I can’t remember a time that I’ve tasted any hot sauces not made in the Americas. Linda and I lived in Belgium for nearly one year, and the only way we were able to have hot sauce over there was to bring it over there ourselves…which is a real trick if you go through as much hot sauce as we do.

In Norway, we sad some stuff called hvitløk, which is translated to garlic in English, but was really a spicy garlicky pepper mash that we used to make some meatloaf for some of Linda’s relatives during our visit there. (Can you believe that meatloaf was the “traditional” American dish we decided to make for them?) Our spicy options were severely limited, and we were so starved for hot sauce that even regular Tabasco sauce seemed like a real treat.

Enter our new chilehead compadres from Sweden, Ewa and Goran. I guess it’s realistic to think that there were some hot and spicy food aficionados over there…but we just didn’t run across any in our travels. Boy, how things have changed thanks to the Internet!

Part of our hot and spicy food care package was this small greenish bottle simply labeled as “Hot Sauce,” featuring the label with Chili the boerboel’s face & head on it. Checking the cheat sheet that came in the package, I saw that it was composed of this:

Ingredients: mixed chiles but mainly red habaneros, onions, balsamico vinegar, brown sugar

It’s a nice, straightforward list with no icky stuff like artificial colorings, preservatives, or other undesirable ingredients. Just like I would with a commercially-made sauce, I began about the task of astutely evaluating this homemade hot sauce brew. Here’s my take on it:

First impression: Like I said, it’s a small greenish bottle that doesn’t allow you to fully appraise the appearance of the sauce before you open it. Either that adds a sense of mystery to it or not, or a sense of fright about the contents. Since I’ve not seen too many sauces in this sort of semi-opaque container, I gave it a plus-mark for being different. For a sauce featuring balsamico vinegar, it has a surprisingly neutral aroma. There is a faint smell of chiles accentuated by vinegar, but it didn’t leave a big impression on my sense of smell initially. The consistency is more on the liquidy side of the spectrum, and pours easily from the jar. Some seeds, and pepper bits, are visible floating within the sauce after pouring out a dollop to taste.

Taste: The straight taste was a study in contradiction. For such a neutral-seeming sauce, it has a strong flavor profile. Balsamico vinegar is a nice touch, and tasting this makes me wonder why it isn’t used more by sauce-makers here in North America (cost, perhaps). White and cider vinegars are by far the more common choices, but the balsamico gives an almost oily texture and taste to the sauce, which is noteworthy but not unpleasant. Unlike most habanero sauces that hit my tastebuds more towards the back of my mouth and tongue, this set my tastebuds buzzing right up front. Onions and brown sugar are very tasteable, but not overpowering at all. Nice also that the brown sugar added just a hint of sweetness that didn’t make me pucker. Bottom line on that was that I liked the taste quite a bit. The heat was variable, though. Depending on when I tried it, I would give it anywhere from 6 to 8/10 which may be due to some settling of the ingredients before tasting.

Pairing this sauce with food was delightfully easy. Viscous enough to cling to food, this was perfect as a condiment on sandwiches, as a spicy dipping sauce, or even as a marinade poured over your entree du jour. It was not the most ideal add to my almost-daily fix of chili, nor to soups & stews. The taste mix wasn’t bad, but the strong balsamico vinegar taste just didn’t fit right with some of the other flavors. In fact, mixing it into foods was a real hit-or-miss proposition. Like some of the hotter sauces, this did well in creamier dishes where the flavor could really come out.

Overall recommendation: This hot sauce from Sweden both resembles, and differs from, many of the staple hot sauces I’m used to eating on a regular basis. If you like the taste of balsamic vinegar, then this sauce will appeal to you, as it has a strong presence in this mixture. For heat, it was medium-hot, and probably could have benefited from a few more habaneros to stiffen the mix up a little. However, it certainly is a unique-tasting sauce, and that also scored well with me. Unlike some hot sauces, this one doesn’t strike me as shelf-stable, so I definitely plan to keep it refrigerated until I use it up. It’s a good effort, and I hope that Ewa uses this sauce recipe to create some others.