Review - Scoville Food Institute's Garlic Cayenne, Habanero and Orange Habanero Pepper Sauces

Scott Roberts March 25, 2009 at 11:13 pm food

Scoville Food Institute Sauces Straight from the Scoville Food Institute company come a trio of blazing beauties which promise to spice up a wide variety of dishes and meals. I'm reviewing the Garlic Cayenne, Habanero, and Orange Habanero sauces.

Ingredients:
Garlic Cayenne - Aged Red Peppers, Distilled Vinegar, Garlic, Salt, Xanthan Gum

Habanero - Habanero Peppers, Carrots, Onions, Distilled Vinegar, Garlic, Lime Juice, Salt, Xanthan Gum

Orange Habanero - Habanero Peppers, Onion, Garlic, Lime Juice, Vinegar, Salt

Aroma:
Garlic Cayenne - Smooth yet bright garlic and vinegar scent. Pleasant.

Habanero - Tangy and blustery, this smells wonderfully strong of vinegar and peppers.

Orange Habanero - Has a less vinegary and slightly more sweet aroma, and very potent of habaneros.

Appearance and Texture:
Garlic Cayenne - Thin, orange, and no large, conspicuous flakes or chucks of spices. Only the tiniest, ground-up piece of peppers make up heft of the sauce.

Habanero - Darker red than the Garlic Cayenne and is of a similar appearance and consistency. It's a touch thicker than watery sauces such as Tabasco or Frank's Red Hot.

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Orange Habanero - This is the thickest one of the bunch. It's a medium-consistency, semi-translucent, deep orange sauce. It's also the most visually distinctive of the three, with dozens upon dozens of habanero seeds and hundreds of long, tiny, thin chile shreds blended in. Becauce of this, more novice chileheads may be intimidated ("Oh, no! Look at all that habanero in there!").

Taste Straight Up:

Garlic Cayenne - 4.5 out of 5. Easily one of the best garlic-based hot sauces I've ever tasted. Great balance between the balance and the moderate heat. This bests one of my previous favorites in the same category, Cholula's Garlic Hot Pepper Sauce.

Habanero - 4 out of 5. A taste similar to a typical "Louisiana-style" hot sauce. This one's high in vinegar, with a detectable twinkling of a fresh vegetable taste (probably due to the carrots present), and a nice, fiery sting from the habs. Very good.

Orange Habanero - 4 out of 5. Slightly more hot than the regular red Habanero sauce, and has more of a ripe, fruit flavor has less vinegar.

Taste on Food:
Homemade fried chicken breast nuggets were for tonight's supper, and were just begging for some new sauces to spice 'em up.

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Garlic Cayenne - Dynamite taste, although I would have preferred a denser, stickier sauce on the breading. This had a taste simlar to Buffalo Wild Wings' Spicy Garlic Sauce. 4 out of 5 on flavor.

Habanero - Somehow it lost a bit of it's luster and identity when covering the nuggets, possibly due to the runny nature of the sauce. The taste was okay, but not much different from the casual habby/vinegar offerings populating hot sauce land. 3 out of 5.

Orange Habanero - Ah, now we're talkin'. The heat went very well with the chicken, plus the thickness and clingability of the sauce made more suited for this type of food, whether it's dipped, poured on or tossed. Delicious. 4.5 out of 5.

Heat:
Garlic Cayenne - Not too hot, and just enough fire to counter the garlic flavor. 1.5 or 2 out of 5, on a scale where 5 is hottest.

Habanero - This has a bit more burn. This would pacify most lovers of heat and make the uninitiated sweat a bit. 2.5 out of 5.

Orange Habanero - As mentioned before, the small needle-like shreds and numerous seeds make this look more hot than it actually is. Yes, it does pack an incendiary punch - 3.5 on a scale of 1 to 5 - but experienced chileheads needn't worry about pouring this on your food in vast amounts. Like habanero heat, this hotness is slow to build up and once it's reached full bore, the heat lingers in your mouth for a good 5 or 10 minutes.

Label:
5 out of 5. The Scoville Food Institute has gone all-out with the periodic table theme and making each bottle look like a MSDS label for a hazardous chemical. All sauces are clearly labeled with the heat level, type of pepper used, pepper image, and most notably, a two-letter abbreviation of the pepper as if were a scientific element. Clever, crazy and cool.

Overall:
The Scoville Food Institute may have went with a "pure science" design motif for their marketing, but thankfully they realize that taste should reign supreme in a hot sauce, not how many Scoville units they claim exists in their bottles. It's good stuff, and comes with my recommendation.

The Scoville Foods website, http://www.scufoods.com, has their current line of hot sauces available for $4.45 to $6.75 a bottle, depending on the type of sauce. If you live in the Pittsburgh or Columbus area, you can pick them up at selected Whole Foods Markets, or other stores and shops in the northeastern U.S..

Comments

Charlotte DiAngeles
2009-03-27 20:46:11

Excellent review. This is one of your best to date.

BBQ Bill
2009-03-30 06:34:31

Has anyone tried their OTC (Off the Charts)? If so, is it any good?

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