05 Mar Wild West Worcester- Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce
Review by Greg Wagenmakers
Product: Wild West Worcester- Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce
Location of Manufacture: Dargaville, New Zealand
Ingredients: Malt Vinegar, Brown Sugar, Wheat Flour, Onions, Spices, Treacle, Liquorice, (gluten containing) Cereal
Review: Anything that has been labelled with a chilli from the ‘Superhot Realm’ needs to be treated with respect. This Ghost Pepper Hot Worcester sauce is excellent. Worcester sauce of any kind is excellent. But this sauce is something else. Taken neat, the sweetness from the treacle and liquorice sings. Take too much and you’ll be singing too. There’s a fine line between having the perfect balance of heat and actually tasting the sauce AS WELL as the dish it accompanies and concentrating on just getting the food down because it’s punishing you for being too much of a hero.
This reviewer walked that fine line of balance and ‘wannabe’ hero. Respect was given to the Bhut Jolokias inside, as they should. As with any super hot chilli, the heat builds and stays for a while before subsiding. This sauce is no exception. The sweetness and almost caramel-’ish’ hints from the Worcester make it so incredibly enjoyable, reaching for another splash is just inevitable; only to go through the scenario of breathing through tight lips again.
This sauce accompanied another reviewed sauce whilst eating the meal- Crispy fried pork belly, lemon rice and fried kale salad. The Ghost Pepper Sauce and Pork were best friends. Honestly, there has never been a better companionship than the one that these two shared. On that meal alone, the neck of the bottle was gone. Tonight’s meal was a simple sausages and vegetables. Adhering to the advice on bottle, the Ghost Pepper Hot Sauce is supposed to be good with sausages, bacon and eggs. However, in all honesty, it’s so prodigious it could even go on ice-cream and pavlova.
The heat is probably about 8.5. It’s not going to rip your face off, have you reaching for the milk and tearing up but you need to respect it. I love it when I get a bit of capsaicin from between my teeth, only to be reminded that I had something good for dinner. This sauce will make a good dinner great. I give it 9.5. I can’t give it a 10 because that assumes that it can’t be topped and I have many more sauces to try, but this condiment, in my opinion will sit upon the middle podium for quite some time.
