Queen of Farts: Live the medieval war between sweet and salty

If you love blasting violent explosions out of your ass, you might want to just cut out the hot sauce middle man and do what the lowliest lifeforms on Earth do.  For the rest of us, there's Queen of Farts, a goofy sauce whose silly name and bottle art may deter normals from understanding the complex war of flavors happening under the innocent plastic cap. Is this Queen worth bowing down to? Will she ever learn to control herself?

Let's look at the facts: The second I found this sauce, I said to my girlfriend, "I bet a goofy guy in a pepper Hawaiian shirt made this sauce." True pepperheads can see each other in our fiery dreams. Sure enough, friendly CaJohn of Columbus, Ohio states: "CaJohns is about getting together with friends and family, enjoying great stories and lots of laughter over some delicious fiery food. We hope our hot sauces and fiery foods help you make your gatherings even more fun!" If you're not interested in swapping stories of lives and times in the gaseous monarchy, CaJohns makes tons of cool looking sauces for true pepperheads. It's refreshing to see such a down home business with such variety. Clearly, Queen of Farts is about fun, plain and simple. Funny name, funny bottle. Niche market. I found the sauce in an "As Seen on TV" store. It's a funny stocking stuffer or gag sauce for the hot freak in your life, but I believe there's more beneath the surface. Combinations of some of my favorite hot sauce traits are all under one cap, but they battle each other a bit more than they may need to.

Good Hurts: This sauce promises a "gentle heat, enjoyable for everyone." This is one of the sauce's highest points. It's not too hot, so even though it's clearly made for hot sauce aficionados, friends and family can gather round and sample it without worrying about severe face peeling or ass blorting. It's a comparable heat to a big gulp O Tabasco sauce. Hey, the world only needs a handful of things like Blair's 10000 skrillion reserves or Pure Cap.

Flavor: Like many wars between feudal kingdoms, this hot sauce's polarized flavors constantly try to scale one another's moats and co-opt their territories. Papaya, guava, pineapple, passion fruit, and banana. Lemon, passion, and guava fruit juices. There's no reason this sauce shouldn't be the sweetest heat in all ye lande. However, the savory armies of salt, garlic, white vinegar, and, leading the charge, curry, put up a formidable fight against insurmountable odds. In between this war is the fair maiden habanero. Curry is the most powerful flavor, so you get a little sweetness after what tastes like a yellow curry. However, it's not the tropical blast it probably could be. So much fruit is hidden by the thick armor of vinegar, salt, and curry. It's a hybrid of the Babysauce and Curry Fire made by the Peppermaster, but the two don't seem to blend as naturally as mere mortals may dream.

Availability: CaJohn's good ol' website has this sauce and more at your beckon call. But guess what?!?!??!?!?!?!?!?!???!??!?!?!?!?!?!?!? This sauce has Christmas miracle-like distribution. Novelty stores and As-Seen-on-TV/gourmet chef stores. If you can find a food-friendly outlet store, you might get lucky and find this sauce.

Good for: I think it's best with rice dishes, since it seems very curry like. And the curry is good! But it's not the sweet treat you might think it is. Indian food, especially yellow curry, would work with this sauce, too.

Review:

Heat: *

Flavor: ***

My Review: 6.9/10

It's a tasty curry sauce, but this Queen may need to lighten up on the farts and "let them eat fruits."

Tabasco Sauce: A special Christmas review of the All-American hot sauce

New Years is a time to reflect upon one's year; recognizing flaws you want to fix and new ground you want to cover often paints the landscape of the start of another all-too-short 365 days. 2009 was a good year for Good Hurts. It started! Sauces were eaten. (A) Reviewer(s) went to bed sore-stomached and smiley-faced after long nights of sampling. But Good Hurts has missions:
-To become the definitive hot sauce review site.
-To develop our own special blend of 10/10 sauces.
-To sign a hit TV show deal (hopefully right before Jersey Shore comes on...can't miss a second of Snooki's foppish antics).
Most important of all:
-To remain completist, never elitist.

In keeping with the spirit of America's favorite holiday, Christmas (besides, perhaps, the Superbowl, or Thirsty Thursday), Good Hurts prepares for a great 2010 with the hot sauce that defines a nation: Tabasco.

Tabasco sauce is a watery, light red Louisiana style sauce. That means big vinegar, Tabasco/cayanne peppers, and salt, salt, salt. And after vowing many times not to review sauces like this, why do they keep showing up on Good Hurts? Here's why: Tabasco has transcended the pantheon of excellent hot sauces; it's traversed the hierarchy hall of hottness. Tabasco has become an iconic hot sauce clearly symbolic of the American dream, intertwined more with our values, history, and  consumer culture than it is a regular ol' hot sauce from Lo'sianna.

Let's Look at the Facts: I can't rewrite their mind-blowing history page...I just don't have the time or web design doller$. But you really should check it out. Long story short: The McIlhenny Company started making the hot sauce in 1886 to spice up the reconstruction South's bland food (haha, it's never too late to rise again. -Ed.) Edmund McIlhenny, a banker, aged his Avery Island, LA crushed red peppers in a "mash" with salt. After 30 days in crockery jars, the mash was mixed with French white wine vinegar (they use distilled white vinegar like most Louisiana sauces now) and aged for another 30 days. Boom! Tabasco sauce, the first major commercial hot sauce, was born. Please note the ties to the class-rising, multi-chance American dream of finding passion in unconventional places between the hardscrabble lines of life in our free-market democracy. Paul McIlhenny, the 6th in a line of McIlhenny company presidents and Avery Island residents, runs the company today. But beyond the mild heat and tangy flavor lies the secret of its success: unmatched longevity and drive to be the best...perhaps it isn't the hottest or best tasting, but it's everywhere and it worked hard to get there. It's the story of so many American business juggernauts: a website designed to look young, fresh, and like a vibrant concert also contains a long section about the antiquated tradition and steadfast adherence to unchanging recipes and business values. Like Coca Cola, Tabasco pioneered an entire food industry and has reinvented itself again and again to change with the times. They build their image in the long shadow of their own American mystique: a family with dreams, land to cultivate, and traditional beliefs. Most importantly, Tabasco is everywhere. Like any die-hard capitalist company, Tabasco slaps their name and product any and everywhere, as a great way to learn about something is repetition, repetition, repetition. If you're reading this site, you have probably eaten Tabasco sauce.

Good Hurts: It's actually spicier than you might assume. Even the most cynical and stone-hearted of pepper freaks can dump gallons of the sauce on a single bite of food and get a back-of-the-throat heat. This humble editor must admit that the main reason for this review is a Christmas with my girlfriend's mom, who doesn't keep any hot sauce in the house. Yet my heart grew three sizes when I poured a generous puddle onto a single corn chip and could feel the burn I've nursed in my mortal mouth since I founded this site. Is it as hot as the killer world of death running the hot sauce niche today? No way. But it is a hot sauce! There IS a heat.

Flavor: Tabasco is really tangy. I actually think that its flavor has a lot in common with its place in the legendary lore of American foods. The proud USA is still a tad over 230 years old, having split from the Brits who colonized our country. Notice that those Brits can't get enough of vinegar and salty foods...from Fish n' Chips to Marmite and Vegemite,  salt and vinegar go hand and hand. Here in the USA, McIlhenny developed a sauce down south with a comparable vinegar tang that pairs well with the mild sweetness of cayanne pepper and fresh Avery Island salt. While the image and ubiqitousness have huge hands in the Tabasco brand, flavor--and ties to down-home Louisiana, Southern spice, and stringent, painstaking hand-crafted tenderness--is just as important. This is America's loud answer to salty foods across the pond: tangy zings and spicy exclamation points, even if they aren't hot enough for true hot freaks.

Availability: This is probably the first and only time I'll ever say this: This sauce is available everywhere. Grocery stores. Gourmets. Gas Stations. Restaurants (I've even seen it in some dumpy Chinese joints). This sauce is literally everywhere. The hot sauce world's answer to Coca-Cola is cheap and easy. They even developed their own little hierarchy of various flavors and online-exclusive "special reserves." Because Tabasco is older than any person on Earth and has been successful for longer than most political regimes are in place, their name will always lend itself well to the masses. According to their website, "Tabasco" is a word of "Mexican Indian origin believed to mean 'place where the soil is humid' or 'place of the coral or oyster shell.'" For many, "Tabasco" means "hot sauce."

Good for: Tabasco originated something I think is a brilliant concept: it says that it's good on everything and actually lists all the foods it's good for. Pizza, salads, eggs, subs, steak, chili...the list goes on and on. You can even download recipes using the sauce onto your ipod. Topical! As a card-carrying spice beast, I have to say that this sauce is remarkably good for everything because of its generalist nature; not too hot, not too tangy, not too salty, not too sweet. I prefer to diversify, adding different hot sauces to different foods, but I would never turn down the salty zing of Tabasco on my eggs. This sauce is made for regular Americans by not-so-regular Americans working and living on Avery Island who'd probably like you to believe they're down-home folks just like yourself. They are actually factory workers and CEOs.

Review:
Heat: *3/4
Flavor: **3/4
My Review: 5.5

As a poet, I can compare Tabasco hot sauce to Walt Whitman. I hated him growing up! I hated him as a poet obsessed with the avant-garde! But as I matured as a man, I began to understand the significance of Whitman's place in poetry. His "collective consciousness" and lesson-like stream of realizations was instrumental in the development of the poet's creative, off-the-cuff comprehension and analytical approach to writing and the world. Tabasco's collective consciousness appeals to the little part of EVERYONE that loves spice, but some of our little parts are actually pretty big.

Merry Christmas from Good Hurts!

Love, the Good Hurts editorial team: Russell (content writer, editor, spice-eater, sauce-aficionado) and Becky (video editor, stock footage master)!

Nando's Chickenland Hot Peri-Peri Sauce (and some others): Savor the flavor that outweighs the sauce

I'm a big Twin Peaks fan. I was hooked from the very intro to the first episode, when Pete Martell, a fisherman, finds the washed up body of well known Twin Peaks high school student, prom queen, and mystery-woman extraordinaire Laura Palmer washed up on the beach wrapped in plastic in the small (fictional) Washington town the show is named for.

What's the significance? That lifeless body leads into a world of mystery, murder, motives, and the metaphysical like you wouldn't believe.
What's the point of this? Nando's Chickenland sauces remind me of Twin Peaks, in a way. A huge box of sauce arrived at the top-secret Good Hurts hot sauce cavern miles beneath the Earth's crust. Inside was Nando's Hot Peri-Peri Sauce (regular and Garlic flavor) and a slew of cooking sauces. Is Nando's Chickenland Hot Peri-Peri Sauce culinary murder? No, but it's the weakest sauce in a box of delicious flavors. Take or leave the hot sauce; Nando's has some die-hard followers, but their cooking sauces might just be worth the hype.

Let's look at the facts: Nando's is a huge mega-company with over 700 locations worldwide. Look at some of these locations. Unless you have the internet, you probably won't find too many restaurants selling their hot sauces in Cyprus or Botswana. However, they only have 2 restaurants here in the land of the free. They have a die-hard fan base in the UK; after reading over some reviews on Amazon, I wasn't surprised. The hot sauce is very salty, but their cooking sauces are sweet and robust, flavorful and the perfect accentuation to various foods. I'll talk about some of them along with the review of the first hot sauce!

Good Hurts: This sauce is not very hot, plain and simple. It has a very slight tangy spice to it. Like many low-heat hot sauces, it kind of rolls around in your throat. There are some little chunks of peri-peri peppers, African birds eyes peppers valued for their spice and delicious flavor. I think that heat is a bit lost in the thickness of the sauce; the other sauces I got, cooking sauces, aren't hot at all. These are sauces meant for savoring flavor and cooking with.

Flavor: I think, again, the flavor of this hot sauce is a little too salty. I think it tastes a little chalky, but not inedible. It reminds me of some Trappey's sauces. Before I get into that, however, let me introduce this new friend:

This Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil marinade tastes like a rich, slightly spicy pizza sauce. It's the best thing in the world for pasta and salads. Astoundingly, this sauce made of African ingredients is ideal for Italian food. Now, please direct your attention to this brand new pal:

This is the Roasted Reds Cooking Sauce, which is its own unique meal for the whole family (or just me). Cut up some veggies, cook some rice, and enjoy the heat and flavor of this roasted red pepper amalgam. It's a delicious mix of naturally smooth red peppers and a mild heat. This sauce could take the place of a curry or an Indian/Chinese food sauce; it's the kind of thing that, with the right meats and veggies, could really make a meal. I mean, it's called Chickenland...add some chicken!
Am I trying to swerve away from the hot sauce? Not really. I just think it's really important to say that while I don't like the hot sauce enough to gush about it, I think their cooking sauces are really, really amazing and must-buys for any do-it-yourself chef!


Availability: Warning: DO NOT view this website if you can't handle loads of animation or you're really, really high on drugs. Nando's makes a hot sauce that might not be above the cusp, but their cooking sauces are really, really incredible. If you're an international Good Hurts reader, look up your nearest Nando's locale. If you're in NY or Washington DC, you can probably find a restaurant around somewhere. For the rest of us, the website will have to do as the global takeover silently envelops our homes like the blankets of snow effortlessly tumbling down on this Iowa City hot sauce reviewer's home.

Good for: I think this hot sauce has the Brits excited because it's salty; they seem to like salty stuff over there. I don't think it's flavorful or hot enough to really go far here. The Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Marinade would go great on Chicken, salad, or pasta. I might even put some on steak or fish. The Roasted Reds cooking sauce is ideal if you're a big fan of Earthy, down-home bell pepper flavor stir frys filled with chicken and veggies.

Review(s)
Nando's Chickenland Hot Peri-Peri Sauce:
Heat: *
Flavor: *
My Review: 4.0


I'm not reviewing the cooking sauces as hot sauce, BUT:
Sun-Dried Tomato and Basil Marinade:
My Review: 8.1


Roasted Reds Cooking Sauce:
My Review: 8.9

The hot sauce has some die-hard fans, but this reviewers says that the cooking sauces are really what's special.

Peppermaster Pepper Fire: Third sauce not necessarily the charm

The Peppermaster's third sauce in the trifecta of delicious gourmet sauces I'll be reviewing is the weakest of the three, but still a damn good sauce, first of all.  Don't be fooled by the "fusion" label; the one I have is called Pepper Fire. Simple name, but surprisingly the least simple sauce of the three.

Let's look at the facts: There IS a hot sauce universe, and, of course, it's filled with nebulous galaxies. One galaxy is the realm of the Peppermaster, filled with exotic planets and asteroids of goat pepper goodness. If the master himself is at the center, I think of Babysauce as the closest planet in orbit, sweet and warm. I'd call the far-east inspired Curry Fire far out in orbit, filled with a sharper spice and unique flavor. In the middle is Pepper Fire. It's not quite sweet, not quiet savory...it's more garlicy. Not very spicy, but more garlic-spiced. It seems like garlic has overwhelmed some of the ingredients, but what you get is still yummy and definitely worth eating.

Good Hurts: It has a more unique type of spice than its bigger and littler brothers. The Curry Spice hits you right away and lingers; the Babysauce trickles in and stays with you. This sauce builds up over a few bites, stings, and fades quickly. It reminds me of the kind of spice garlic gives you if you eat a clove (or 10, like I like to). A lot the ingredients are exciting, but they get a bit in the way of the fresh heat of a goat pepper.

Flavor: Exciting is the right word, and I already said that. But just look at the bottle: pineapple. Fresh lime juice. Molasses! That should be really exciting right there, but it's all just a little lost in the galactic churn of the garlic. The slow drawl of the molasses, combined with the lime juice, sort of tastes like a more savory cola flavor. This isn't a bad thing...just less sweet and robust and more salty and garlicy. 

Availability: Same as the last two. Here's the site. You know what to do. I'll leave you to it.

Good for: I think, like the Key West Lime hot sauce I good hurt-ed earlier, this would make a solid marinade for beef or chicken. The little tiny bit of sweet, garlic, and sort of salty cola notes would go really well with the smoke of a summer grill and your favorite meat. I think it's a little to heavy for just chips, and might overpower a lot of salsas. A little garlic, after all, goes a long way.

My Review:
Heat: *3/4
Flavor: ***
My Review: 7.0/10

Not the best of the three sauces, but definitely worth eating, buying, and snuggling up with during any season, on any planet.

SNOWED IN

JPGfun.com

Peppermaster Mango Fire: Babysauce

Another near-instant classic by Quebec's Peppermaster Greg Brooks, but in a starkly different way. Does this sweet (sweet, sweet, sweet) sauce measure up to its Indian counterpart, Curry Fire?


Let's look at the facts: You already know everything you need to know about Peppermaster foods and their amazing ability to create some of the best, most flavorful sauces out there. Their website paints an interesting picture:
Finally, the all-natural table topper you've been waiting for: Mango Table Topper is the perfect condiment for the kitchen or restaurant table: Stable enough to not require refrigeration. You'll never go back to that other brand. Designed by the Peppermaster to deliver crisp heat and refined fresh flavours that enhance many global dishes. This is real pepper!
 Table Topper? Never go back to that hot sauce? The throws of spice addiction are thick as lasso ropes...I doubt any pepperhead would ditch their regular sauce for what I have christened "Babysauce." But it IS an interesting take on a fruit hot sauce, and it's remarkably good!

This is a cute baby. Say hello. In the world of hot sauce, it's Peppermaster Mango Fire. Why? Let's look at the facts: Babies are cute. Babies are sweet and silly. Babies are innocent. Babies are little bundles of joy that are blissfully, wonderfully unaware of the cold, harsh, vicious world around them that they'll grow into. Why, it's just like Mango Fire! Outrageously sweet, a tiny bit spicy (as if still learning), and unaware of the painful world of hot sauce it has, through no fault of its own, entered.

I also think "Babysauce" sounds better than "baby sauce."

Good hurts: Babysauce is not the wimpiest sauce out there; in fact, it's hotter than Cholula and pretty much any Tabasco-style sauce commercially available. It's burn is a low murmer; it's like a baby version of a serious hot sauce. It will give you a lil' tongue tingle, but the teeny-tiny heat is probably pretty serious for novice spice eaters. Again, Peppermaster is rockin' the goat peppers, but not to the extent of the Curry or Pepper Fire sauces. 

Flavor: I'm a big fan of the American version of "The Office." There's an episode where Michael (Steve Carrell's doddering, incompetent boss role) waits in line to get a hot pretzel and ends up getting the works: 18 different sugary toppings, from crushed peppermint to caramel drizzle to sprinkles to powdered sugar. Babysauce works on a similar principle: cane sugar, mango, pineapple, citric acid and lime juice. Also, sea salt, habanero peppers, and onions stand like wallflowers around the sugary dance floor. Amazingly, this sauce has 1 gram of sugar per serving! It's a Christmas miracle for sure. Babysauce tastes just like the yellow/orange sweet n' sour sauce at many Chinese restaurants, but it has a well-rounded halo of spice that follows each bite. It's also really, really syrupy, so be careful when pouring. One unifying factor I can think of that keeps everything on Earth connected is sugar. Animals love it. People love it. Plants...well, they make it, so they probably love it too. Everything loves sugar, including me. So by default, I love this sauce. I found half the bottle gone almost immediately, and my face and hands dyed a mysterious orange color.


Availability: What I said about Curry Fire applies here...go ahead and order it from their site.

Good for: Like the Cheech Mango, this sugary delight is good for fruit salsas, fish, rice, and livening up Chinese food or sweet meats. Mango is a remarkable fruit, sweet and juicy, and the slight hint of sea salt makes it more utilitarian. I really recommend taking whatever prior knowledge you have culinary use of mangoes and expanding it to this hot sauce.

Review:
Heat: **
Flavor: ****1/2
My Review: 8.6/10

Babysauce isn't for everyone. In fact, this review may be controversial for some hot freaks. But I stand by the fact that sweet n' savory goes a long way, so grab your babydaddy and down a bottle of Babysauce right now.

Peppermaster Curry Fire: One of the best from unsuspecting Quebec.

When I think hot sauce, a few places come to mind: the spice-crazy Caribbean  islands; the "spice belt" of Southwestern American states filled with hardcore hotheads; the downright satanic levels of spice rockin' India. Yet in a little place called Quebec, north of the USA and just south of the brutal Canadian tundra, there is some of the best, must-eat hot sauce any hot freak must know about. For the next three days, I'll be examining three humble gourmet sauces from Peppermaster foods.

Let's look at the facts: Memorize this face:

 THIS is the intimidating smile of a true pepper master! This is the hat of a flavor expert! This is a hot sauce maker who speaks at least two languages!
Peppermaster foods, the brainchild of Greg Brooks, has been cranking out goatpepper hot sauces since 2003. Besides being the executive chef of Apple Tree Landing Restaurant, Greg is a fire expert who grew up in the jungles the Bahamas and acquired a taste for searing spice and top-notch flavor. Goat peppers, habanero cultivars, are the central point of Curry Fire sauce. What a sauce it is! Full of spice and flavor...AND the reverse side of the bottle is in French (or should that be the reverse side is in English?)! Unique and delicious is a great combination.
  
Good Hurts: The tropical goat pepper lets loose a throat tickling, mouth busting burn. It's almost the perfect level of heat: hot enough for even jaded chili-brains, but tasty enough to completely change (most likely for the better) a meal. This sauce, though Canadian, is rife with the essence of India: curry spices mesh perfectly with the hot peppers into a thick, rich sauce. It won't kill you; it's slightly less hot than the habanero/ghost pepper organic sauce division, but it certainly will knock you around as spice builds bite after bite. The best part about it is the lingering, sharp spice that other hot sauces can't keep alive for long enough.

Flavor: It's a welcome (and needed) addition to the acidic and vinegar-y world of hot sauce. Rich, sweet-hot Indian spices, sugar, onion, ginger, thyme, guar gum (for thickness), and fresh hot peppers come together masterfully. Imagine the aromatic sweetness of creamy, fresh yellow curry, filled with savory, juicy veggies. Somehow, Brooks has crammed that flavor into a hot sauce using fresh, fair-trade ingredients. It's so unique and so simple: the perfect one-two punch.

Availability: This sauce is, according to the website, available commercially in the US and Canada. You can order it from their home page, obviously, as well. Where it's located is something I just can't answer; haven't seen it anywhere. They use the same (fun looking) label for their sauces, so make sure you read and make sure you're getting the right sauce! However, it needs to be mentioned that they will make special hot sauces for you! Design the label and name, and all they do (!) is make it for you! It's a good idea for promotional gifts and fun personalized stuff.

Good for: This amazing sauce is a must have for Indian food, rice, naan, and can add an Eastern kick to pretty much anything delicious: chili, salads...yes, I have put some on hot dogs. Think Indian chili dogs: kidney beans, onions, spicy mustard, and thick helpings of this sauce! The sky is the limit for such a unique-yet-versatile mastery of yellow curry.


Review:
Heat: ***3/4
Flavor: *****
My Review: 9.8/10

It's the holidays. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Diwali, or just want to tip your straw hat to the Peppermaster, order this sauce. I'm not gettin' paid from them...I'm just a hot freak who loves a great hot sauce. Don't delay: order it now!

Good Hurts heats up MySpace!

Yes, nearly a decade after MySpace became really popular, Good Hurts has caught up!
Check out the XXXXXtra hot MySpace page:
http://www.myspace.com/511079361

Of course, add us as your super pals, and invite us over for the Holidays. We'll bring the sauce. You print out the fancy invitations.

Green Bandit Basil Serrano: Secret Sauce for Surprising Snacks

Good Hurts is the name of the site, but real good hurts include anything that hurts good. As an English teacher, my natural instinct not to explore the definition using the same terms reversed, but it's just plain true. Good Hurts, however, dedicates itself to the taste-oriented world of "good." No, you won't see any good hurts on this site like getting pleasure out of a vicious spanking, but you WILL see a wider variety of hot, spicy, and painful treats beyond the average hot sauces we've come to know and accept.
Green Bandit's Basil Serrano hot sauce is, well, a sauce that's hot. But is it a hot sauce as we've come to define hot sauces? This bizarre sauce lurks in secret shadows behind your taste buds like the no-good varmint on the label. But is it worth challenging to a duel?


Let's look at the facts: Made in sunny Fairfield, NJ, Green Bandit Basil Serrano is proudly "stolen from a secret family recipe." The bottle even includes a fun story about how the hot sauce artisan's dad earned the nickname "Raging Abe" because he stole his hot sauce recipe. Then he asks, "can I come home now, dad? Be creative and try it on everything!" Choice words...less so about furious father everywhere and more so about trying this sauce on everything. How right he is!

Good hurts: For formatting sakes, I'll put this first and THEN flavor. But flavor really comes before everything here. Yes, it's hot. It doesn't have the kind of lingering kick or burn that most hot sauces have, though, even though it uses habanero peppers; the Serrano pepper is a lot more full-bodied and juicy than a habanero, and gives you more of a fresh sting than a long tongue scorching burn. This sauce is all about the kick it has. Not a big one, but more than you'd find in a typical dressing or vinaigrette, which this sauce resembles.

Flavor: This sauce is two things: weird as the wild west and delicious.
It's weird because it's a green sauce, which means it's filled with all kinds of herbs and spices and is usually pretty good for vegetables. However, apple cider vinegar, serrano peppers, lemon juice, olive oil, and the all-important basil are a lot of acidic flavors you won't find in most hot sauces. The ginger hints are subtly significant, and you may find yourself licking your fingers after consuming. This thin, basil-chunked sauce feels light and tangy, which leads to point number two: it's interesting blend of zesty, garden fresh flavor makes it able to go places other hot sauces can't. Unless you're a total hot freakomatic, you aren't going to put Dave's on salads or pesto pasta. Yet Green Bandit can sneak into unsuspecting, surprising foods. This "hot sauce" is a lot more like a spicy salad dressing or vinaigrette. It might belong more in your condiment section of the fridge or spice rack than hot sauce collection!


Availability: Like I've found with most hot sauces on Good Hurts, it's easy to find on the internet and available in hot sauce stores. However, I say to you: demand this sauce! Grocery stores would be remiss for not acknowledging a hot sauce with the power to blast a salad and fresh veggies (or even more acidic fruits!)

Good for: This is the first sauce I've eaten that I think is designed with salads in mind. Whether it's simple greens, tuna, chicken (or chicken salad), or tortilla, I think this tart sauce is meant to accompany savory greens and lighty sweet fruits. It won't leave you rolling on the floor burning, but will add an emphatic kick to your healthier meals.

Review:
Heat: **
Flavor: ****
My Review: 7/8/10

This unique sauce isn't quite versatile enough to pour on chips or burritos...and it's a bit on the watery side. It is, however, unconventional, bold, and brave. And it's a very good (light) hurt.