It’s been quite a long time coming for this review. We had been contacted by the folks at Nando’s a couple of years ago, shortly after this blog went online, to review some of their products. They even went so far as to send us some stuff to taste…but then we didn’t hear back from them for a long time.

Well, time lost was time gained to do reviews now. I think it was well worth the wait.

The fact is, that Nando’s has done gangbusters in the way of expansion into the U.S. market in the past few years. We’ve seen and read the reviews on the HSB. We’ve seen the ads in Chile Pepper magazine. We’ve even run past their booth at this past ZestFest, which was always crowded and busy. Things for Nando’s seem to be on the up and up.

So, that brings us to the present day. We were contacted by David and Clive Rock of Nando’s USA, and they asked us to give some of their products a try and to see what we thought of them. Soon thereafter, we received a box of three different products, of which this hot sauce was one if them. So, their Medium Peri-Peri hot sauce is the first product we will be reviewing.

First impression:All of the Nando’s products come in a bottle with a clean, glossy label featuring what I’m supposing is their cartoon version of their peri-peri pepper, not to mention the chicken from their “chickenland.” From the side of the bottle, this sauce’s description reads:

Medium Peri-Peri
The original Peri-Peri sauce with perfect balance between lemon, garlic, Peri-Peri flavor & herbs that develops into a lasting ex peri-peri ence with medium heat (Copyrighted material from Nando’s)

Going further, their list of ingredients indicates these:

Ingredients: water, vinegar, onion puree, salt, lemon puree, sunflower oil, serrano peppers, cayenne pepper, African birds eye peppers (Peri-Peri), garlic, xanthan gum, propylene glycol alginate

Seeing the propylene glycol alginate made me a little nervous, but checking into it, I found that it is a stabilizer and thickener (like xanthan gum) and has been on the government’s “safe list” of additives for quite a long time. The rest seemed to be all good, and even looked a little mild given that the onion and lemon puree were in greater amounts than any of the peppers.

This is the dollop of sauce I poured out for the straight taste. It’s a pretty finely blended sauce with less pepper bits than many sauces you’ll come across. It’s less thick than catsup and pours easily from the nipple-less bottle, but is still viscous enough to stick to food and not all end up in a puddle on your plate. The aroma is mostly vinegar with some pepper-y elements, so I hoped the taste would feature more than the whiff did in terms of complexity.

Taste: The straight taste was pretty interesting. After an initial blast of vinegary tartness (which will get your attention), the taste that follows is noteworthy. This is one sauce where I feel as though I can truly taste nearly all of the essential ingredients. The lemon and onion are dominant flavors, followed by the heat and crisp flavor of the peppers. There is a unique sort of pepper taste (almost an aftertaste) which I attribute to the peri-peri since it has a different “mouth feel” than either cayenne or serrano. The heat level is truly as advertised, about a 5/10 on the scale. Just enough tingle on the tongue to get my attention, but it does build to a solid “5″ the more I ate.

After trying it on several dishes at different meals, I came to the conclusion that this sauce was far better ON food that it was mixed into foods. In my usual soups, stews, and chili, the flavor of this sauce gets a little lost and the heat got too diluted out. However, poured over foods it more than made up for any deficiency otherwise. Not sure how they did it, but seldom have I found a hot sauce that is this good with chicken. (It just proves that “chickenland” is the best food idea with Nando’s.) Whether used as a dip or simply slathered over your food, this sauce provides ample flavor and a modicum of heat exactly where you want it…caressing your tastebuds on their way to your stomach. It was also good with other meats as well, so don’t think that chicken has the monopoly on this sauce. Heck, it was even good poured over veggies or in place of catsup with french fries. This sauce was pretty versatile, and that is a strength no matter what.

Overall recommendation: For a mass-produced sauce, this one is pretty darn good. Ample in flavor and medium in heat, this sauce is quite the utilitarian workhorse for a hot sauce. It’s not going to wow you for heat, and I think the hotter sauces would please me better, but the flavor is well worth your effort in tasting this one. Don’t limit yourself to chicken, though, despite what the label hints. It’s good with so much more. Enjoy!