Review - CaJohn's Jolokia Wing Sauce 10
After eyeing a bottle of Jolokia Wing Sauce 10 during my recent trip to CaJohn's Fiery Foods in Columbus, Ohio, I knew I had to give it a thorough taste test (in order words, devour large quantities) some since I'm a diehard buffalo/hot wing fanatic.
Ingredients:
Ace Hot Sauce (Red Savina Habaneros Chiles, Black Pepper, Garlic, Onion, Chile Caribe, Vegetable Powder [Bell Pepper, Carrot, Onion, Pea]), Canola Oil, Tomato Paste, Cayenne Chiles, Garlic, Butter, Bhut Jolokia Chiles, Salt, Sugar, Xanthan Gum, Black Pepper, Natural Flavorings.
Aroma:
4.5 out of 5. Very pleasant buffalo wing sauce aroma with a strong vegetable scent, and is also heavy on the hot chiles, a bit of garlic, and a smidgen of sweetness.
Appearance and Texture:
4 out of 5. Jolokia Wing Sauce 10 is a dull but beautiful orange color highlighted by specks of black pepper and spices. The sauce is good n' thick, like a real heavy gravy. It's not oily like other butter or oil-based wing coaters are, but gets the bulk of its heft and content from the peppers, veggies and tomato paste. Pour this out on your wings straight from the bottle and you'll cover them with layer that might be too thick (unless that's your thing), so you'll probably need to extract it from the bottle with a butter knife or use the regular "shake" method of covering chicken wings after dunking some out into your lidded container.
Taste Straight Up:
4.5 out of 5. The scalding power of the various chile peppers hit you almost immediately. The flavor is incredibly nice and has many more levels of complexity than a standard Frank's Red Hot/melted butter combo would provide, not to mention many more times the fire. Like the aroma, the veggie taste is present, along with the right hints of fresh habaneros, garlic, and overall tanginess. I also loved the fact that (to paraphrase a line from CaJohn's website) you can get near-extract level heat without the awful, bitter extract flavor. They've done a super-hot wing sauce just right. Yet there was just that tiniest thing "missing" that prevented this from being a grand slam home run.
Taste on Food:
5 out of 5. My lovely wife fried up chicken wings for the night's dinner:
And since she and the rest of the family weren't courageous enough to try CaJohn's Jolokia Wing Sauce 10, I had to apply the sauce on each of my bare, breaded wings individually:
With a little bit of spreading around with a butter knife, these puppies were coated with generous amounts of sauce. Mmmm! It was time to dig in.
Any deficiencies the hot sauce had quickly evaporated after sinking my teeth into one of these wings. With the perfect touches of spiciness and balanced flavor, this would have to be in my top 5 favorite wing sauces of all time.
Wing Sauce 10 was so good that I even poured some sauce on my fried potatoes I had on the side with the wings. This stuff could be a terrific replacement for ketchup if you're in the mood for a condiment with near-nuclear heat.
Heat:
4 out of 5. If someone sees a bottle of this and notices the word "jolokia", they may erroneously assume that this sauce matches the bhut jolokia's heat level at around one million Scoville Heat Units. It certainly isn't that hot, as loads of other ingredients are mixed into to bring down the heat level. Experienced chileheads can slather heavy amounts of this sauce on without worrying about it being too terribly hot.
But make no mistake - this is still very, very hot and is probably for hardcore spice fans only. The deadly heat is immediate and yet continues to build, to the point of almost numbing my tongue...and I loved every second of it! And take precaution by not getting this sauce on your fingers and lips.
Label:
4 out of 5. Clean, snazzy graphics, and to-the-point. The very front of the bottle is actually very sparse information-wise, and contains only a gold flame with the word "Jolokia" (similar to the regular version of the Jolokia 10 Hot Sauce). Turn the label a bit, and you'll see that it's a wing sauce:
In Conclusion:
If you want a flavorful wing sauce with tons of kick, look no further than this lovely offering from CaJohn's.
You can grab a 12 ounce bottle of Jolokia Wing Sauce 10 on the CaJohn's website for $10.00 plus shipping.
Related Articles:
Spicy Food Reviews - Hot Sauce Reviews, Hot Snacks, Hot Wings, Seasonings, BBQ Sauces, Condiments, and More
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2009-08-08 11:57:56
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