Hank Sauce – Hank’s Heat

This is going to be a rather short review as I’ve previously written up Hank Sauce’s Camouflage here, and the two sauces are very similar.

As a quick rundown, this is a cayenne based sauce featuring aged peppers, vinegar, and some unexpected ingredients such as wine, butter, and in this particular sauce, basil (as opposed to the cilantro found in Camouflage) plus the addition of habanero peppers.

Hank Sauce also rates the heat of this one as one notch above Camouflage, which is likely the work of the habaneros. They have another basil sauce called Herb Infused that doesn’t use the habanero peppers. It’s clear that the base line Hank Sauce sauces are just using variations on a theme, but I have no personal issue with that as they’re all delicious and it allows each person to find the flavor combination that best suits their palate.

Tangy and complex for a cayenne based sauce and with a very approachable heat level, this sauce begs to be used on wings, and I was more than happy to oblige. With the butter already included you may not even need to add more to your wing sauce, but if you’d like to cut the heat a little and add extra richness it does work beautifully.

There’s a piquancy in this sauce, and perhaps also due to the inclusion of the basil, that makes it work beautifully with tomato based and Italian foods. This is a great pizza hot sauce, and adding a glug to some tomato sauce can help it come alive.

Coming in 8.5 fluid oz bottles you also get quite a lot of sauce for your money, so this is an easy recommendation if you’re looking for a more flavorful and complex alternative to Frank’s or Crystal. Whether you choose this or Camouflage (or Herb Infused) comes down to personal preference, but they’re inexpensive so I’d recommend getting all three and taste testing yourself.

Ingredients: Hank Base (aged peppers, distilled vinegar, salt, xanthan gum), wine, garlic, habanero peppers, basil

Heat Level: 3/10. Slightly hotter than the Camouflage sauce, this is still easily accessible for anyone with any tolerance level.