Wow, it’s been over five months since we did our first set of reviews on the Chooch and Pootan hot sauces. We didn’t intend on taking so long to do the Chooch and Pootan wing sauces, but the fact is that we don’t eat a whole lot of chicken wings at home these days…especially deep-fried ones. So, we had to wait until that perfect time came along where we could give these sauces a fair shake over some wings cooked up in our very own kitchen.

Admittedly, we didn’t wait all this time to open the bottles. We had opened a few up just to taste ahead of time, and was pleasantly surprised with how good they were straight out of the bottle. In fact, we found ways to use them for food other than chicken wings, but we’ll save that for our discussion about each sauce in particular.

To keep the calorie counts in the reasonable range, we made the decision to oven-bake the wings. It’s certainly cleaner than doing the deep-fry method, since you don’t end up with oil droplets scattered all over the cooking area. We picked up this mega-huge container of wings from our local Sam’s Club, and got them ready for baking in one of our Pyrex oven dishes.

Baking in the oven was pretty easy, although you want to avoid cooking the wings at too high a temp else they’ll dry out too much as they cook. We opted for 375 degrees for about 30 minutes or so. Above you can see how the wings looked after cooking. We drained all the excess juices and patted the wings dry from any extra chicken fat.

After that, it gets even easier. Take a few plastic sealable mixing bowels and add the cooked (and still warm) wings and pour over your desired sauce. Make sure you use enough sauce to completely cover all the wings.

After the wings are covered, shake the bowels to get the wings covered and allow the warm wings to absorb the sauce for a few minutes. After this time has passed, pour your chicken wings back into another baking dish and bake the wings for another 10 minutes or so in the oven. When done, the wings are ready to serve. No pictures really came out of the cooked wings, so we’ll just talk about our tasting notes on each variety.

The Mild Hotta Winga Sausa:

Mild: pepper sauce (vinegar, salt, cayenne chiles), butter, flour, ground pepper

This wing sauce is everything you would expect in a mild sauce. It’s high in buttery flavor with just a hint of spicy heat. An outstanding wing sauce for those who like chicken wings, but can’t keep up with the chileheads who like to have them extremely spicy. This really seems to be the Chooch & Pootan “base” wing sauce that the others are built upon. Linda particularly likes the tangy-ness of this sauce (is that a word?), and loved this sauce on the wings.

Alternate use: We used this as a marinade for chicken with great success. The vinegary-ish to this sauce made for a nice addition to mashed potatoes. Just mix it in and voila…spicy taters.

The Mild Garlic Hotta Winga Sausa:

Mild Garlic: pepper sauce (vinegar, salt, cayenne chiles), butter, flour, ground pepper, garlic

Garlic is good in so many hot and spicy food products, and this sauce is no exception. Not sure whether the garlic is fresh or granulated, but the distinctive garlicky aroma comes as soon as you open the jar. In most ways, this sauce is the identical sister to the mild sauce, but with the added garlic. However, if you like garlic…you may reach for this bottle instead of the Mild when you cook your wings. Buttery and rich, a little extra spice makes this sauce a step above the Mild for flavor.

Alternate use: This one was also good with the mashed taters as we did above, but this one also lent itself well with cooked veggies such as green beans and cauliflower. We used this in place of a buttery sauce to pour over the veggies. A little tart with the vinegar, but still quite do-able.

The Garlic Hotta Winga Sausa:

Garlic: pepper sauce (vinegar, salt, cayenne chiles), butter, flour, ground pepper, garlic

I guess you could call this sauce the “spicy” garlic, but it’s really just to be considered a little hotter than the mild…no more than medium to most heat-lovers. The spicier it is, the more the garlic enhances the flavor. In fact, this was one of Linda’s favorite sauces out of the bunch…and it’s due to the combination of the higher heat level and the garlic in combination. This one was a fave of Joe’s as well, but for flavor rather than heat.

Alternate use: We tried to think outside the box on this one. Try beating 2-3 eggs in a mixing bowl, and then adding a tablespoon or two of this sauce. Great garlic-buttery eggs with a hint of wing sauce taste. Nice!

The (Hot) Hotta Winga Sausa:

Hotta Winga Sausa: pepper sauce (vinegar, salt, cayenne chiles), butter, flour, ground pepper

This sauce, by our standards, really is the creme de la creme of the Chooch and Pootan line of wing sauces, and is deserving of every award it has won. Ramped up in heat compared to the other sauces, but still medium-heat overall. This one is their perfect mix of heat and flavor, and was the runaway fave not only for us who cooked with it initially, but with anyone else we let sample the sauce when cooked. This was the only bottle that was truly polished off in short order, and we used it for much more than wings. However, if you decide to use this sauce on wings, fry up a lot as a little of this sauce goes quite a fair ways. Great stuff.

Alternate use: All of the above. This sauce was good with anything. A little vinegary like all these sauces, but it was the best-tasting in combo with other kinds of food. Try using it with any sort of breaded chicken…it’s awesome.

Overall recommendation: Solid wing sauce choices from Chooch and Pootan complete their current lineup of hot and spicy sauce choices. Our biggest concern was not how vinegary the sauces are, but how laden with butter they are. The butter is not listed in the ingredients as to whether it’s clarified or not…and that directly impacts the shelf-stability of the product. When in doubt, these sauces should not sit on the shelf long and MUST be refrigerated after opening or the butter could go south in a hurry. All that said, we had no issues with that at all. The sauces are buttery-rich, darn tasty, medium-hot, and well worth you giving them a try in your kitchen to see what you think. Enjoy!

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