Queen Creek Olive Mill Ghost Town Ghost Pepper & Prickly Pear Hot Sauce

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Queen Creek Olive Mill Ghost Town Ghost Pepper & Prickly Pear Hot Sauce

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Whew! What a mouthful! And we're happy to have a mouthful of:

Queen Creek Olive Mill Ghost Town Ghost Pepper & Prickly Pear Hot Sauce

Many, MANY thanks to our friend Aardvark who was finally able to send me a hot sauce that didn't arrive in a sack of broken glass shards and lost dreams.

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Ingredients: Agave nectar, prickly pear puree, habanero chiles, salt, distilled vinegar, ghost chili powder.

Ghost Town (what I'll call it from now on) comes in an adorable little 100ml bottle with a high-quality screwcap. 100ml is pretty small for the price, but since I didn't pay for it, I'll let it go. Upon removing it from the package, I shook it, thinking it had settled, but in fact it had not. In the bottle, it presents as a tantalizingly burnt-orange color, and what I can only describe as a syrupy appearance and viscosity, likely due to the first two ingredients, the agave nectar and prickly pear puree. Once I realized that's how it was supposed to look, I couldn't wait to dive in!

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But I had to! If there is one noticeable flaw in this product, is it the TINY little rubber dropper on top, which insists that you not receive any of your product upon a reasonable shake, and on a violent one, only a drop or two. I realize this is their way of saying "it's so hot, just get one drop at a time!" but come on. We can handle ourselves with our own condiments. However, after shaking it vigorously, and the bottle too, I was able to get a full teaspoon full and give it a shot.

The first two seconds take you on a trip from a blast of recognizable habanero fruitiness, straight and immediately into the sweetness of the agave and prickly pear combo. It's not overwhelmingly hot at first, and the combined sweetness of the agave and cactus balance the chiles out perfectly. It is genuinely one of the most enjoyable, fully realized hot sauce flavors I've ever experienced. You must enjoy the sweetness to fully appreciate it, but if you do, you can do no better.

But then we rememeber the last ingredient on the list, and the meaning behind the sauce's name. The ghost chili powder serves one purpose here, and does it admirably. As you think the reasonable wave of heat from the first taste is subsiding, the ghosties take over, and while they do not enhance the flavor, they do not detract from it, but instead lend a slow, increasing burn to the sauce that has remarkable power, both in burn and length.

So here we have a sauce with a beautiful flavor, combining habs and sweetness in a way that would be perfect on eggs or in any southwestern or Caribbean dish, but then we're left to enjoy it long after our first bite, as the ghost chile powder tears its way so enjoyably through our pain receptors.

This sauce is world class, and if it were cheaper (or Aardvark would keep sending it to me), I would never want to be without it.

I'd just take the dropper out of it first.
I don't have to say anything. I'm a doctor, too.

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AArdvark
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Re: Queen Creek Olive Mill Ghost Town Ghost Pepper & Prickly Pear Hot Sauce

Post by AArdvark »

Thank you for trying it.

You know, when I first saw the skull on the label I thought it was some kind of poison. Glad it's good stuff. Not a fan of prickly pear flavor.

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