Review - Cheater 5 Sauces and Salsa
With the amazing and baffling assortment of hot sauces polluting the marketplace, manufacturers must have some unique angle to differentiate yourself from the pack. How 'bout a surfing theme for your company? Well that's exactly what the Cheater 5 Surfin' Salsa Company has done (and according to their website, some of their founders are "extreme sports enthusiasts" who actively participate in "surfing, motocross, skateboarding, wakeboarding, snowboarding, and skiing"). But can their products - which are Shreddin' Serrano Salsa, Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce and Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera - be just as distinctive?
First, let's see what in these items.
Ingredients:
Shreddin' Serrano Salsa:
Roasted tomatillos, [unroasted] tomatillos, onions, serrano chiles, habanero chiles, roasted garlic, cilantro, dried chiles, water, salt, lime juice concentrate, xanthan gum, citric acid.
Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce:
Papaya, water, mango, banana, habanero chiles, lime juice concentrate, dried chiles, potassium sorbate (to preserve freshness), sodium benzoate (to preserve freshness), spices.
Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera:
Tomatillos, filtered water, tomato sauce, assorted chiles and peppers, salt, minced garlic, corn oil and xanthan gum.
Aroma:
Shreddin' Serrano Salsa:
4 out of 5. The smell of this salsa is very appealing, like the kind of fresh tomatillo-based dip you would find in your favorite Mexican eatery. Unmistakable tomatillo scents provide the base for chiles, cilantro, garlic, and other discernible aromas.
Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce:
3.5 out of 5. This one is fairly difficult to pin down. Even after studying the ingredients list, it's hard to pick apart each smell individually. Overall it's oddly sweet and mellow.
Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera:
4 out of 5. Sweet, refreshing scent of tomatoes, tomatillos, and a touch of garlic. Strangely altogether it reminds me of the smell of a vegetable salad that's heavy on the tomatoes and topped with bacon bits. I kid you not, as silly as that may sound, that's what it is dead-on in my opinion.
Appearance and Texture:
Shreddin' Serrano Salsa:
3.5 out of 5. If you love drippy salsas, then this one's for you. It's dark olive green totally infused with seeds, specks, sheds and pieces of vegetables. There's quite a few of black roasted bits, giving this an even more interesting look.
Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce:
3 out of 5. Dark yellow, it's relatively porous but not watery. It's got a medium about of body. Red flakes as well as chile seeds float in the mixture.
Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera:
3 out of 5. Deep red, as one would expect a tomato-based sauce to be like. This is a touch thicker than the Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce is, and contains numerous seeds, both whole and chopped.
Taste:
Shreddin' Serrano Salsa:
3 out of 5. Nice tomatillo flavor with accents of cilantro, hot peppers, and tartness from lime. I must mention that when eating this I got a little "build up" on my tongue that I've never gotten from eating a salsa before that was...oily? I don't quite know what ingredient, if any, this "film"originated from. It didn't really decrease my satisfaction with the salsa, but it was odd enough to mention.
Shreddin' Serrano Salsa should compliment a vast array of Mexican dishes moderately well in addition to tortilla chips.
Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce:
4.0 out of 5. It's a little easier to pick apart the different ingredients by flavor than it is by aroma. I can taste banana, mango and a heavy dosage of chile peppers. Overall, the blend is off the beaten path, sweet, rich, and very good. It's not like traditional "tropical" or "Caribbean" hot sauces where it's sharp, spicy, and complex like jerk sauces or tart and tangy like other fruit-based condiments. It's almost like the "anti-tang".
Now this is a sauce that tasted pretty good on everything I tried it on. Pizza was a no-brainer, but also oddball items like hamburgers, ramen noodles, and Chicken Fiesta Hot Pockets (as a dip) were very flavorful with Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce.
Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera:
5 out of 5. My favorite if the bunch. I'm not the biggest fan of tomato-based hot sauces, but Cheater 5 have a solid winner here. I think the fact that it's quasi-unique (it's not a Mexican sauce, it's not BBQ, ketchup, taco or steak sauce, and it's not tomato sauce) makes it seem like risky proposition whenever you wonder if Totally Tubular will go nicely with a dish, but truth be told that I couldn't find an honestly bad application of it. It's a wonderful, all-purpose sauce. Try it with a steak, hash browns, fajitas, french fries, or even fish tacos - the possibilities are endless.
The taste itself is similar to my assessment of the smell - bold on the tomatoes and tomatillos with that odd bacon bits taste (this oughta work as a salad dressing - no joke). Could it be the taste of the corn oil? Who knows, but it's rather uncanny. It's a touch sweet, marginally tart and oh so good. The heat from the chiles barely register, letting the other vegetables take command.
Totally Tubular Tequera (left) and Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce
Heat:
Shreddin' Serrano Salsa:
On a scale of 1 to 5, with 5 being the hottest, this would rate perhaps a 1.5. It's not too fiery, but contains just enough heat to please chileheads.
Killer Caribbean Hot Sauce:
The hottest of the three Cheater 5 products reviewed here. 2, maybe 2.5 out of 5. It's got some kick and spice to it, but it blends terrifically with the cool fruit flavor so it may not taste as hot initially.
Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera:
Not much heat at all. 0.5 out of 5. Safe for just about everybody, except those people who think Nacho Cheese Doritos are spicy.
Labels:
5 out of 5. All three have cool and distinctive labels that loom professional and slick, all with surfing peppers. Great job!
Overall:
The salsa doesn't blow me away, but it still is good. Cheater 5 have managed to concoct a savory Caribbean-style sauce that rises above most others. But it's the excellent Totally Tubular Salsa Taquera that's the star of the show. It's so good that it may become one of my regular table sauces (and that's no easy feat). So have Cheater 5 set themselves apart from the pack? I'd have to say yes. Be on the lookout for these guys; with a little more promotion, they could become big in the hot sauce world. Cheater 5 has already had a rousing start by winning some awards, which include two Scovies. I would love to see them go far.
The three products can be purchased from the Cheater 5 website at http://www.cheater5.com. The Killer Caribbean and Totally Tubular are a steal at $5.99 for large 10 oz. bottles (a lot of specialty hot sauces come in 5 oz bottle for the same price or higher). A 12 oz. jar of Shreddin' Serrano Salsa is available for $6.99.
One last note, and this is in regards to Cheater 5's website: you must click on "SHOP" from the navigation menu in order to buy their products. For some reason, the products listed on the "OUR PRODUCTS" page have no links to their online shopping cart, but instead have links to "letters to the editor"(?!). And from the looks of it, these letters are either purposely fake (for a humorous effect) or they've chosen some really goofy ones that Cheater 5 could reply to in an even goofier manner. They're missing an opportunity here to make it easy for potential customers to quickly order their sauces and salsa if these potential buyers first click on the products page.
Related Articles:
Spicy Food Reviews - Hot Sauce Reviews, Hot Snacks, Hot Wings, Seasonings, BBQ Sauces, Condiments, and More
Comments
2009-07-01 09:26:55
Mick
KATO'S
www.katoproductions.com
888-528-KATO(5286)
2009-07-04 15:28:16
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