We here at the Hot Zone Online really like seeing the “little guy” succeed in the hot & spicy food business. Perhaps we need to change that to include the “little lady” as well.

Some time ago, we were contacted by Mia from Borderline Gourmet Barbecue & Spices about trying their products. It seems as though she has a small business that just opened in July of last year making spicy BBQ sauces, which evolved from a recipe that she had been making at home for quite some time. This sauce, the Habanero Sauce and Marinade, is one of the two varieties that Borderline Gourmet currently has to offer. Never being ones to turn down a chance to try a good spicy BBQ sauce, we graciously accepted Mia’s offer.

The bottle itself is a twelve-ouncer with a glossy metallic label. It looks kinda classy and elegant, while maintaining a certain simplicity as well. In fact, the metallic sheen made it a little tough to photograph…but only us food bloggers actually spend time trying to find ways to photograph their food. This sauce has this within it:

Ingredients: water, tomato concentrate (water, tomato paste), corn syrup, vinegar, onions, red wine vinegar, white vinegar, liquid smoke, habanero peppers, Worcestershire sauce (white vinegar, molasses, corn syrup, spices, anchovy paste, natural flavor [contains soy], tamarind), brown sugar, mustard, lemon juice, salt, garlic, cumin, soy sauce, jalapeno peppers, chile arbol, black pepper, onion powder, and spices

Not a bad list for the most part, but we were struck by the fact that this sauce has not one, but three, kinds of vinegar in it. The taste would reveal how well that works with this sauce, but it was noteworthy from reading the label. The aroma is blissfully free of a strong vinegary smell, and has an aroma mostly of tomato and liquid smoke. The sauce is quite thin, more so than most BBQ sauces we’ve reviewed, and pours a little too easily from the wide-mouthed bottle.

Taste: The straight taste revealed a strong, vinegar-dominated flavor. In fact, this sauce is downright tart with vinegar…but has spicing which is rich in habanero and balck pepper flavor. Few people eat BBQ sauce straight out of the bottle, so we decided that the best use would be with some BBQ chicken. Our home cooking with BBQ sauce is pretty straightforward, so we decided to keep this simplicity going and use this sauce to make some BBQ chicken breasts in our oven.

With a few boneless, skinless chicken breasts, we added a little pepper & garlic salt spice mix to the chicken and pressed it onto the breasts like a rub on both sides. Making some slits in the breasts with a knife, we wanted the sauce to cook into the chicken. We also heated our oven to 375 degrees and cracked open the bottle of sauce.

We then gently poured some of the sauce over the chicken breasts. Now we didn’t want the chicken to essentially get parboiled in BBQ sauce, so we used just enough so it would bake into the chicken. After about 25 minutes at 375 degrees, we then added a little more since the sauce’s liquidity does get cooked out over time. After use of half the bottle and about 40 minutes of cook time, our chicken was done and ready to serve.

Now that’s some good-looking BBQ chicken!! You can even see the pepper seeds still sitting within the sauce over the chicken. As for the taste, it was absolutely outstanding. The cooking process mellowed out the vinegar and really helped the BBQ flavor come through, and even with some habanero heat and flavor. In fact, this was surprisingly spicier than expected, and caused Linda to refill her water glass more than once during her dinner. As for me, I loved the heat and thought it was a great addition to the chicken and certainly easy to make this dish. In fact, the leftover chicken was as good the next day as it had been for dinner when it was originally made.

Overall recommendation: One thing that we both commented upon when we tried this sauce was that it seemed more like a marinade than as a BBQ sauce. Whether it was the thinner consistency or the vinegary taste, we both could easily see this sauce performing well as a marinade for meat, veggies, or whatever you like. Heck, we’d mix it with a little bit of olive oil and use it as habanero salad dressing as well. As for the BBQ, it’s a sauce that you’ll like lovingly slathered over whatever you cook…whether it’s in your oven or on your grill. This sauce is a promising start for Borderline Gourmet, and we look forward to our next review of their sauces as well. Try it for yourself and see what you think. Enjoy!