The General’s Hot Sauce

Even by the standard of veteran-owned companies with a veteran-owned theme, the packaging here is super kitschy. Nevertheless I am going to recommend it because the product is high-quality.  




My sister sent me these, which is lucky because I probably would not have bought them for myself. However, I'm really impressed. The pepper sauce is 86% ripe peppers, the rest being small amounts of garlic, vinegar, and salt. Even though this is their hottest version, it is not super hot because they are using natural peppers -- from left to right, cayenne, a mixture of cayenne and habanero, and pure habanero. 

Many commercial sauces use only around twenty percent pepper matter, and make up the heat with refined capsaicin oil so the sauce is thinner and hotter but not as thick and delicious. Others use engineered peppers like Carolina Reapers that are not as flavorful as the natural peppers. This one is more expensive than a bottle of big-brand sauce from the store, but it's pretty great.
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2 comments:

  1. E Hines2:23 PM

    I've used Carolina Reapers before, and they are hot. Being engineered, I couldn't grow a new batch from the seeds I got from the initial crop (bought those seeds from the Carolina Reaper crowd), or I'm too brown-thumbed to grow them.

    Heat for heat's sake doesn't interest me in food, but these did do a good job (in very much moderation) of adding some heat-bite without overwhelming the other flavors and without overwhelming my liking for some heat.

    When I saw the title of this post, I thought immediately of General Tso's... but that dish, while good tasting, is far from spiced-up hot.

    Eric Hines

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  2. Texan9912:18 PM

    One of my Christmas gifts to my husband last year was a cookbook for fermented pepper sauces, about 100 of them. We've finally started trying them out with the summer's pepper crops, and they're just fantastic. The first one was sort of a sweet-and-sour sauce, but quite hot, and I can't wait to try it out on something fried. The next is kind of like a quick kimchi, but identified as Persian. I've been tasting it every few days. It should be ready for final processing soon. These can be made in a mason jar or in a Korean-style crock, which is easier.

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