Butterfly Bakery of Vermont – Lemon-Serrano Tomato Hot Sauce
This is another of the recent new flavors from Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, and features a bounty of summer flavors all packed into one bottle.
This sauce is a great example of how a sauce doesn’t need to pack huge heat to still have huge flavor. While it does feature one of my absolute favorite chile peppers, the serrano, the overall heat level of this one is quite mild, coming in at about the same level of heat you’d expect from basic Lousiana style sauces like Frank’s Red Hot, Crystal, or Texas Pete (or the eponymous Louisiana).
What this sauce lacks in heat however, it more than makes up for in flavor. The tomato is one of the dominant flavors, but this evokes later summer tomatoes picked right off of the vine, and not anything Italian tomato-sauce-esque. The other strong initial flavor is the lemon juice, used here in stead of vinegar, which when combined with that acidic tomato brings a very tangy taste to the forefront of this sauce.
The other players in the bottle aren’t overshadowed however. There is that vegetal chile flavor of the serrano, the pungent garlicky notes of the garlic scapes, the slight bite of the smoked onion, and the sweetness of the carmens, which are a type of sweet pepper.
The overall result is of perfect harmony with a lot of complexity if you roll it around on your tongue and let the flavors develop. It’s like a summer garden blended up and put into a bottle, and it’s delicious.
I found this sauce a perfect pairing with seafood. It was great with some shrimp that I grilled, as well as with a grouper sandwich I picked up from a local seafood shack. It’s also a perfect pairing with chicken, and when mixed with a splash of clamato and a beer it makes an amazing michelada.
If you enjoy fresh summer flavors and don’t need your sauces to be hot to find them enjoyable, or if you’d love to find out how full of flavor a mild sauce can be, you should absolutely pick a bottle of this up.
Ingredients: Lester Farm tomatoes, Honey Field Farm red serranos, Otter Point Farm carmens, lemon juice, maple wood smoked onions, Pete’s Greens garlic scapes, salt, sunflower oil
Heat Level: 1/10. This one is mild in heat, just a little hint of warmth, and can easily be enjoyed by anyone from young children on up.
