Review - Stadium Salsa Holy Toledo XX Hot Salsa
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I remember the first time I met Greg Shepherd, owner of Stadium Salsa, vividly. We were booth in the foyer of Jungle Jim's Oscar Event Center several years ago, where the Weekend of Fire was about to go down. I was waiting for my bloggers booth pass while he was trying to obtain his pass for being a vendor that year. Long story short, we talked for a minute, exchanged business cards, and later met each other up in the main ballroom where the show was held.
That day I learned that Greg's food offerings weren't the most flame-o-riffic thing ever to hit a spicy food show, but they were pretty damn tasty nonetheless, including Stadium Salsa's Mexicali Cheese Dip (which interestingly enough, was interesting enough to Jonathon Passow's palette to review three years ago on The Hot Zone Online.) The few jars of Stadium Salsa's products I took home that year were the last of that Bowling Green, Ohio-based company I've had.
Until now, that is. Greg recently shipped a jar of his Stadium Salsa Holy Toldeo XX Hot Salsa for me to review. This extract-fueled is SS's entry into the super-chilehead race in the salsa category. Does it measure up to his previous tasty efforts, or does it get weighed down by the typical chemical-like flavor of capsicum extract? Read on to see what I think...
Ingredients:
Tomatoes, Green Peppers, Jalapeno Peppers, Banana Peppers, Lemon Juice, Garlic, Sugar, Cider Vinegar, Salt, Spices, Habanero Powder, Capsicum, Food Starch
Aroma:
2.5 out of 5. There's a strong whiffage of acidic tomatoes with chile extract mixed in.
Appearance and Texture:
4 out 5. Good, hefty, red and chunky - Stadium Salsa Holy Toldeo XX Hot Salsa is right down my alley in this regard!
Taste Straight Up:
2.5 out of 5. With a spoonful I got a lot more than what I was expecting! The first ingredients that hit my tongue were contained in the "liquid" portion of the salsa, which contain quite a bit of firepower from the habanero powder and extract...wow! It made picking out the other components a difficult proposition, but not impossible. The tomatoes and chunks of peppers are right-on-cue with their feel in my mouth and their fresh, tangy, sweet, fruity tones, and a slight pungent nudge from garlic. I was perhaps craving a bit of onion (maybe it was the mood I was in that day?) and was slightly disappointed with their absence; but with what was there, an admirable balancing act saved the day.
Upon subsequent tastes on different days the chile extract started to jump out at me more prominently, and not in the best way if you've ever tasted extract before. The overall flavor of this salsa by itself was at first try a little of the positive side of my review scale, but ended up falling squarely in the middle into the "average" zone. The nagging bitterness of the extract prevented this from being wholly delicious.
Taste on Food:
2.5 out of 5. Stadium Salsa's scrumptious products had done well in a variety of Mexican fare before, so I wanted to give Holy Toledo XX Hot the same college tries. This stuff is good and meaty and darned hot on tacos.
As a simple covering/dip for chimis, Holy Toledo XX Hot was decent, but the creeping bitterness of extract pushed too hard to prevent this from being a fantastic lunch.
With simple tortilla chips, this salsa reached territory only populated by certain jolokia and scorpion salsas (e.g., CaJohn's Trinidad Salsa) by being almost too hot to scarf down large amounts. Unfortunately, it was not the heat that did me in, but the nasty extract back-end that prevented me from plowing through a half a jar when snacking. And when salsa cannot be wolfed down in large amounts because something's in he way of it being addictive, then you know you've got a problem.
Heat:
4.5 out of 5. Extreme heat abounds here, and consuming large amounts will coat the inside of your mouth with fire! For serious chileheads only.
Label:
5 out of 5. I love the look of this! It boasts it all: classiness, a sharp, modern gaze, plus the fun of the famous little dancing chip. This would really stand out on a store shelf with high visual appeal. Good job.
Overall: 
There's a bit too much of the foul extract dominance that bleeds through to make this a solid contender in the extreme chilehead salsa arena. It's been proven that adding a bit of chile pepper extract to a sauce or salsa is not it's death knell (just look at Zane and Zack's Stinger X Sauce or Defcon Defence Condition #1), but my advice is to dial down the amount ever so slightly and perhaps amp up the amount of habanero powder in this, or even to look at super-hots like ghost peppers and scorpions for straight-from-the-Sun heat.
That having been said, this may be worth a look for the fiercest heat freaks out there. Stadium Salsa's online shop (perhaps temporarily underging maintennance at the time of this writing) can be found at http://stadiumsalsa.com/shop/.
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2012-10-23 11:58:50
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