Review - Henry Family Farm Varietal Chile Extracts Red Naga Jolokia and Yellow Fatali
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David Rosengarten is a self-described "journalist, television personality, and cookbook author" and runs a food blog/website of sorts at http://drosengarten.com. On it, Rosengarten has the obligitory recipes and such, and he also sells a few items he has come across during his culinary travels. He discovered hot sauces produced by a small family farm in the Shenandoah Valley, Virginia that use an enormous punch of chile peppers for both heat and taste. These are the Henry Family Farm Varietal Chile Extracts, which come in both Yellow Fatali African Habanero and Red Naga Jolokia flavors.
Now before we go any further, I want to clarify something with the name of these condiments from Henry Family Farm. Now, as many of you know, capsaicin extract (sometimes also referred to on hot sauce labels as chile extract, pepper extract, and capsicum, among other terms) is the substance that fueled the extreme heat of certain hot sauces from the 1990s and early 2000s such as the original Dave's Insanity Sauce and many of Blair's sauces. It allowed products to get up in the astronomical levels of Scoville Heat Units only obtained by eating pure habaneros...and at times even hotter. The problem with extracts is that they add bitter, putrid, chemical-like tones to the sauce. Nowadays, most learned chileheads vilipend extract as they feel it pollutes any good flavor the hot sauce might otherwise have, and would rather have ultra-hot burn come from a chile such as bhut jolokias or trinidad scorpions.
Well, in the case of Henry Family Farm Varietal Chile Extracts, the "extract" in the title is thankfully not actual nasty-tasting extract pulled from peppers. Instead, these babies utilize a lot of the pure taste and blazing heat from the chiles after which they're named. So hot sauce fanatics who might be turned off initially by the mentioned of "extract" can be rest assured that these are not those types of hot sauces.
Yellow Fatali African Habanero
Ingredients:
Hot peppers, acetic acid, salt, xanthum gum, sodium benzoate.
Summary:
Henry Family Farm's Yellow Fatali African Habanero Varietal Chile Extract Hot Sauce (Whew! What a name!) possesses a deep, dark yellow color and boasts an awesome medium consistency; it's splashable without being too watery. It's smooth, highly-pureed and has an overall even feel in the mouth. Flavor-wise, it's all bright, tart, slightly bitter with an incredible wallop of fatalii taste. If you dig fatalii chiles, then you'll definitely love this! This sauce is more than just the presence of a "pepper in sauce form" with a touch of saltiness and even sweetness, but it's the pepper which is king in this bottle. Heatwise, there's a tremendous up-front burn plus some palpable slow, residual fire, and rates an easy 4 out of 5 on burn.
Overall Rating: 
Red Naga Jolokia
Ingredients:
Hot peppers, acetic acid, salt, xanthum gum, sodium benzoate.
Summary:
Red Naga Jolokia Hot Sauce from Henry Family Farm has a slightly runnier consistency than the aforementioned Yellow Fatali African Habanero, yet thankfully stays above the watery viscosity of your typical Louisiana pepper sauces. Think of this as a thick, bright red Cholula when you pour it out. The taste....wow! It's an insanely potent stab in the tongue of blistering ghost pepper flavor and scorch. The distictive citrus notes of the jolokia are accented with the sour burst of acetic acid (which is the main component of vinegar). This is another sauce that borders on the "pepper in a bottle" description. And the burn....some of the hottest I've had in a regular sauce, and will blow most people away with a 4.5 out of 5 rating in terms of SHUs.
Overall Rating:
Taste in Food
Since these two products have the distinction of centering around the flavors of the chile peppers, they can be applied to anything where you desire some immense chile heat and taste. Both varietal chile extracts would excel as a liquid additive for soups, stews and chilis that are dying for some much-needed spiciness. Mexican and Asian cuisine is a no-brainer. A simple cheese and cracker test allowed the kick of the sauces to shine through while still leading the overall course of gastronomical notes through fiery and tart stretches.
Labels
2.5 out of 5. Simple but a bit too plain. It's mostly sparse black text atop a LOT of whote background. This could have used much more color and variety to make it pop. What's worse, these look like they've been taken fresh off a cheap home printer using regular paper, so that any hint of moisture on the bottle would immediate wrinkle and ruin these, plus make the ink smear.
Summary and "the Catch"
As much as it pains me, I might borderline not recommend these otherwise terrific sauces. Why? The big red flag of the price. The official David Rosengarten website, http://drosengarten.com/shop, sells 5 oz bottles of these for $22 a piece, plus shipping. Ouch! Even some of the costlier hot sauce prices that I've been critical about in the past, such as $15-18 for a trinidad scorpion sauce, are still lower than this. They do offer a three pack of Green Jamaican Lime (not reviewed here, of course) Red Naga Jolokia, and Yellow Fatali for $32 plus shipping; so if you absolutely must try these, that might be the course to go. If it wasn't for this, I would urge fans of gargantuan heat and chile pepper flavors to try Henry Family Farm Varietal Chile Extracts.
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Comments
2012-12-19 09:57:02
2012-12-19 10:16:26
Yeah, I'm a food snob.
I suppose the advantage to the SB is that you can leave the product out on a table and it won't go bad. Although, I will never understand the addition of xanthan gum... ever.
T
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