On the heels of doing our review on the Smokin-Hot Stuff by E.Z. Earl, we quickly sped to open and use the bottle of the Blazin-Hot Stuff we were sent as well. Since we knew that the Blazin-Hot was the hotter of the two sauces and the Smokin-Hot Stuff was pretty damn hot, we had to prepare our tastebuds for some serious stress of dealing with the heat level of the Blazin-Hot Stuff.

Comparing the ingredients of this sauce to the other, we saw that the Blazin-Hot Stuff has these ingredients:

Ingredients: pure white vinegar, filtered water, diced tomatoes in juice, English-Style Worcester sauce (no anchovies), secret blend of 12 natural herbs & spices, Oregon clover honey, concentrated lemon juice, x-hot horseradish, salt, natural hickory smoke, precooked food starch, hot chili extract, natural Xanthan (as stabilizer)

Look familiar? They should, if only because it’s the exact same list of ingredients as the Smokin-Hot Stuff. What we surmise is that the heat-making components, such as the herbs, horseradish, and extract, have been ratcheted up a notch to make this a hotter sauce. Since we liked the taste of the Smokin-Hot so much, we hoped that the additional heat wouldn’t adversely affect the flavor.

Pouring some of this sauce onto a spoon, there wasn’t any noticeable change in consistency by comparison. In fact, its character pretty well matches up with the Smokin-Hot in every way that we could tell. However, the difference is slightly in the taste and more so in the heat. We did the taste-test-off-the-finger again, and again our response was…

DAMN, this tastes good. Re-read our other review about the taste of E.Z. Earl’s sauces, because they’re all that and a bag of chips. Still smoky and peppery, even the herbs flavor manages to linger despite the dominant BBQ taste. I (Joe) was savoring the wonderful BBQ flavor when, all of a sudden, the alarm claxons for the heat sensors in my mouth went off and I started to sweat.

Ouchie, this BBQ sauce is hotter than any we’ve tried before…and then some. Easily coming in at a 9/10 for heat, this sauce will satisfy any chilehead’s yen for heat in a BBQ sauce. In fact, this sauce packs more heat than a lot of hot sauces we eat on a regular basis. To see how well the heat did with food, Joe carried this sauce around for about a week to try on different foods. The results were somewhat mixed due to the heat level of this sauce. Ya gotta be able to handle the heat to eat much of this sauce at any given time.

I gave the sauce some of the usual BBQ uses…as a dipping sauce straight & mixed with other condiments, as a sandwich condiment, as a little pick-me-up in my lunchtime chili, and we even used it in “Passow Pizza” fashion just to try that out. The pizza thang wasn’t as good as some of the others, but a dollop of this sauce made all the others a spicy BBQ treat. Suprisingly, one of the tastier uses of this sauce was on fish…both baked and fried. Any fish you might eat that has any of that very fishy taste to it (like some of the warm-water fishes) would be nicely balanced with some of this sauce on it.

The real test, though, of any BBQ sauce is how well it does with meat. Our choice for this review was boneless beef ribs, seen below before being cooked with the Blazin-Hot BBQ sauce:

We searched for some recipe ideas on how to cook boneless beef ribs, and found there were 2 schools of thought. One was to slow-cook them for about 4-6 hours at low heat and the other was to cook them for a shorter period of time with higher heat. Out of time constraints, we opted for the latter. We cooked the ribs at 450 degrees for 30 minutes initially, so that they were mostly cooked through. Then, we coated the ribs with BBQ sauce, lowered the heat to 350 degrees, and cooked them for another 20 minutes. As they came out of the oven, another light coating of BBQ sauce was applied. The end result looked like this:

Cooked to a nice reddish-brown, these ribs were some of the finest-looking ones we’d ever cooked in our oven. These weren’t like baby-back ribs (which might have been better), but did have a great flavor to them anyway. Another review by The Hot Pepper, mentioned he thought the heat may have been enhanced by cooking. We thought the heat was mellowed but the flavor was enhanced by cooking, which we liked a lot more than the sauce as poured straight from the bottle.

It probably doesn’t matter what meat you choose, this sauce will make it better and certainly spicier. Gotta cook some chicken with this soon!

Overall recommendation: If you liked the Smokin-Hot Stuff, you’ll dig this sauce as well. It does torque the heat up a notch, so be prepared to use it sparingly with those palates who haven’t been toughened up by years of capsaicin use. For the chileheads of the world, having this sauce and the Smokin-Hot should be staples in your kitchen for your BBQ cooking. Quality ingredients, excellent taste, ample heat, and all in a huge bottle of sauce…what more could you want? Enjoy!

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