It can be a rarity indeed when we crank out a review truly quickly, so we allow a little inspiration to take hold of us when we have the chance. Such is the case with this new Honey BBQ sauce from the mad geniuses at Torchbearer Sauces. This is the first new product we’ve tried from Torchbearer in quite a while, but we have always enjoyed their products in the past…so we had no inclination that this sauce would be any different. It’s the first bottle that strays from their non-woozie eight ounce bottle that’s been a standard issue for their stuff, and comes in a huge-mongous sixteen ounce bottle.

Ingredients: tomato paste, water, honey, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, molasses, worcestershire sauce, yellow mustard, chili pepper, garlic powder, chili powder, lemon juice, oregano

Kudos to the gang for sticking to all-natural ingredients. An automatic thumbs-up from us for that!

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Completing our cooking experimentation with Borderline Gourmet, we cracked open the bottle of Chipotle Sauce & Marinade for our trial run with it. Chipotle barbecue sauces have become quite popular these days (check your local grocery store if you don’t believe me), so I wondered what Mia of Borderline Gourmet could do with the sauce to make it a standout sauce.

For one thing, much I can say about this sauce also applied to the recent review of the Habanero Sauce and Marinade I posted a few days ago. The bottle, label, sauce consistency, and even the aroma is roughly identical to the Habanero sauce. The aroma really smells like a prototypical barbecue sauce, and is thick with the scent of liquid smoke and a sweetness that’s a little like caramelized sugar. The ingredients list looks like this:

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

Pretty much the same as the habanero, save for the addition of a little more sugar and chipotle peppers instead of habanero peppers. My lovely wife Linda is much more the chipotle aficionado than me, so I came up with an idea to cook up a dinner to best utilize this sauce. I didn’t want to duplicate what we did with chicken, so I opted to cook up some tender boneless pork chops with this sauce. Keeping the simplicity theme going, we bought some two inch-thick boneless pork chops which looked pretty much like this:
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Popularity: 10% [?]

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.
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Popularity: 9% [?]

Just in time given CaJohn’s announcement of these products on his Flavor and Fire blog, we actually had a bottle of this BBQ sauce lurking on our “to-do” shelf where it’s been for about 6 weeks or so now. We had a chance to briefly taste this sauce awhile back as well, but nothing works quite as well as using at home in your own kitchen for a great BBQ dinner. (We actually had most of the other BBQ sauces as well, but have used them up before the big announcement.)

It’s a little cold to be standing outside at the grill, at least for us it is. These sauces simply beg to be used over an open flame, but we decided to make do with the heat of our oven for some BBQ pork loin. We picked up a couple of pounds of them at our local Sam’s Club just to have for simple barbeque feasts like this.
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Popularity: 9% [?]

It’s actually somewhat amazing that we still have products from the Jungle Jim’s Weekend of Fire show back in August that we have yet to try. As we work our way through them, we have run across several that we have regretted waiting so long to re-visit after the show.

This BBQ sauce is one of those.

The Ole Ray’s Sauces booth was directly across from our own at the show, and we sauntered over after making our rounds through the other vendors to sample their wares. With a variety of BBQ sauces, many with stuff in it like apple, blackberry, cinnamon, and bourbon, they didn’t seem to be the sorta stuff that just screamed hot & spicy. After trying the Kentucky Gold Bourbon BBQ Sauce, I found out that we couldn’t have been more off-base.

Just in looking at the ingredient list, it seems a rather mundane list. In fact, I looked at this and said, “Aw heck, even I could make this sauce!”

Ingredients: mustard (distilled vinegar, water, #1 grade mustard seed, salt, contains less than 2% turmeric, paprika, spice, natural flavor, garlic powder), brown sugar, hot chili pepper sauce (aged red chili peppers, vinegar, water, salt, worcestershire sauce[distilled vinegar, molasses, corn syrup, water, salt, caramel color, sugar, spices, anchovies, natural flavor, tamarind], water, apple cider vinegar, bourbon, lemon juice, liquid smoke, red pepper, black pepper, garlic powder, onion powder

Wrong, wrong, and wrong again. It’s not what you put in it, but how much and how well it’s mixed. Ole Ray’s Sauces are not only well-made, but they take mundane kitchen staples and turn it into BBQ magic. The sauce’s description is also fairly straightforward:

Kentucky Gold Bourbon is a spicy mustard based BBQ sauce great on sausages, pork, ribs and makes a great dip for pretzels.

Well, we weren’t going to make ribs or sausage in our current mode of eating, but we had an idea that we thought would be just as good. How about BBQ fish? Low in fat, low in calories, and high in protein, we had a bag of tilapia filets that we just screaming to have this sauce cooked with them. After layering the fish and absorbing any extra liquid, we layered some of this sauce on them and baked it for about 30 minutes in the oven at 350 degrees. The results:
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Popularity: 21% [?]

If it seems like we never have enough good things to say about the products from My Favorite New Mexico Foods, well…we’re not going to dispute that. Try as we might, everything thus far we have reviewed thus far has been various degrees of excellent. With this product, the Chimayo Citrus & Mustard Bar-B-Querque Finishing Sauce, we continue our experimentation with BBQ-ish sauces from MFNM by giving this sauce a one-and-only culinary test-drive.

Usually, one-shot kitchen wonders are not what we do. We like trying products out in a variety of ways before writing a review on them, but this sauce was so quickly used up that we have to make do with what we had. (Take note, Sharon, this means we’ll need some more. ;)) One thing was for sure, we didn’t know offhand what a “finishing sauce” was…at least not by that terminology. SOme research revealed this definition:

Finishing Sauce: A term commonly applied to mixtures that are served over various foods either as it finishes cooking or for use after it is served.

Well, I guess that means that all BBQ sauces are finishing sauces, but not all finishing sauces are BBQ. We took inspiration for our dish of choice that gave us this idea:

Chicken is another common favorite that can be given a new lift by the presence of a finishing sauce. With baked boneless chicken breasts, try preparing a zesty pepper sauce from scratch or purchasing one of the commercially produced pepper sauces from the supermarket. The sauce can be brushed on about half way through the baking or broiling process, allowing the meat to absorb some of the flavor.

Well, we had some boneless, skinless chicken breasts that we were needing to cook for dinner, so Linda set about the task of making them with this sauce. We did a chicken sauté by simply cooking the chicken breasts in this sauce on medium heat until they were cooked all the way though. When nearly done, the chicken breasts were cut into bite-sized pieces and we added a can of diced tomatoes and some freshly diced onions to the mix and let it simmer, adding water on occasion so that it wouldn’t dry out while cooking. Here’s how it looked in the skillet as the chicken cooked down initially:

A word about the straight flavor…its outstanding. Only MFNM can take such divergent tastes as chile powder, mustard, and orange marmalade and make the combination taste like they were meant to be together. Check out this list:

Ingredients: apple cider vinegar, yellow mustard, orange marmalade, chipotle chile powder, chimayo chile powder, garlic powder, kosher salt, sesame oil, and seasonings

All-natural and delicious right out of the jar. You get a nice tangy flavor from the orange & mustard blend (which is not too heavy on the mustard), followed by the heat and flavor of the blend of chile powders. From the initial sweetness, the first thought was that it wasn’t all too spicy…but a nice, simmering heat follows that builds the more you eat. Perhaps a 5/10 for heat, building to a 6/10, it’s enough to at least get your attention. Back to our entree, however….

After the chicken had simmered in the sauce for another half-hour and the added veggies had softened up, Linda cut the chicken up and made one last mix of the chicken sauté before it was served. Here was dinner, right before we ladled it onto our plates:

The finished product was nothing short of outstanding. Linda’s mother, who eschews spicy food, found herself eating her entire portion and then some. She said, “Yes it’s hot, but the flavor is so good that I don’t really care.” Again, MFNM foods manages to marry heat and flavor in such a way that this sauce has appeal to most palates. The description of the sauce from the bottle recommends:

Chimayo Citrus & Mustard Bar-B-Querque Finishing Sauce (Medium Hot)- This tangy yet spicy sauce is a great compliment to chicken, pork and fish. It features 4 varieties of NM chile favorites (Chipotle, Chimayo, Cayenne, and Red Pepper) as well as mustard and a hint of orange flavor to spice up even the most average dish to make it a hit among family and friends. A local favorite is basting chicken wings or shrimp on the grill with this sauce and then using it as a dipping sauce on them as well.

Our lingering thought was that this sauce takes mundane foods and makes them something special in a very simple, straightforward fashion without having to get too complicated in the preparation. Use it as a dip, a basting sauce, or even as a NM-style condiment that you’ll truly enjoy. This sauce may have less critical acclaim, at this point, than some of the others in the My Favorite New Mexico Foods product line, but you could scarcely go wrong with this sauce in any meal in your kitchen. A hearty, enthusiastic thumbs-up from us. Try some for yourself and find out. Enjoy!

Popularity: 28% [?]

Given a chance to taste and review a product from one of our favorite companies, My Favorite New Mexico Foods, we jumped right at it. One of the great things about attending this past Weekend of Fire show at Jungle Jim’s was the opportunity to pick up a variety of their products…in bulk. Even though this sauce, the 4 Chile Bar-B-Querque Sauce, isn’t as much-awarded as some of their other sauces, we knew from our sampling of it at the show that it was likely going to be a big hit at our house.

The fact is, we’ve been on a bit of a BBQ kick here lately. A lot of grilled BBQ chicken along with the occasional hamburger or other red meat has made for some good taste-testing with the variety of BBQ sauces that we have. We planned our usual grilled boneless, skinless chicken breasts on our grill, plus a few other tasty options before putting our thoughts to paper…er, computer screen. The description of this sauce from the website goes like this:

Beef is wonderful when cooked with, or dipped in this unique sauce, that is bursting with the flavor of Jalapenos, Ancho chiles, Chipotle, and Chimayo chile. This sauce will spice up your burgers, ribs, steaks, and briskets.

Hey, all that sounded pretty good to us! The combination of three fairly earthy, great flavor chiles seemed like a good idea even before we tried it. Scanning the ingredients list, we saw:

Ingredients: catsup, onions, fresh jalapenos, coffee, worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, apple cider vinegar, lemon juice, dijon mustard, vegetable oil, ancho chile powder, chipotle chile powder, chimayo chile powder, garlic, kosher salt
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Popularity: 30% [?]

Our collection of Monty’s BBQ sauces has laid dormant for a while, mostly because we’ve been doing a lot with hot sauces and salsa, but precious little with BBQ sauces. After our last shopping adventure, the arrival of a large package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts changed all that.

So that’s where the fun begins.

One of my bigger complaints against the majority of BBQ sauces in general has been that they’re glorified ketchup with lots and lots of added sugar and artificial flavors. In the world of mass-market, large volume production, this is largely true. It takes a maker who doesn’t make them by the metric ton to come up with something that has a bit more uniqueness and imagination to it. As someone who developed Type 1 diabetes, I appreciate ANY product that cuts down on the sugar. It usually means a reduction in calories as well.

That brings me to this sauce. A quick look at the ingredients list shows:

Ingredients: tomato sauce (tomato paste, water), water, vinegar (10% acidity), dehydrated onions, salt, mesquite smoke flavors, dehydrated garlic, caramel color, chile pepper blend, spices, xanthan gum, dehydrated bell pepper, acesulfame K (potassium)

All those are fine and dandy, none of which really raise any alarm bells with me for quality concerns. Acesulfame K is a widely used artificial sweetener used in many diabetic and diet foods. If you’ve ever tried Coke Zero or Pepsi One, then you have tried it already.

I had two main uses in mind for this BBQ sauce. The first is the more “traditional” usage, which was making good ol’ BBQ chicken on the grill. The other was to see how it did as a condiment and dipping sauce. Sounds like work, huh? I wish my real work was this much fun.
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Popularity: 25% [?]

I got a surprise care package in from our body Lars at Csigi. Contained within was two of his newest product. Today, I’ll be reviewing his Honey Habanero Barbecue Sauce.

Ingredients: tomato puree, tomato paste, unsulphered black strap molasses, vinegar, honey, onions, extra virgin olive oil, light brown sugar, spices, extra coarse sea salt, Habanero chilies, coarse black pepper.

Reading directly off his ingredients list makes my heart flutter with anticipation. Not only does he not use sulphers (which I have an allergy to), but also there’s no artificial colors or corn syrup. Just all natural ingredients, something so rare now a days.

Opening up the bottle I find that this one’s thick. I mean super thick. I wasn’t really surprised after all, with the top three ingredients being tomato puree, tomato paste, AND molasses. Throw the honey on top of all those and you get yourself a sauce that’s guaranteed to stick to whatever you slather it on.

The taste directly out of the bottle is very tomatoey mixed with a big burst of sweet ad topping off with a nice bite of black pepper. There is a slight hint of the fruity Habanero taste but that’s played down a bit by the sweetness of the various sugars involved. A nice bonus is that the olive oil doesn’t leave you with that slick, film coating on your tongue that I so passionately complain about in most other sauces.

Since this is a barbecue sauce, I went out and bought some Buffalo tri-tip for the official taste test. On a side note for the grillers out there, always cook your Buffalo rare to medium. Any more and you loose the beautiful, elegant taste that Buffalo gives you.

After banging the bottle on the cutting board for a few minutes, I finally got some of the sauce to splooch out of the bottle. Did I mention this sauce is thick? I thoroughly coated the meat and threw it on the grill (searing both sides before leaving it to the fire). A little bit later it was done and boy was it good! All the flavors blend so well and the sweet factor jumped up by a factor of 2. The whole sauce basically caramelized and seeped into the meat a bit making the tri-tip even more supple that it was before.

I’m a little disappointed by the heat though. I understand it’s a gourmet sauce and isn’t supposed to blow the top of your head off but I barely got a tingle from the Habaneros. Other than that small little nit pick, this is just phenomenal. So good, the whole family will want to know your secret. You get a gold star, Lars!

Taste: 9, Heat: 1.4

Popularity: 27% [?]

I’ve finally reached it. The last hot sauce to review from the 2007 Fiery Foods show. A very enthusiastic Tim Sharkey, from California Habanero Blends graciously donated his line of hot sauces to me the second night of the show and has been patiently awaiting the review. So, without further ado, let’s start the show!

These sauces come in three heat levels; Mild, Medium, and Hot and sport three different taste descriptions; Sweet, Sweet and Smokey, and Tangy. The great labels display different background colors so to distinguish the heat levels. I especially like the fact that there is a life sized habanero prominently displayed in the center of the label. It really shows off the main theme of these sauces; habanero goodness.

Ginger Garlic Ingredients: Sugar, orange juice, pineapple juice, soy sauce, garlic, Habanero peppers, ginger, key lime juice, vinegar, salt, spices, xanthan gum.

Garlic Ginger is the mildest of the bunch as far as heat goes. All the juices in this sauce cause it to be the most viscous of the set and allow you to see some of the ingredients floating around. The thing I noticed immediately is the Habanero seeds. This sauce is riddled with them! Luckily they have become extremely soft due to all the liquids its sitting in so you won’t find yourself gnawing on them

Overall it is really sweet, but not to the point where it would limit the foods it would pair with. The sugar, orange juice, and pineapple juice really jump out right away and blend quite well with the ginger. There are small chunks of ginger in the sauce and when you chomp down on them, you’ll come to realize something I learned long ago. Ginger and sugar go amazing together!

I really can’t detect the soy sauce and Habaneros though but the garlic is hiding around the background. Strangely enough, the key lime juice hits as an aftertaste. It’s light, but just enough to smack your tongue on the roof of your mouth. As stated above, this one is mild but oddly enough, it grabs the center part of the tongue. This is unusual because Habaneros are known for their back of the throat burn.

Chipotle Ingredients: Tomato puree, sugar, Chipotle peppers, garlic, spices, Habanero peppers, key lime juice, molasses, honey, maple syrup, vinegar, salt, liquid smoke.

You know that old saying, “Slow as molasses”? Well, that’s about how fast this sauce pours. I finished reading War and Peace while waiting for it to come out of the bottle. Ok ok, it’s not that slow, but you get the idea. Chipotle is the thickest of the group making it a perfect BBQ sauce with it’s brown color and slightly chunky consistency.

The liquid smoke combined with the taste of Chipotle peppers gives this sauce its distinct, heavy flavor. Unless you cook with it, the taste is very prevalent. Up next is the sweet taste of molasses and tomatoes. The maple syrup is a background flavor that you don’t quite pick up at first and the same thing can be said about the key lime juice. The Habanero flavor is definitely present and blends perfectly with the honey. Out of the whole set, I’m going to say that this is my favorite.

A lot of the flavors die down when you cook with the sauce, which is sad. So I suggest grilling up some marinated chicken and then using this as either a finishing sauce or a dipping sauce. As for the heat? It’s got a little bit of a kick to it. I would agree with the label and call it “Medium”. Once again, the Habanero’s hit the center of the tongue.

Garlic Key Lime Ingredients: Carrots, Habanero peppers, garlic, key lime juice, vinegar, salt, extra virgin olive oil, spices, xanthan gum.

Now onto the Garlic Key Lime sauce. Coming in a little thicker than the Ginger Garlic and in a muted Orange color that reminds me of Devil Duck’s sauce this one is my least favorite of Tim’s sauces. The label isn’t lying when it says “Key Lime”. The key lime is way too overpowering and face scrunching and the extra virgin olive oil coats your tongue leaving a slight texture behind that isn’t quite pleasant.

I’m not quite sure if I’m confusing the taste of key lime juice with the salt, but the salt is also very bold. Salt should always just be a hint in the background to be used to bring out the subtle flavors of the ingredients. The carrots help to accent the flavor of the Habaneros but are hard to focus on due to the key lime juice.

The heat, however, is a nice, quick bite. It actually hits the back of the mouth just like Habaneros should. I found myself doing a little bit of the “air suck” after a few spoonfuls of this sauce.

All in all, California Habanero Blends have a good thing going for them. Quality ingredients that really shine their flavors in every drop of the sauces. It does the Habanero name sake well.

Ginger Garlic; Taste: 7, Heat: 2

Chiptole; Taste: 8, Heat: 4.12

Garlic Key Lime; Taste: 3, Heat: 6.43254

Popularity: 31% [?]

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