Review - Blair's Golden Death Hot Sauce
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Blair Lazar first mentioned it last fall as a "a beautiful tropical rum sauce". Since then, his brand spankin' new Golden Death Sauce made its debuted at this year's Fiery Foods Show and now it's finally available to the general public both online and retail locations that stock Blair's Sauces and Snacks.
Most of the other items with Blair's Death Sauce lineup branding are of the dark red, habanero-based variety with heat levels ranging from steaming to screaming. This lighter-colored product has the potential to be quite different from the other sauces bearing the crazy skull on the label, so this has had me intrigued ever since I first heard about it. Is it as wonderful and exotic as I had hoped? Read on to find out...
Ingredients:
Scotch Bonnet Pepper, Fresh Onion, Cane Vinegar, Mustard Seeds, Habanero Powder, Salt, Turmeric and Ascorbic Acid
Label:
3 out of 5. Golden Death has the same basic design as all the other revamped bottles in Blair's Death Sauce lineup, and the same skull key chain affixed by the shrink wrap. For some reason, though, the gold color comes across to me as "weak" (I happen to think that gold in packaging should be used sparingly).
One very noticeable aspect is the words "with Chipotle" printed across the top of the Blair skull. There is no chipotle present in the ingredients list above, nor is there a single iota of a chipotle or smokey flavor I could detect in the sauce itself. Could this be a printing error, perhaps a forgotten leftover from another Death Sauce artwork template file?
Aroma:
3 out of 5. A nice, bright vinegar burst with a touch of onions that perks up the nostrils without being overpowering.
Appearance and Texture:
3.5 out of 5. Orange, almost to the point of being strikingly similar to a store-bought wing sauce (more about that later). It's speckled with thousands of red fragments along with tens of thousands of tinier whiteish-yellow particles. It's a relatively smooth blend, has a medium viscosity and doesn't feel too gritty when eating it.
Taste Straight Up and Heat:
3.5 out of 5. The vinegar twang hits you immediately. Following closely behind is a small but odd mishmash of salt, onions and the ever so faint attributes of a mustard. On that last note, there should be no mistake about it - this is not a mustard nor a mustard-y hot sauce at all. It only has those minor inflections of a yellowish, rich, Caribbean-style sauce to give it complexity.
After two or three seconds from first consuming a spoonful, the tartness from the cane vinegar begins to wear off and the heat from the peppers take over in the tanginess department. While the burn quickly builds, Golden Death disappointingly doesn't get too high on the scorch-o-meter. With something that contains as the first ingredient Scotch Bonnet peppers and also boasts habby powder, this elixir barely creaks above Tabasco level heat. As you could guess this was a big letdown. On a heat scale of 1 to 5, this might register at 1.5.
A bit more on the flavor. All in all, Blair's latest saucy creation tastes primarily like a vinegar and cayenne wing sauce with hintings of depth from onions and turmeric. There isn't much going on in the way of creaminess (maybe a dash of melted butter would help that) so it doesn't neatly fit into the mold of a chicken wing coater. Golden Death lacks any substantial fruitiness, sweetness and truly rich spiciness for it to squeeze into tropical hot sauce territory. So as it is the stuff straddles a couple of different culinary regions. That is by no means bad, but it does call for some experimentation of your own to see what this goes good on. Read on to see how I've used the sauce.
Taste on Food:
3.5 out of 5. First I wanted to see how it would fare with some homemade bean and beef tostadas. Not bad at all. The flavor supplied a delicate kick to the food yet the heat became heavily buried by the other tastes in the food. More capsaicin-fueled burn and this sauce would have been killer instead of being merely "nice".
I had a chicken quesadilla for lunch. Ah, Golden Death Sauce was much better on this than the tostada. The mild pico de gallo and grilled chicken breasts pieces benefited greatly from the sauce's tanginess. This was a winning match-up.
What's next? well, I also have planned to make some Golden Death wings in the future and maybe even to try this with some grilled fish. But for now, my overall verdict would rate around a 3.5 out of 5 stars. I really liked it, but I didn't necessarily fall in love with the stuff.
I think people who really don't care for Blair's hotter offerings (in other words, the everyday citizens who consider a Texas Pete to be a tongue-stunner) might take a liking to Golden Death. It's easily one of Lazar's mildest sauce products, and it might go over well with the large market that's just now beginning to get acclimated to spicy cuisine.
You can pick up a 5 oz. bottle of Blair's Golden Death Sauce at extremefood.com for $7.95 plus shipping.
Related Articles:
Scott Takes on a Spoonful of Blair's Ultra Death Sauce
FireTalkers: Interview with Blair Lazar of Blair's Sauces and Snacks
Blair's Update - Death Sauce Spreading Around the Globe and New Factory
Review - Blair's Original Death and Jalapeno Death Sauces
Blair Happenings: New Site Design, New 2008 Halloween Reserve, and More
Comments
2010-06-04 20:52:28
2010-06-04 21:14:11
2010-06-04 23:05:28
I was curious who might rip off the Redum Golden BBQ name. I just didn't think it would be Blair! lol
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