Hot Sauce Finds: Chile Lengua De Fuego Chico-Ghost Sauce
Bottom Line: The Chico-Ghost Sauce from Chile Lengua De Fuego is bold and intense, and it brings some heat.
The latest hot sauce that I tried from my Heat Hot Sauce Club subscription (more on that here) is the Chico-Ghost from Chile Lengua De Fuego, and it is another winner. That company is based out of Cantarranas, Honduras, and they are producing craft sauces with ten different pepper varieties from around the world. Here is the description of the Chico-Ghost Sauce from the website:
A bold, fermented hot sauce made with chocolate ghost peppers and Scotch Bonnet, balanced with smoky garlic, ginger, and raw cane sugar. Sweet, smoky, and spicy with a smooth, rich finish.
It has an intense, deep richness along with some smokiness that delivers a bold kick from the first taste. It has a hint of chocolate, but there are no cocoa beans in this sauce; the Chocolate Ghost Chile refers to the dark brown color of the peppers used. This is a very sweet sauce, almost too much so, but the intensity of the other flavors balances that out. I don’t really detect the smoked garlic amidst everything else going on, but that likely adds to the smokiness. Nor does the ginger stand out, but there is some funkiness to the sauce, and it certainly contributes to that.
With that bold taste, you expect some heat right away, but it takes a while to build up. I did not detect too much burn at first, but the more I ate, the hotter it got. I would put it a little above Medium on my scale, and it does have a kick. They rate it as a 4 on a scale of 10, but I would put it a little hotter than that.
They suggest using it with tacos (is there any sauce not suggested for tacos?), grilled meats, and roasted veggies, and I concur with those. This sauce also would work really well as a marinade for a chicken breast or maybe some shrimp or veggies that you then sauté in a pan. You could also put those on the grill, but the sauce already brings some good smokiness, so save this as a rainy-day BBQ substitute. This might also make a good addition to mole sauce to kick it up.
You can purchase this from Amazon, the Heat Hot Sauce Shop site, and directly from the Chile Lengua De Fuego site, and it goes for $14.99 per bottle. That is on the high side for a craft sauce, but you are paying extra for the quality. And if you are ordering from their site, they offer a 15% discount for up to four bottles. They have quite a number of other sauces to choose from as well, so I may be sampling those soon.
Nutrition Info:
Ingredients: Chocolate Ghost Pepper, Scotch Bonnet, Smoked garlic, Ginger, and Raw cane sugar
Serving Size: 2 tspn (10 g)
Calories: 11
Fat: 0g (0g Sat/0 Trans)
Protein: 0g
Carbs: 3g
Sodium: 120mg
