This could probably considered baby’s first hot sauce for something for your girlfriend who can’t handle spicy foods.

Heat – 0
Flavor – 3
Appearance – 1
OVERALL – 4


Next up is another from the people at Blue’s BBQ. This is their Chipotle Mustard Pepper. The smell of this sauce gave off a strong scent of peppers and good heat. This smell was quite inviting and would make probably make anyone who was daring enough to pick it over another sauce. It came out of the bottle more watery than I had expected and was unable to stay completely on the McNugget. This sauce was actually quite sweet and sour and had a good amount of heat. The burn of this sauce dissipated quite quickly and left you wanting more. All in all, a very pleasant sauce.

Heat – 2
Flavor – 2
Appearance – 2
OVERALL – 6


Here we have Torchbearer Sauces’ Zombie Apocalypse. This was probably the best named bottle in the death sauce category. Too bad I realized this after I had eaten this pictured McNugget. The main ingredient of this sauce is Bhut Jolokia peppers, these are the hottest peppers in the world. A single drop of this would bring most people to the ground in pain. Since I am such a total badass I ate the amount enough to cover half a McNugget. From the moment I opened the bottle and the nuclear orange paste like sauce came close to my face and I first smelled this sauce, the little voice in my heard popped up and said “maybe this isn’t such a good idea” in which I promptly told it to “nut up and shut up” This sauce smells like death, there’s no sweet undertones to it, or an inviting smell. This sauce smells like “if you want to eat this, you are a God among men” The best way I can describe the taste this sauce would be HOLY FUCK. This is probably the hottest sauce I’ve ever encountered. This probably incapacitated me and my taste buds for a solid 30 minutes. There was no taste to this sauce just pain, horrible deadly lava burning pain. I can probably say that this sauce changed my life, it was THAT intense.

Heat – 5
Flavor – 0
Appearance – 0
OVERALL – 5


Here is the only sauce here to come in a packet. This is the Meleguta table sauce. Right from there I knew that something was going to be wrong with this one. I came in an unassuming packet instead of a bottle. There was only a side note written in very small font that it was xxhot. A death sauce should have at least 3 x’s to be considered good. It came out of the packet in a quick watery overflow, it smelt like vinegar and wet dog, not a great sign. It tastes like wet dog and unclean female parts. This was easily the worst of them all. It even left a lingering after taste and smell like unclean lady parts. There was a slight burn but it was at the back of the throat. Awful, just awful.

Heat – 1
Flavor – 0
Appearance – 0
OVERALL – 1

This sauce was brought to me by the Pain is Good people. Their packaging feature floating heads on a brown paper bag paper and kept in glass flasks. This was hands down one of my favorite sauces and made by one of my favorite sauce makers. This sauce was their Jamaica Style sauce. The smell of it hinted strongly of pineapple and gave a really good Caribbean feel to it. The initial taste of this was kind of sweet and fruity like pineapple, and then the heat come in. BOOM. The heat is a very good level for a death level sauce. It was hot enough for me to be in a good level of pain, but it was a good pain, almost euphoric. The burn would linger and decrease quickly but at good pace over a period of time. It doesn’t disappear instantly. Very much like the scent of a woman’s perfume on your shirt and pillows after she leaves in the morning. It’s faint but it stays over the period of quite some time. This sauce is everyone a spicy foods enthusiast could ask for. Great flavor, great heat, very versatile. This sauce is made of absolute win. Swagger out!

Heat – 4
Flavor – 3
Appearance -3
OVERALL – 10


Best Sauces:
1. Pain is Good Jamaica Style
2. Blue’s BBQ Habanero Reserve

SPICY WEEK PART 2: Regular Hot Sauces

All right. All is back to normal and the photos are here! So without further ado, let me share with you the results of a drunken evening with Swagger, 40 McNuggets, and an asston of hot sauces. Damn, son.We judged the hot sauces out of ten, with points for these categories:
Heat (Out of three. The heat had to be lingering with a good burn, but not painful)
Flavor (Out of three. Savory, peppery, vinegary, with a good balance.)
Appearance (Out of three. Visually appealing? Appetizing? Something you’d serve to guests?)
Label (Out of one. Is it clip-art or Cezanne?)The first sauce tried was the Suck Creek wing sauce. I especially liked it because of its name, but the clip-art minimalist logo, and funky chicken legs sticking out from the name were kind of cheesy. This was a visually appealing sauce, but had lots of vinegar. Possibly a little too much, because that was really all we tasted. It had a slight burn, but didn’t really linger.
Heat- 2
Flavor- 1
Appearance- 3
Label- 0
OVERALL- 6The next sauce was a Caribbean hot sauce, Goldson’s MoreFire. I love fruit and heat so I was expecting a nice mango or papaya flavor in this. It was difficult for Swagger to get this open because it was sealed with a crappy sticker, and combined with the ever-persistent “drunk hands,” we quickly got irritated. The packaging was strange and looked like someone had gone overboard with Photoshop. And after all that work, it wasn’t worth the hassle. It smelled strange, and the main ingredient wasn’t even pepper. It was tomato. It smelled like barbecue and was overly chunky with a weird spice that faded quickly away.
Heat- 0
Flavor- 1
Appearance- 0
Label- 1
OVERALL- 2After that, we had a sauce that I’d had kicking around for a while, the Big Papi Double Hitter. Now, I don’t know about you, but when I see a label advertising “Big Papi’s sauce,” a man whose lips are dangerously close to a smoking, phallic object, and flaming objects all around, I think of one thing. Luckily, Swagger knows a thing or two about baseball and informed me that this was actually the fabulous David Ortiz. And the sauce wasn’t bad. The packaging may have been a little suggestive, but it had a nice blend of peppers and a decent heat with a clean, wasabi-like burn. It was a little salty, but carried a good smoky flavor, too.
Heat- 2
Flavor- 2
Appearance- 1
Label- 1
OVERALL- 6This hot sauce looked a little like the Suck Creek sauce, but with a thicker texture. It was a Southern hot sauce, so I expected a lot from this company. But Lillie’s of Charleston spent more time making sure their labels were Gullah-approved than priming their hot sauces, because this was too sweet with a very slight burn suspected to be from the vinegar that clouded its flavor than peppers.
Heat- 0
Flavor- 1
Appearance- 1
Label- 0
OVERALL- 2After that, we had a sauce by Heartbreaking Dawn’s. They sent over a few unique product that spanned other categories as well, but this classic “gold” sauce made me think of mustard and heat- two of my favorite things. The packaging was funky, but I didn’t really understand what the tiki-like creature on the bottle was. It smelled promising, and wasn’t too sweet, but had an overpowering vinegar aftertaste. It was still pretty tasty with a lingering burn.
Heat- 2
Flavor- 2
Appearance- 1
Label- 1
Overall- 7
Dr. Gonzo’s Uncommon Condiments was a company I’d been chatting with for a while, and their products seemed diverse and interesting, with archaic names that reminded me of an apothecary. The packaging and labeling was clean-cut and monochromatic in an Inception, hipster-like fashion. This particular sauce, the Buffalo Balm, was very watery, but had an exceptionally tasty lime and jalapeno flavor and a really good, lingering prickle. There was no aftertaste, but there was one of the best afterburns of any of the sauces we’d had so far. This was seriously good stuff.
Heat- 3
Flavor- 3
Appearance- 1
Label- 2
Overall- 9The next sauce was weird in all senses of the word. For starters, Trini Mike’s had a creepy anthropomorphic pepper character, and that guy was jacked. So we had this jacked pepper character on a beach, with his sexy pepper wife and adorable pepper infant grilling peppers on the beach, and then the pepper sauce in the bottle. These characters not only condoned cannibalism; they actively participated in it themselves! Who was the pepper in the bottle? A cousin? An ex-lover of Mrs. Pep? When we opened the bottle, the sauce had separated and was thick and gooey on top. This sauce was like napalm. It was painfully hot with no flavor and took about ten minutes for me to get the burn to recede, aided by about a half gallon of milk. I didn’t enjoy this at all and thought it was disgusting.
Heat- 0
Flavor- 0
Appearance- 0
Label- 0
OVERALL- 0
The next sauce was a little misleading. I had been under the impression that this was a unique, fruit-based hot sauce, but it was really more of a fruit spread. It was unique, a sunny peach-tomato “hot sauce” with a really distinctly organic flavor, but it wasn’t hot at all. Strangely enough, this contained habanero peppers, but we didn’t taste them at all.
Heat- 0
Flavor- 1
Appearance- 2
Label- 0
OVERALL- 3We came up with another wing sauce after that one. It lived up to its name- Saucy Mama. It was a bright, bold red with a succinct label and it glistened on our nugget. This really was the perfect wing sauce- even going as far as to rival Frank’s! It was a buttery, tangy wing sauce with a freakishly smooth texture. Really, really smooth, and it even had a decent heat to boot, perfectly balanced between pepper and vinegar. This was a wonderful sauce and Keepitcoming and I even used it in a sandwich for the Puppy Bowl.
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OVERALL- 8We then came onto the Crooked Condiments hot sauce. It said it was a jalapeno hot sauce, but was mysteriously brown and chunky, with a sour scent wafting from the bottle. It had a very distinct smell, like soy sauce and raw onions. And it was not what we were expecting- there was nothing to distinguish that it was at all jalapeno. It tasted more like a spicy tamarind sauce, with a quick burn and a milky, sour aftertaste.
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OVERALL- 1Ten sauces in and we were pretty tired and pretty wasted. It was already 1 in the morning and we’d ingested more nuggets than any man ought to. But still, we persevered. The next sauce was from the aptly named sauce line, Pain is Good. And indeed, it is, with a sauce like this. The sauce in question was a jalapeno harissa, a familiar spice flirting with the exotic. This, I liked. The bottle and labeling gave a mixed breed stereotype- maybe your hippie cousin’s grungy girlfriend from Texas. She has dreadlocks. With its lunch bag label and screaming severed heads, along with a flask-shaped bottle, it was pretty snappy and a little sexy. Immediately after opening the bottle, a nice, smoky scent emanated out. It was a really flavorful, smoky sauce, and it wasn’t too spicy, but packed enough heat to make us draw in our breaths. You can really taste the roasting of the peppers and spices in this.
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OVERALL- 7After that was a South African sauce, Nando’s Hot Peri-Peri sauce. This was another bright, coral-colored sauce with a kick to its flavor- surprisingly, not a spicy kick. The real surprise in this was a bright, fresh burst of lemon about midway the bite. For a sauce with vinegar as the main ingredient, it sure wasn’t as acidic as I’d imagined it to be.
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OVERALL- 6The last hot sauce of the night (thankfully) was Red Hot Robin’s chipotle mango hot sauce. This was a drippy, almost syrupy in consistency, sauce that was a little heavy handed on the chipotle. The smokiness was almost too cloying for me, but it had a good burn to cut it and a sweet flavor, despite lacking a distinct mango taste. Swagger and I both liked the Ed Hardyesque packaging.
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TOP THREE
1. Dr. Gonzo’s Buffalo Balm (9)
2. Saucy Mama’s Wing Sauce (8)
3. Pain is Good Jalapeno Harissa Sauce (8)

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s spicy post…Swagger reviews death sauces!

SPICY WEEK PART 1: Weird Ass Stuff/Misc.

Another rearrangement. Spicy Week 2011 isn’t out of order- it’s SPECIAL. And also entirely my fault. But tonight I’m featuring, as Always Sunny in Philadelphia would say, the wild card. Or wild cards, in this case. This selection was a bunch of hot sauces or spreads that were too interesting to lump into one category. I wanted to feature them together instead of just cramming them in somewhere they wouldn’t stand out- it would be like drinking an ’89 Clinet in between two other big players- a Beaucastel or a Certan. That way, I’d be able to enjoy and savor each one.It was indeed, a motley crue of sauces. All different peppers, syrups, sauces, jellies. But quite tasty across the board. We started on a pretty dismal note. The first sauce, from Pain is Good, was a jalapeno wasabi sauce. The packaging was unique. All across the board, PiG has shown us a brown bag, flask-shaped, sort of grungy style that I rather like. It’s the same here. And the sauce looked promising, but turned out to be sour from the start, with a funky mouthfeel and aftertaste. It was probably all the worst of both jalapeno and wasabi, and would doubtedly go well and overpower any food it was paired with. The next sauce was from Nando’s Peri-Peri, their extra mild lemon Peri-Peri sauce. Having enjoyed their hot sauce and cooking sauce in the past, I was prepared to put this on my chips and savor it. Even if you’re from an area with little to no good Mexican, who hasn’t enjoyed the combination of citrus and salt? I love squeezing limes on my nachos. This, however, was pretty disgusting. It was very, very bitter with too much lemon. Ironically, the citrus made the “extra mild” sauce a little bit hot from the acidic burn. It had a soapiness to it and a smell I couldn’t quite distinguish. After passing it to my roommates, we later determined that it smelled exactly like nail polish remover and an asston of garlic. It’s inedible and I wouldn’t put this on anything for fear of being suspected of poisoning. Luckily, it went up from there. After that, I tried Benito’s habanero maple syrup. I was really excited when this came in, as I’d been envisioning a cold winter breakfast of jalapeno cornmeal pancakes with syrup, and this made it sound even more delectable. I figured that at its worst, it could be thick and grainy and overly spicy. But it was perfect. Honestly, one of the tastiest syrups I’ve had, despite being an outlier. The first great thing was that it had a natural maple syrup base and flowed easily and smoothly. I’d have guzzled this plain, but it got even better and it came with a burn! A lingering heat that didn’t overwhelm the sugar, but would wake you up in the morning for sure.Then came the jams. Honestly, I’m dying to use these jams in a jalapeno popper. Or maybe a sweet banana pepper popper. I think they’d go really well with cream cheese. This is the Chili Dawg’s Strawbanero. I think the names are a little contradictory, because I expected something chili-related, but jam is delicious. The strawberry flavor was intense and seedy, with a little gumminess. The heat was present, and definitely in with the jam, but was inevitably not very spicy and died out quickly. Overall, kind of disappointing for a spicy product, but decent as a jam.
This next jam was one of four my father brought me from France, all themed with strange peppers and fruits native to Europe. This is supposedly a coing and Szechuan pepper jam. I had no idea as to what a coing was, but Wikipedia France told me it was an extremely aromatic, large fruit, with an acidic flavor and a pear-like shape. When I tasted it, its softness reminded me of a plum and it had an appley, slightly citrus flavor. I’d definitely be interested in trying a fresh one. The peppers didn’t show through as a spice, but more as an herbal note. An intense herbal note. More like tea than spice, or pumpkin pie spice, but tasted pretty high end.The last sauce I tried was probably the most hot saucey of tonight’s bunch, a jalisco pepper hot blueberry sauce from Buen Apetito. I found that it had a nice heat that really lingered- for over two minutes, but otherwise could have fit in with the regular hot sauces. It didn’t remind me of a blueberry hot sauce aside from a strange pulpiness to the texture. But what I was really looking for, the berries, was lost in the heat.This is another jam that Keepitcoming tried as a gift from Dr. D back in November. It’s a saucy spicy jalapeno pepper jam grown by one of Dr. D’s friends and made into jam by her students. Her company is called We Be Jammin’ and makes excellent jam. This particular pepper was looser than most jams, but was very, very spicy and soaked into the toast and other breads we used, with a sweet brown sugar flavor and a substantial spice.

THE BREAKDOWN
Pain is Good Jalapeno Wasabi: 2
Nando’s Mild Lemon: 0
Benito’s Habanero Syrup: 10
Chili Dawg’s Strawbanero: 7
Carrefour Coings and Pepper: 8
Buen Apetito Blueberry: 5
We Be Jammin’ Hot Pepper Jam: 9

Clearly, Benito’s syrup was the tastiest unique product I tried tonight. I feel like it’s both versatile and exciting and my only qualm is that it comes in a tiny bottle when it seems as though it could be useful for so many foods. This is also the case with We Be Jammin’- another condiment that has that universal usage. Both sauces were well balanced with spice and sweet, and weren’t overwhelming in one way or another. Excellent!

Herrell’s Almond Hot Fudge Sauce

Six months and a few days ago, I wandered into Herrell’s to get an ice cream with a girl I’d never met. We hit it off pretty damned well.

And six months ago today, she asked me to be her girlfriend.

I know six months might not seem like a lot of time to most people, but it’s like half a lifetime for most infants, and that’s nothing short of incredible. So tonight, to celebrate dating for half a year, Keepitcoming and I made a wonderful dinner with roasted chicken, mashed red potatoes, and icebox cake for dessert- drizzled with Herrell’s almond hot fudge sauce.It’s no secret as to why people come to Herrell’s. It’s cute and funky and the ice cream is jaw-droppingly, orgasmically, eye-rollingly insane- but the fudge is the cherry on top. It’s made with fresh cream and butter and all the things that diabetes is made of, but it’s good enough to bathe in and is perfectly textured.

I think the hallmark of a really incredible hot fudge sauce is the texture. Pouring this onto the icebox cake after warming it up, it flooded down the sides in thick ribbons but still adhered to the surface. This sauce is smooth, kids, and we’re talking smooth like Smoove B riding a white unneutered stallion to Switzerland to pick up the finest chocolates and jazz CD’s. That kind of smooth.A few slugs on a piece of anything basically creates a dessert, but the most important thing about this is how accurate the flavor is. Almond-flavored anything can be a little dodgy, especially when paired with something as strong as dark chocolate, and I find that with a lot of products, the nut flavor fades into the background while the chocolate takes center stage. Not this. This tastes like fresh marzipan or genuine, untoasted almonds mixed into an incredibly rich chocolate base. It was perfectly sweetened and tasted natural. I know that word is thrown around these days, but something about this sauce just tasted really genuine. It was outstanding.

We’ll probably go back to Herrell’s in six months to celebrate when the weather is warmer and have some ice cream, but for now, it was a really special treat to stay in and cook knowing that was in store for dessert. And it went fabulously with the icebox cake.

Hallowings with Howlin’ Hollar Pumpkin Hot Sauce

It’s Swagger season- October time in New England and it’s all about the pumpkins. There’s pumpkin lattes, pumpkin pie, and just about pumpkin everything. As the designated spicy foods reviewer of this blog, I was assigned to have a taste of this hot sauce containing pumpkin. From my experience, the best way to test the taste and integrity of a hot sauce is to put it on one of the most awesome foods ever, WINGS!In an opportunity to incorporate some fancy word play with one of my favourite holidays, I’ve decided to make “Hallow-wings” using this pumpkin hot sauce. When opening the bottle, I could smell that this sauce was not a normal hot sauce. Instead of the regular pungent vinegar smell of a Tabasco sauce, or Frank’s Red Hot, it had a rather strange sweet smell. It would have been rather difficult to pinpoint that the smell was pumpkin if the bottle was not labeled as so.When combined with the heat of the freshly fried wings, the sweet smell of the sauce was even stronger than the smell from the bottle. The taste of the sauce was quite sweet with a slight heat to it. There was not as much as an after burn rather than a nice sweet after taste. The sweet taste was actually very much like the taste of pumpkin, it was nice offset to the heat and acidity of the sauce. The taste of the sauce slightly conflicted with the taste of the flavour of the wings.

The sauce did adhere to the wings very well. It was able to coat every nook and cranny on each one of the wings, but personally I would not recommend it for use with wings, the flavour of the meat would clash with the subtle taste of the pumpkin too much and just cause the sauce to taste like a sticky hot mess.This sauce would be very good with a pumpkin based food such as pumpkin fritters or something similar. Overall it was an interesting sauce; it smells kind of funky but tastes like how it’s advertised on the bottle. It’s not extremely hot and doesn’t leave an after burn. Its uses are rather limited due to the exotic nature of this sauce and it wouldn’t go well with foods that are not pumpkin based. Happy Halloween!