Slowly but surely, we have been working our way through our box of sample goodies from the Peppermaster. Finding our way to this sauce, called Wings of Fire, harkens us back to the days when we used to eat chicken wings like they were going out of style.

Oh, for those bygone days. Nowadays, we’re trying to make ourselves healthier and thinner…so we have to forgo those chicken wings in favor of some other stuff where we can use sauces like this.

Well, it’s a good thing that this sauce was designed to do more than just bathe deep-fried chicken wings. According to the sauce’s description, it is something like this:

The Peppermaster’s answer to Buffalo Chicken wings!

You first taste the fresh roasted garlic and then the fresh roasted hot chili peppers. Provides great flavour and quick heat that disipates rapidly from the mouth.

Delectable and mild enough to use just about everywhere!

Try it on chicken fingers, or in a sandwich to add flavour.

Toss chicken wings in this sauce for mild hot wings.

Use in place of your regular cayenne pepper sauce.

In theory, this should be a great sauce in that it can be used for a variety of food options. Rated at 7 flames (out of 10) for heat, it should be fairly hot as well. As for its composition, gaze upon this:

Ingredients: fire roasted fresno peppers, vinegar, spring water, fire roasted garlic, fresh habaneros, lime juice, cornstarch, rum, sesame oil, sea salt, guar gum

The one thing that continues to impress me about the Peppermaster products is their use of fresh ingredients without any preservatives. Cracking the little mini-jar I have open, I can mostly detect the aroma of garlic and vinegar with some undertones of habanero. It’s a seed-laden sauce, although likely from the fresno peppers moreso than the habs. The consistency is more on the thinner side of the spectrum and pours easily from the bottle.

Taste: Having merely a 45 mL sample jar, I had to use this in fairly measured amounts. Just for sampling, I tried this sauce with a little spoon just to get a feel for it. It has a nice peppery taste which is a little milder than I thought it might be. A little less habanero in favor of the fresnos, this one is probably more like a 5 or 6 out of 10 for heat, but it does build a little as you eat more. The pure taste with all the spices is good, but there was something about the mouth feel that wasn’t quite right. I suspect it was the sesame oil, but also the hint of rum didn’t add anything for me either.

In culinary use, it worked out a little better. I went with a couple of the suggested uses, for sandwiches and chicken (which I grilled). It seemed to work better with the cooked food rather than as a condiment, as the heat seemed to mellow the flavor a little. I actually like this sauce as a cooking/saute sauce and cooked up a little bit of chicken and veggies with it that were pretty darn good. The one use that I didn’t try? With chicken wings! Go figure.

Overall recommendation: This wing sauce from Peppermaster isn’t your typical wing sauce, and may have those who either really like it or really don’t. With a taste profile that seemed more like a cooking sauce than a wing sauce, trial-and-error will determine what you’d like it best used upon. If you want to try it on chicken wings, all the better. Not as spicy-hot as I thought it would be, the flavor is one you’ll have to judge for yourself. Enjoy!