Casa Firelli – Italian Hot Sauce

Firelli’s miracle elixir, that’s what did the trick sir, true sir true (I have have had Sweeney Todd stuck in my head for the past week or so).

This is an interesting sauce, and from the online discourse about it, one that’s (strangely, IMO) rather polarizing.

Hailing from Pama, Italy this sauce does feature some real-deal Italian ingredients, including Calabrian chiles, real-deal balsamic vinegar from Modena, and porcini mushrooms. The sauce doesn’t have any tomatoes but it does strangely have a tomatoey flavor, or perhaps that just my mind playing tricks on me with the red color and the Italian origins.

The taste of this sauce is slightly tangy, slightly sweet, savory, and with that unmistakable complexity of balsamic vinegar. It’s thick and smooth in texture, similar to a ketchup but a little bit less viscous. There is a minute amount of garlic and mushroom in the sauce, which to my taste buds just present as background flavors to add to the base instead of punching through. The heat level is very low, this adds some complexity of flavor, but very little to no heat.

The obvious pairing for a sauce like this is for Italian food, and that’s where I began, finding it a great match for tomatoey Italian dishes like Chicken Parmesan or Baked Ziti. I also decided to give it a try as a ketchup substitute on some french fries and found it also worked rather well there. Their website recommends it as a possible wing sauce, a role I haven’t tried yet, but that I’m not particularly enthused about the outcome of – I believe this sauce really works best when it’s paired with tomato-based dishes where the tang, tart, and salty nature of those recipes can offer a counterpoint to the sweeter nature of this sauce.

If you eat a lot of Italian food and would like to try spicing it up a bit, this sauce is worth it to try.

Ingredients: Roasted Red Peppers, Water, “Aceto Balsamico Di Modena IGP” 12%, Apple Vinegar, Calabrian Hot Peppers, Concentrated Lemon Juice, Sugar, Natural Flavorings, Spices, Dried Porcini Mushrooms, Xanthan Gum, Garlic

Heat Level: 1/10. This is an extremely mild sauce, no hotter than basic sauces like Frank’s or Crystal.