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The Sambel Cap Jempol Company out of Jakarta, Indonesia, makes one of my favorite sauces at the moment. I picked up a bottle of their Sambel Asli at a local Asian grocer on a whim. Why? It was a big bottle (why must all hot sauces be sold in such teeny little bottles?); it didn’t cost very much; the texture and color looked appealing; the ingredients list was short; and I was intrigued by the idea of trying something from Indonesia. That first bottle disappeared before I could write a review so this actually a review of the second.

The sauce has good pepper flavor, not too much salt, and is thick with peppers (and not thickeners). It’s a shaking sauce, and not a pouring sauce, due to the thickness. Unlike some sauces you can use it both both Asian, Mexican, or Indian cuisine without getting clashing flavors. My biggest gripe with the sauce is the absolutely crummy cap on the bottle. The cap doesn’t seal tightly enough to keep liquid from leaking out, so if the bottle tips in the fridge you will have a mess to clean up. In addition, the sauce always gets stuck in the lid so you quickly end up with a messy bottle even if you keep it upright.

Should you buy this sauce? If you enjoy hot sauces, I would definitely recommend adding it to your arsenal. The heat isn’t for the faint of heart, but the flavor is good, the bottle size is right, and you can’t beat the price. Just watch out for the godawful cap.

Recently I came across Busha Browne’s Pukka Hot Pepper Sauce while spending some time in the Twin Cities. It looked interesting and came with warnings about using too much, so I bought one bottle. The bottle claims that the sauce is made from scotch bonnet peppers. The only evidence I have to support that claim is that those are the only peppers listed on the ingredients list. The sauce itself isn’t very hot, despite what some reviews online would like you to believe. I used just a bit initially, but quickly found myself shaking it all over my plate to the heat up to where I expected it to be. The flavor of the pepper is subdued, especially in comparison to Desert Pepper XXX. The biggest turn-off to the sauce is the extremely thick nature of it. Modified food starch claims a prominent place in the ingredients list and they certainly didn’t scrimp on it. You definitely don’t pour this out of the bottle; you shake the bottle to get the viscous sauce to move from one end of the bottle to the other.

Should you buy this? No. The flavor of the pepper is so subdued that you mostly get heat. The extremely thick nature of the sauce makes you wonder if they haven’t cut costs by reducing the peppers in the recipe and replacing their bulk with food starch. There are definitely better options out there.

There may be a million pretenders out there who label their repackaged ketchups as “hot” or “fiery”, but once in a while you stumble across the real deal. Uncle Paul’s Habanero Hot Barbeque Sauce is a legitimate stand-up-and-holler-mercy barbeque sauce.Sarah and I first tried this sauce at the Wisconsin State Fair in 2007. We happened across the stand, tried a few of their sauces by dipping pretzels in them, and bought one bottle. After that the bottle went into the basement because we already had a bottle of Memphis-style BBQ sauce in the fridge.

Recently, we finished up the Memphis-style sauce, so when we had barbeques a couple of days ago we opened Uncle Paul’s. Neither of us could remember much about it, so we weren’t expecting much. Wow, were we surprised.

The sauce is thick, brown, and has a slightly sweet scent. When it first hits your tongue it tastes sweet and a bit fruity. Then, as you chew and swallow, the habanero pepper leaps out of the sauce like Greeks out of the fabled Trojan horse and starts a flaming assault on your taste buds.

Sarah probably would have expressed her appreciation for the sauce if she hadn’t been so busy trying to put out the inferno blazing away on her tongue. The more I ate, the more I started sweating and my tongue started burning, both signs of an extremely potent sauce.

In contrast to just about every other barbeque sauce on the market, you would recognize every single ingredient on the label of Uncle Paul’s sauce. There are no high fructose corn syrups, food starches, or caramel colors. What makes it sweet? Brown sugar and pure maple syrup. What makes it spicy? Habanero pepper powder. What gives it that fruity flavor? Apricots and orange juice. Natural ingredients, all around.

In short, Uncle Paul’s Habanero Hot Homestyle Barbeque Sauce is the real deal. It’s probably far too hot for most people to enjoy, but if you’re a fire eater, then this is the stuff you seek.

Yes, it’s hot. See-through-time-and-space hot. Unless you’re a chili-head you have no business messing around with this sauce. If you find Tabasco sauce hot, you should expend copious amounts of effort to avoid Dave’s Insanity Sauce.

While this sauce is hot, it lacks much of the bright, fruity flavor common to Desert Pepper XXX. This sauce tastes more like the peppers were first roasted before being sauced. Or, perhaps the sauce has some liquid smoke or similar ingredient in it.

While I enjoy the heat of Dave’s Insanity Sauce, I like the flavor of Desert Pepper XXX better for most situations.

Sarah and I stopped in to one of the local Hispanic groceries the other day. While browsing the aisles, I saw this sauce from El Yucateco on the shelves.
The label on the bottle reads, “Original Mayan Recipe.” The Mayans, depending on who you ask, had a variety of interesting uses for habanero peppers.

Some claim that they ate plates of habanero peppers, with just salt. I will buy that they ate the peppers, but the idea of using salt as a condiment seems to be too much of a modern idea for that to be believable.

Still others claim that the Mayans threw hot peppers at their enemies in battle. That is completely outside the realm of reason. It would be far more effective to hurl bricks and stones than produce. After all, simply making contact with a habanero pepper’s unbroken skin isn’t likely to make your skin burn.

Others claim that the Mayans burned peppers in large fires and that the smoke confused and disabled their enemies. That I completely believe. If you’ve ever had hot pepper smoke in your eyes, nose, and throat, you have no choice but to believe that’s true.

If the Mayans truly did contact this sauce, they certainly knew what they were doing. Even for a hot pepper sauce veteran like myself, Kutbil-ik XXXtra is hot. Unlike many hot sauce frauds that claim to be extraordinarily hot, and quite frankly, aren’t, Kutbil-ik XXXtra Hot Sauce is the real deal.

Pepper Heads: This is the good stuff. Hot, hot, hot.

Pepper Novices: Are you crazy?!? Your mouth should be burning just reading this page.

In the spirit of Truth in Advertising, Panola Extra Hot Hot Sauce should really be labeled “Panola Extra Lame Lame Sauce.”

Once again, Tabasco delivers more heat than a sauce onimously named “extra hot.” It’s almost as though more sauce makers are pumping up the names of their sauces, without pumping of the heat, in an attempt to increase sales. They are making Disney-style hot sauces: the appearance of danger without any real danger within ten miles.

Melinda’s Original Habanero Extra Hot Pepper Sauce has earned itself a permanent place on my “Top Ten Hot Pepper Sauce Frauds” list.

The only heat this sauce generated was the steam that came out of my ears when I realized what a colossal fraud this sauce is. I picked up this bottle at the store on Tuesday night. I’m writing this shortly after lunch on Thursday and the bottle is already half gone. No true habanero sauce should go so quickly. Tabasco sauce is hotter than this garbage.

Costa Rica should be ashamed to turn out such lame hot pepper sauce. Hell, any Midwestern state (where foods generally run the gamut between bland and tasteless) would be ashamed to turn out such a terrible product.

My father bought this sauce while visiting the 2004 Sturgis Motorcycle Rally. This was the same rally at which he purchased a bottle of South Dakota Habanero sauce. Unlike that sauce, to which I gave reasonably unfavorable reviews, this sauce is four-alarm hot.The first clue that this sauce is hot is the relatively low sodium content on the nutrition labeling. As a general rule, the more salt a sauce contains, the less heat it contains. Manufacturers put more salt in the sauce to compensate for the lack of heat and flavor in their milder sauces. So, a mere 48mg of sodium per teaspoon is a good sign.

The second clue that the sauce inside the bottle is hot is the thick viscous nature of the sauce. Thin, watery sauces are generally mild for some reason (maybe it is difficult to evenly distribute the seasoning in a thin sauce?). You’ll recognize a thin sauce right after opening the top because the bottle will have a shaker top.

Thick sauces, like this sauce, generally pour right out of the bottle without being hindered by a shaker top.

If you can find this sauce still (and it might be difficult, given its name), and if you like hot sauce, pick up a bottle. Whoo! It is hot. I got a bit frisky while dispensing it over some pasta (must have had a South Dakota Habanero flashback), and I almost made the pasta inedible.

If you are not a hot pepper junky, you’ll most likely think this sauce is way, way too hot.

On a dish of red beans and rice, it completely disappeared. I probably added over 1/8 of the bottle, and the dish never got terribly spicy.

However, adding the sauce to a tub of salsa (that was made none too hot originally), perked up the salsa quite a bit.

So, this appears to work best in situations where it is not drowned out by the food on which it is sprinkled.

UPDATED 29 Oct 04Lame, lame, lame. Today, I used upwards of a two tablespoons(!) on a pasta dish without any heat dampening ingredients (i.e., dairy products). This sauce did not hold its heat at all once it was opened. Nearly one month after first opening the bottle, I’m trying to finish it off and the fact that the sauce has almost no heat left is certainly helping the cause.

Two tablespoons(!) of a good, roaring hot habanero salsa should nearly render the food on which it is dispensed inedible. Instead, the food (which was rather bland to start) simply became spicy enough to bother eating.

Essential for making buffalo wings (if you make buffalo wings with some sort of dry spice rub, we’re not interested in hearing from you, or eating your "food". Heretics.). More of a vinegar and salt flavor than a heat.

Chili-heads: You already know this isn’t the answer for you.
Novices: Enjoy this on all sorts of foods.

The hot version is not even in the same zipcode as the heat produced by those salsas that use habanero peppers.

Chili-heads: You already know to look elsewhere.
Novices: The "hot" version of this sauce may make you want to exercise some modicum of caution.

This is supposed to the "hot" Frontera salsa. Uh, huh. Hot compared to tap water, perhaps.

Chili-heads: Stick to the Desert Pepper XXX.
Novices: You’ll enjoy the flavor and lack of overwhelming heat here.

Truth-in-advertising laws must have been suspended the day this product reached market. The only thing hot about it is…nothing. Green Mountain Gringos must be truly afraid of the heat if this is their interpretation of hot.

Chili-heads: Don’t even bother. You’d do better to just eat flavorful, fresh tomato sauce.
Novices: Knock yourselves out with this one. You shouldn’t fear this one at all.

Olive flavored (if you like olives, that is a good thing. I don’t like olives, so it’s an obvious turn-off), with some small amount of heat.

Chili-heads: Not worth mentioning for heat. You might like the flavor.
Novices: Enjoy. This is right up your alley.

Lame. Hell in Jamaica must be a comfortable, temperate place.

Chili-heads: Use with abandon.
Novices: Exercise restraint until you become comfortable with the heat.

Good stuff. Good flavor, good heat. Not for hot pepper novices.

Spicy, and hot. Has a different flavor than many other habanero sauces. Probably due to the fact that green habaneros, instead of red habaneros (and carrots) are used.

Hot pepper novices should use this sauce in moderation. Chili-heads will enjoy it, and should exercise some restraint until they judge how it is for themselves.

Lame. Really, really lame. I used 1/8 of the bottle on a taco salad and still thought that I would have done better to use Tabasco.

Those who don’t like hot and spicy foods, but want to give the impression of doing so, should use this sauce in the presence of those they are trying to impress. However, make sure to disallow the other party the use of the bottle as they will surely discover how lame this sauce really is once they try it.

Gives Belize a bad name.

Actually does contain habanero peppers and is actually quite hot and spicy. Will only be enjoyed by chili-heads. All others would be advised to steer clear or use in extreme moderation.

The original and still among the best. Certainly not the hottest one out there, but it gets points for being hot, flavorful, and very widely available.

Safe for use by all palates, though those who appreciate less spicy food should use it cautiously. Chili-heads: use it with abandon.