On the side of the bottle, CaJohn warns you, “The Fatalii is a chile from Central South Africa commonly known as “the devil’s tongue”. This sauce is very tasty and VERY HOT! Remember, I warned you!”

First impression: Taking some of the aroma from the bottle after unscrewing the lid, this fatalii pepper just smells macho. With a somewhat darkly mustard-y coloring, you can see the tiny bits of black pepper lurking within the pepper morass.

Taste: Move over habanero! You’re not the biggest, baddest pepper on the block anymore. In its most basic form, this sauce very much resembles the CaJohn’s Select Fatalii Puree in both taste and consistency. There are some nice flavor adjuncts like pepper, garlic, and onion, but it took me several tastings and building up my heat tolerance before I could appreciate the subtlety of these compared to the overly dominant heat of the fatalii pepper. If you could use a description of a scent for flavor, I would describe the taste as pungent. While the habanero has a tropical apricot-like flavor which can build a bit, this heat hits your tongue broadly as soon as you taste it.

What foods would it be best with? Alternate uses? I found that it took so little of this sauce before your tastebud heat sensors overload that you might be able to use it on a wide variety of foods…just in moderation. I liked it in a couple of different ways. Firstly, it was wonderful in chili and soup. You get that full fatalii flavor and its heat to make you slurp your dinner that much quicker. It makes any condiment better…add it to salad dressing, ketchup, mustard, whatever. If you can take the heat, pour it right over some meat, spread it thinly, then munch away. A tablespoon of this turns a bottle of boring salsa into a chilehead’s fave.

Ingredients: fatalii chiles, vinegar, garlic, onion, black pepper, chile caribe, and a select blend of dehydrated vegetables

Overall recommendation: The overall taste is wonderful, but you simply can’t hide the fact that this sauce is probably 9.5/10 on the heat scale…and you’ll know that after one bite. Not for the faint of heart, this sauce is a scorcher.