Have you ever met anyone from Texas who is so fiercely proud of being from there that they even wear clothing that looks like the Texas state flag? These are the type of people that have barbecue knowledge as a birthright and somehow manage to do it better than you could at home if they were teaching it to you. If you add in a variety of quality products that they make that are extensively tested by other BBQ masters, then you have the idea that the folks at SuckleBusters know what they’re doing. I tried some of their products at the Fiery Foods Show in Albuquerque this past March and took home a bottle of chipotle hot sauce and some fresh salsa fixins to have for my very own.

Chipotle pepper sauce: peppers, water, vinegar, salt, sugar, onion, garlic, chipotle, mustard, spices, xanthan gum

Fresh Salsa Fixins – Hot: onion, peppers, cilantro, garlic, lime powder, salt

I had tried some of the hot sauces rather briefly, but really liked the homemade salsas that they had made with their products. So, I set about the task of creating some salsa from their Hot Salsa Fixins.

The list of ingredients you need to make this salsa are as simple as possible. What see you see above, plus a quarter-cup of water is all you need.

Take yourself a small bowl and just mix them all together. The instructions say to let it sit “for a few minutes,” but the reconstituted onions were still a little crunchy after a few minutes, so I put the bowl in the fridge for about an hour.

This is what the finished product looked like. There still looks like there’s a lot of the mix still visible in the finished salsa, but not so much so that we found the appearance unappealing.

Our review on the salsa:
Much like the difference between “kosher” and “kosher-style,” we call this salsa “fresh-style.” Unless you plan to use fresh diced tomatoes (which is not how the recipe works), then this really isn’t a fresh salsa in the truest sense of the word. It is indeed a fresher tasting salsa than those shelf-stable ones you might find on your grocery store shelves, so at least it has that going for it…and the taste IS better than many of those. One thing for sure, though. This mix is indeed HOT. I don’t know what the “peppers” are in the ingredients list, but this salsa as prepared packs some unexpected serious heat. I mean like 9/10 heat, which is particularly potent for a chip & dip salsa. We liked it in that capacity, but Linda was quite taken aback by the heat when she tried it. As for me, I found the heat level to be rather cumulative…so much so that I was “sucking wind” after eating a fair amount of it. Don’t get me wrong, though. I did like it quite a great deal, but this is one product where “hot” really does mean hot. The nice thing about this mix is its simplicity. You can have a fresh-tasting salsa in a matter of minutes, and one that you can doctor to your tastes should you want to add some other spices to it.

Our review on the Chipotle Hot Sauce:
We both reviewed this sauce as well, and opinions were a bit split. We both liked the consistency, although I did think it was a little close to being a little bit thin. There are granulated spices evident within the sauce, likely being the garlic and/or the onion. There is some chipotle flavor, but did not have quite the smokiness that we are accustomed to in many of the chipotle sauces we have tried. Linda adored the modest amount of chipotle flavor in this sauce, but I thought it had some BBQ flavor to it…like it had some mesquite or other BBQ-ish flavor mixed in. It’s a decent, if not atypical, chipotle sauce. Fortunately, it has a flavor profile and heat level that gives it a great amount of utility.

Overall recommendation:
These are solid, but not spectacular, products. I can’t help but feel that the strength of SuckleBusters’ product lay with their BBQ stuff, but these products are respectable. We liked them well enough that we would buy more of these, or other similar products, to try again. Enjoy!