Frank's Original RedHot Sauce

The "Louisiana-style" hot sauce is probably the definitive hot sauce that most people have experience of, including among it's ranks probably the single most famous brand of all: Tabasco. The race for second place is a bit more fraught, and personally for me the gap is filled by Crystal, which I discovered while I was at uni, and liked so much I could barely keep it in the house without it disappearing. In fact, I liked Crystal better than Tabasco; the flavour of the chilli is foremost, where Tabasco has more of a compromise between the vinegar and the fruit. Sadly, Crystal has more or less disappeared from UK shelves - I can only assume that the company is still recovering from the destruction of it's main factory in New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the export market comes second to their domestic trade. So the fruity cayenne flavour in Louisiana-style chilli sauces vanished from my life for several years.





Enter Frank's Original RedHot sauce. Like Crystal, Frank's has quite a pedigree, but achieved some notoriety by being the key ingredient in Buffalo wings. Possibly because of the industrial quantities needed to make Buffalo wings en masse, Frank's is gradually becoming more available in the UK, and taking over the gap left by Crystal. Having spotted it in my local supermarket, I thought I'd give it a try and see how it measures up.

Without a bottle of Crystal to compare it to, I'm making most of the comparisons to Tabasco.

Tasting Notes: Much like Crystal, and in contrast to Tabasco, Frank's aroma and flavour is dominated by cayenne. While vinegar is a key to both, it's much more muted in Frank's and the salt and spices are much stronger. While both are apparently "cask-aged", the ageing seems to do more for tabasco (which tastes a bit to me like hot balsamic vinegar rather than chilli). Frank's is about the chilli's. It's also thicker than Tabasco - while it's runny enough to pour, it's still got a bit of viscosity to it. It's not perfect though; there's a slightly waxy, bitter aftertaste to Frank's, although you'd only notice it if you were more or less drinking it straight. I don't have a bottle of Crystal to hand, but I don't remember it having that aftertaste. Also, Frank's flavour is far from subtle, and the salt is kicked up several notches over Tabasco. The effect is that where Tabasco is a condiment, Frank's RedHot sauce is, like Encona, more of an ingredient than a table sauce, beefed up to fight off other flavours when cooked into something. Still, Tabasco does seem to defeat it on heat - Frank's has the flavour of the peppers, but it's not setting fire to my mouth.

What It's Good For: Buffalo Wings, apparently. It'll certainly do as a table sauce, but better something with it's own flavour, like pizza, unless you like it salty. The sauce is designed for cooking though, so mix it in for best results.

Final Thoughts: A good alternative Louisiana-style sauce to Tabasco, but I'm still missing Crystal. I'd like to taste those two back to back, and see if I'm remembering Crystal's flavour right.

The Verdict: I'll probably keep a bottle in my cupboard, but I'll be dreaming of Crystal...

Encona Hot Pepper Sauce

After kicking off with a disappointing show by Dilita, I thought I'd compensate with one of my long-time favourites: Encona. Apparently the full title of this little number is "Encona West Indian Original Hot Pepper Sauce", but it'll always be "Encona" to me. While I'm pleased to say that it's been gaining popularity (along with other "world cuisine" brands) in recent years, Encona has a long pedigree in the Afro-Caribbean community, with it's maker Enco going back to the 1930's. Enco's recent expansion has probably been driven by it's 2007 takeover by a larger Caribbean food company Grace; the takeover was marked by a rebranding of Encona and an expansion of their sauce range.




Encona was my first taste of the super-hot Capsicum chinense chillies (made with Scotch bonnets and Habaneros) and I'd be surprised if I've spent more than a few weeks without a bottle in my kitchen ever since. Also, being the first chilli sauce I really took a liking to, I do slightly regard this as the benchmark by which other sauces should be judged - Darth Naga at the ChileFoundry is a little less impressed. Also, this is definitely an "old fashioned" chilli sauce that was presumably intended to be a replacement for C. chinenese for those who couldn't get a hold of it, rather than a sauce in it's own right. So in many ways, it's kind of fighting different battles to "modern" hot pepper sauce, like comparing cooking chocolate to Dairy Milk. So with that in mind, here's my thoughts.

Tasting Notes: The sauce is bright orange, and has a strong rich smell that's dominated by the chillies, although there's a strong acid bite to it. The spices are definitely there, it's salty and a bit sharp, but they really compliment the Scotch bonnet's characteristic flavour rather than adding to it. To some extent that's all there is to this sauce: chillies with preservatives like salt and vinegar, so it probably loses on complexity. It has plenty of texture to it, with lots of chilli mash in there - although this is a downside if you buy the squeezy bottle, as it frequently jams the rubber nozzle - there's a knack to getting the amount you want, but be careful when you first use it, or you could end up with your food drenched in it. And you do want to be careful, because it's hot; but unlike other sauces in this heat range, it doesn't compromise on flavour - the rich flavour of the chillies is foremost.

What it's Good For: Would it be trite to say "everything"? Seriously, this is a staple in my kitchen for a reason: it's incredibly versatile. It works well as a table sauce, and can stand up to strong flavours - I find it's great with ketchup on bacon sandwiches. It's also hot enough to use in cooking without getting lost, and gives that lovely habanero flavour to sauces. I've been known to mix it with sour cream to tone down the heat, just to get that lovely chilli taste - and you know you've found a good sauce when you can take the heat out and it's still nice. That said, it has a bit of an acid bite that make it a little unpalatable on it's own, so I do tend to have it in combination with other stuff, unlike more inventive sauces that could stand better on their own.

Final Thoughts: Hot, tasty, versatile, readily available. If you haven't tried it, give it a shot - you might just find you keep a bottle in your kitchen cupboard too. On the downside, though, it really is a bit of a one trick pony: there's not a great deal of artifice here except letting the peppers shine. If this was the only bottle in your kitchen cupboard, it'd be a pretty boring collection, so be prepared to mix it with other stuff to get the best out of it. Still, it is a damn good trick.

The Verdict: My essential chilli sauce.

As mentioned, Encona do have a broad range of other sauces, but on the whole I've found them disappointing and unmemorable compared to the "original". At some point I might get round to doing the others, but don't hold your breath.

Dilita Afrikana Peri-Peri Hot Sauce

Visiting Tesco's recently, I came across a brand of peri-peri sauce that I hadn't spotted before, and immediately made a grab for it to see what it was like. I'm fond of african-style chilli sauces (thanks mainly to Nando's, a UK chain of afro-portuguese restaurants built around a their peri-peri sauces, but also the delicious Mama Africa's sauces and a few others), so this newcomer had a lot to live up to.



While not a brand name I've particularily heard of before, Birmingham-based Dilita have apparently been around for a while. Reading between the lines of their website, they appear to be an Indian food manufacturer who are diversifying their sauces.

Tasting Notes: So is it any good? Well, right off the bat this sauce hits you, not with the dark heat of chilli, but with a raw kick of citrus. Now this is no bad thing in itself - lemon is a key ingredient in peri peri sauces, and I wouldn't take it away for the world - but in this sauce it comes off as smelling slightly acrid and artificial. Tasting it reveals another disappointment; instead of the fruity bite of fresh lemon, we get a bitter taste, as if it used only the rind. While all the peri-peri flavours are there (although biased heavily towards lemon) it's unbalanced, slightly unappetising, and overall, bitter. The texture is mostly smooth, but very oily - it splits really easily, so give it a shake before using - but it has the odd bit of chilli mash and seed for texture. The skin is a little annoying - it doesn't seem to have much flesh attached to it and just sticks to your throat; it'd probably be slightly nicer if it was properly homogenised. For heat it's passable, although it's probably mid-range for this type of sauce - the hot end of both Mama Africa's and Zulu zulu - heck, even Nando's - would kick the crap out of this one, and taste a damn sight better to boot.

What it's Good For: Difficult to say. Usually peri-peri sauce is great on grilled cheese, or as a thick condiment, but the acrid flavour is a little offputting. I find myself adding it to sauces to try and hide the failings of it's flavour. It's passable as long as it's playing into the flavour of the dish, but really, if you can taste more than a hint of it, it's too much. And what's the point in that?

Final Thoughts: Really, what this reminds me of is lime pickle, with the citrus turned up to eleven, and the spices adjusted to make it a bit more african-y. Which is odd, because I like lime pickle - bitter and sharp and oily - but this sauce manages not to be nice like lime pickle or nice like peri-peri. And it is definitely possible to do indian fusion (I promise, I'll review some of the lovely sauces from Mr Vikki's at some point) - but this is not it.

The Verdict: Give it a miss, really. There are better sauces out there.

Still, worth dismissing Dilita altogether? Not so fast. I've found at least one positive mention of their sauces on the magical intarwebs - a Green Habanero Sauce - perhaps they'll fare better when they're not trying to ram as much lemon peel into their sauce in an attempt to make it "african"? Well, we'll see - while I don't think I'll be trying any of their range with "peri peri" in the title (of which there are four), if I spot the others I'll probably give them a try.

The Starter

Welcome to the inaugural post of the chilli review blog. Welcome one and... well, one. There's only me here. I'm under no illusions of immediate internet celebrity, and I'm already wincing slightly at the narcissism of making some kind of inaugural address to my own blog.

It's here for one reason only - posterity. If I'm lucky, and things keep going, in a few months I might even get a visitor, a visitor who may be thinking "what the f*** is this all about?"

So here's the plan. I'm going to review chilli sauces. I may review other chilli related stuff - restaurants, books, plants, other chilli produce - but for the most part, at least to begin with, we'll be sticking with chilli sauces. I'll try to mix up the more exotic brands with some more household names, but basically these are my own tasting notes.

I'm based in the UK, so some products may not be available everywhere. It's also possible (although I'm not sure how likely) that some products may be made under license in this country, so your mileage may vary if you're somewhere else.