Melinda’s Red Savina Hot Sauce is kind of a conundrum in how it presents itself. The packaging depicts what seems to be a rather sweet-looking woman, who I am sure I can safely assume is Melinda.

Melinda is the image of a kind Hispanic mother, who keeps insisting that you have one more helping of the warm dinner she was only too happy to make for you. Only, what you thought was a delicious rice and beans mix was really just a vehicle for the heavy doses of sedative she’s slipped to you. Now you’ve woken two weeks later. You’re in some city you’ve never heard of before, you’re naked in a filthy alley way and you’re missing internal organs you didn’t even know existed. Continue Reading

The combination is exotic – good food, good drink and good company – enough to produce a best South African Braai concept. More than a cooking process Braai is a way of life. When this great South African BBQ occasion happens, people love to come together to celebrate and turn the occasion into a ceremonial blast.

Braai for the South Africans is that special event, which rain can’t wet or sun can’t burn. This occurrence is that careless personification of South African life where the sun of enjoyment never sets.

Almost all tribal background holders of South Africa have accepted the word “braai”, originating from the Afrikaner people. Continue Reading

Kiss Your Ass Goodbye Hot Sauce – The almost naked bottom of a blonde girl on the label (it’s a drawing, so relax) with a big set of red lips on one cheek is the visual hook for this sauce. When I saw it, I figured the sauce was going to be a weak attempt at greatness. The sauce itself is orange-red and very thin, which almost always means the sauce in question is going to be generic at best. “Kiss Your Ass Goodbye” really surprised me in that department. Although the sauce looks like it will be a passable sauce if you’re hard up and there’s nothing else, this one really delivers with good flavor.

Garlic, salt, vinegar, and the distinct habanero pepper are all there is to this beautiful sauce. Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 4 cup ketchup
• 1 1/2 cup molasses
• 1/4 cup vinegar
• 2 Tbsp Tabasco
• 3 Tbsp Worcestershire
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1 cup chopped onion
• 3 cloves chopped garlic
• 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1 tsp cayenne — (1 to 3)
• 3 Tbsp dry mustard (or 1 Tbsp ginger)
• up to 2 cup water

Directions:

1. Mix everything in a large, heavy saucepan. Add water as needed to create a sauce with a cream-like texture.
2. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat, partially cover and simmer VERY GENTLY for 1 hour. Stir frequently.
3. Add water if it gets too thick.
4. This sauce freezes well in … Continue Reading
   

Baboon Ass Gone Rabid Hot Sauce -  I’m a huge fan of Baboon Ass Habanero Hot Sauce, so when I saw Baboon Ass Gone Rabid, I was expecting something great. I wasn’t disappointed even a little bit, but let me warn you: Baboon Ass Habanero wasn’t over-the-top hot; Gone Rabid is another story altogether.

The name of the sauce could not be more fitting. Don’t make the mistake of eating it in the same dose as you would the habanero version of the sauce. It will blow the top right off your head. The label claims this version is five times hotter than Baboon Ass Habanero, and I’m likely to believe that’s true. Continue Reading

Makers Mark Gourmet Sauce – This is a hand crafted sauce with Maker’s Mark Bourbon as its foundation. The ingredient list in this sauce is extensive, with everything finding its place. Pineapple, applesauce, raisins, anchovies, tomato paste, molasses, chili peppers, garlic, onion, salt, cloves, tamarind, paprika, and shallots are just some of the ingredients.

Makers Mark Gourmet Sauce label calls this a gourmet sauce and that’s right on the money. It’s extremely thick, rich, and full of flavor. The bourbon stands out, but it doesn’t overpower the rest of the flavors, giving this sauce a well-balanced personality.

While you could certainly use this as a barbecue sauce, Maker’s Mark isn’t billed as a barbecue sauce, and its uses are more far reaching. Continue Reading

Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce – This sauce has a lot going for it right out of the gate. First, there’s the naga jolokia pepper that gives it insane heat. One little bead of this sauce on the tip of your finger will have your lips and mouth burning like a match in dry brush. To augment that heat, there’s also the African peri-peri pepper, some fresh habanero, and chili extract. Are you starting to get the picture? This is a mouth blister waiting to happen, so be careful when you use it.

Mad Dog 357 Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce lulls you into a sense of peace when you open it and take a whiff. The fruity fragrance leads you to believe that you’re in the company of a mild sauce. It’s a ghost pepper sauce, so you should know better, but there’s that sweet and fruity fragrance. Continue Reading

Pit Bull Renegade Hot Sauce – For every line of hot sauce, there is almost always at least one variety that is presented as the odd one out. While the majority of the sauce in that line, may promote themselves as exhibiting different levels of torture to your mouth, there is usually that one flavor that supposed to be a little different, without any indication as to whether that means more or less heat.

Pit Bull Renegade Hot Sauce is one of those sauces.

If the label is to be believed, Renegade is the rebel of the Pit Bull hot sauce family. Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 1/2 medium-sized banana, sliced
• 1 1/2 large carrots, diced small
• 1 medium onion, diced small
• 5 fresh picked orange habaneros, diced
• 10 fresh picked piquins, diced
• 5 fresh picked (smallish) cayennes, diced
• 1/2 fresh picked small green bell pepper, diced small
• 1 fresh picked hot banana pepper, diced
• 2 scallions (greens & all), sliced
• 5 small cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp. (approx.) Kosher salt
• Freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1 Tbsp. dry mustard
• Water for blending only (approx. 1/2 cup)
• 1 Tbsp. (or less) Peanut oil Continue Reading
  

Venom Hot Sauce – The front label of Venom features a fiery-tongued snake wrapped around a pepper, drawn in the style of an airbrushed sleeveless t-shirt worn by a metal head with a mullet.

Just at face value, this sauce is really difficult to call. It seems like the sort of homemade low budget hot sauce that you might find on the nearly bare shelves of a truck stop run by My Name is Earl extras who are hooked on crystal meth. This means the sauce could either taste like ketchup, or make me want to kill myself just to make the hurting stop. Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 15 habanero chillis -  chopped
• 1 ripe mango – peel, pit, mash
• 1 cup yellow prepared mustard
• 1/4 cup packed brown sugar
• 1/4 cup white vinegar
• 1 tablespoon curry powder
• 1 tablespoon ground cumin
• 1 tablespoon chilli powder
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Mix all the ingredients together and use a funnel to bottle the sauce

Melinda’s Scotch Bonnet Hot Sauce - Who is this Melinda chick? She knows her sauces. I tried Melinda’s Coffee BBQ Sauce and found it to be an exceptional blend of flavors; I tried Melinda’s Naga Jolokia and absolutely fell in love with it. I’m not sure where the sauce artists that concoct these beauties comes from, but Melinda’s Scotch Bonnet his the third home run in a row.

The scotch bonnet is a very hot pepper in the same family as habaneros. It’s found primarily in the Caribbean. Although it’s hot, it has a subtle sweet undertone that makes it ideal for a number of foods and cooking applications. Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 1 8-ounce can tomato sauce
• 1 6-ounce can tomato paste
• 1/4 cup minced onion
• 2 tablespoons brown sugar
• 2 tablespoons vinegar
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 3 cloves garlic crushed
• 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce
• 1 teaspoon dry mustard
• 1 teaspoon cayenne
• fresh ground pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Cook minced onion and garlic in olive oil until onions turns opaque.
2. Add remaining ingredients, mix thoroughly and allow to simmer for about 20 minutes. Makes about 1 1/2 cups of barbecue sauce.

Wanza’s Wicked Temptation is kind of a perplexing hot sauce. It begins with the label, which is adorned with a vague figure that has long hair and eyeliner, which pretty much means this hot sauce is either the product of a sly-eyed vixen or that of a hair-metal rocker. It’s not like Wanza is a masculine or feminine name.

Wanza’s Wicked Temptation Hot Sauce doesn’t have a label that compels you to take it seriously, yet it has the heat of a sauce that doesn’t screw around.

The list of ingredients is no less confusing. After Vinegar, the sauce has habanero peppers and oil of capcaisin in it. Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds boneless chicken breast
• 4 ounces bleu cheese crumbles
• 1 cup butter
• 4 Tablespoons white vinegar
• 4 Tablespoons buffalo wing sauce
• salt to taste
• pepper to taste
• Toothpicks Continue Reading
  

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken
• 1 lemon
• 4 minced garlic cloves
• 3 Tbs paprika (sweet)
• 2 Tbs black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• ¼ cup soy sauce
• 3 Tbs hot sauce (Depending on how hot you like it you can go extreme and use Blair’s Mega Death or Mad Dog 357 or you could mild with Sriracha Rooster Sauce
• 2 c. flour
• 2 c oil (Crisco)
• ½ stick butter Continue Reading
  

BBQ’N Fools Signature Seasoning- This is a spicy seasoning useful as a rub and especially good in soups and chili. The basics of the mix include salt, paprika, red bell peppers, green onions, onions, garlic, and an assortment of spices that give BBQ’N Fools Signature Seasoning it’s pleasing personality. Since BBQ’N Fools makes a great tasting BBQ’N Fools barbecue sauce, I wasn’t surprised the seasoning measured up.

While I did try it on steaks in the broiler and pork steaks on the grill, my big surprise came when I used it to season a bowl of chili. Continue Reading

Hot sauce heritage began with enterprising men inspired by the love of hot peppers and crafting them into gourmet hot sauces. Hot sauce history additionally chronicles their endeavors to produce innovative hot sauce variants that grace nearly all food in the world.

Sauce historians have collected data primarily from the labeling on the hot sauce bottles located in personal collections. Hot sauce marketing campaigns from area directories and papers are other sources. Data generally speaking is sparse, however exactly what can be found, points to a vibrant and diverse hot sauce history. Continue Reading

Sauce Bitch Hot Sauce – Pass the Sauce Bitch, I say to my wife. She, of course, tells me no. It’s her favorite sauce. Sauce Bitch Hot Sauce is a unique sauce among sauces, crafted with a blend of ingredients that come together in an exciting burst of flavor that really can’t be found anywhere else. It has tropical notes and a kick-in-the ass heat factor that is so well-balanced it’s uncanny.

Sauce Bitch is addicting. There’s no two ways about it. Mango, pineapple juice, raisins, oranges, sugar, salt, vinegar, and red habaneros are the ingredients that work together here to deliver a truly gourmet sauce.

What are the uses for Sauce Bitch Hot Sauce? Why limit yourself? Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 2 pounds ground beef
• 1 onion, chopped
• habanero hot sauce to taste
• 2 teaspoons minced garlic
• 1 (2 ounce) can black olives, sliced
• 1 (4 ounce) can diced green chili peppers
• 1 (10 ounce) can diced tomatoes with green chile peppers
• 1 (16 ounce) jar taco sauce
• 2 (16 ounce) cans refried beans
• 12 (8 inch) flour tortillas
• 9 ounces shredded Colby cheese

Continue Reading

African Rhino Peri-Peri Pepper – Open this sauce and take a whiff straight from the bottle. You know by the pungent aroma that you’re in for a treat. The second indication of the pleasure in store for you is in the choice of peppers. The African Peri-Peri pepper is the star of this show. The Peri-Peri is not the hot property that the ghost pepper is, but it has a kick all its own, and the flavor notes of this pepper is out of this world. It shows in this beautifully executed sauce.

Cider vinegar, tomatoes, onion, lemon juice, sugar, roasted garlic, canola oil, and a few additional spices round out the rest of this sauce, all brought together to create a unique flavor. The word unique means, specifically, one of a kind. Continue Reading

Ingredients:
2/3 cup Frank’s Louisiana hot sauce
1 stick (1/2 cup) cold unsalted butter
1 1/2 tablespoons white vinegar
1/4 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/2 teaspoon Tabasco sauce or other hot sauce (Sriracha is awesome)
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
salt to taste

Cowtown Sweet Spot BBQ Rub – Cowtown barbecue sauce is one of the finer barbecue sauces on the market, with a true Kansas City barbecue flavor that any barbecue fan will dig. It’s only natural to have a Kansas City Cowtown barbecue rub to go with it. Any rub that insinuates it can deliver the taste of Kansas City style barbecue better deliver. This one does. Not only does it deliver, it delivers big.

There’s sugar, salt, spices, Worcestershire sauce powder, tamarind, paprika, and a set of spices in Cowtown Sweet Spot BBQ Rub that were meant to be rubbed on your meat. Seriously, this is a rub you can apply straight to the meat before you throw it on the grill. Continue Reading

Ingredients:

• 1 avocado – peeled, pitted and diced
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1 mango – peeled, seeded and diced
• 1 small red onion, chopped
• 1 habanero pepper, seeded and chopped
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh cilantro
• salt to taste

Directions:

1. Place the avocado in a serving bowl, and mix with the lime juice.
2. Mix in the mango, onion, habanero pepper, cilantro and salt.

Magma Hot Sauce – Very interesting packaging concept. I love the different creative ways hot sauces come. Magma Hot Sauce is in a primarily clear bottle that lets you see what’s going on inside. There’s a graphic on the front of the bottle that shows you what looks like a huge drop of blood spreading out across the bottle. That’s exactly what’s going on inside the bottle, only what looks like a thick pool of blood is actually capsaicin, the chemical compound in the pepper that makes it bur like hell. In Magma, the capsaicin floats in a bottle of clear liquid, daring you to shake this sauce up and give it a try.

You definitely have to shake. You don’t want to taste what’s floating at the top without mixing it into the rest of the liquid. Continue Reading