Pepper Palace – Ghostly Garlic Fusion Hot Sauce

I don’t have positive feelings about Pepper Palace. The company began as a retailer of hot sauces and other spicy specialty foods and became quite successful in doing so. Their move that I take issue with is that eventually they decided they didn’t want to share their profits with craft hot sauce makers and opened their own kitchen, ripped off the recipes of the sauces made by other sauce makers they used to carry, and recreated them with cheaper and inferior ingredients. To add insult to injury their price points are ridiculous for the quality and type of the ingredients used in their sauces. I don’t personally have an issue with paying $15 or more for a bottle of hot sauce, but I want it to be something special and craft made with high quality ingredients in that case. With far better sauces at far better price points available direct from sauce makers online I don’t see any reason to support Pepper Palace given their past actions (though if you do enjoy shopping retail there’s absolutely nothing wrong with supporting small independent hot sauce shops that carry a variety of brands from different sauce makers).

While I will not be giving Pepper Palace any of my own money, I received this bottle as a gift as part of a Secret Santa program and I it would be rude not to open it up and give it a fair shot. I enjoy both ghost peppers and garlic so the promise of the (crudely rendered) label had me intrigued. Looking at the ingredients list tempered that enthusiasm as I discovered the sauce was a generic Louisiana style sauce base and did not contain any actual ghost peppers, just ghost pepper powder and that only as one of the last ingredients by weight in the bottle. On a positive note minced garlic was quite high on the ingredients list and pieces of garlic are evident in the sauce. The aroma is one of a cayenne based Louisiana style sauce with copious amounts of garlic. The consistency is medium-thin but chunky because of the amount of garlic used in the sauce.

The flavor of Ghostly Garlic Fusion is cayenne and garlic forward. There’s a bit of habanero flavor as well from the habanero mash used, though it lacks the fruitiness that fresh chopped habaneros would bring. The combination of distilled vinegar and lemon juice does give the sauce a good amount of tang, something I always enjoy in a sauce, and the lemon juice thankfully doesn’t overpower to the point of making it too sour. Tasting the sauce straight it’s evident that the cayenne hot sauce base is not of the highest quality – it has a slightly stale and overly processed flavor, but when combined with food that’s well masked so it doesn’t become a problem when using the sauce as intended instead of eating it straight by the spoonful. I didn’t detect any actual ghost pepper flavor in this sauce. The ghost pepper powder thankfully doesn’t give it a gritty texture as sauces that overly rely on powders can often have, but the ghost pepper powder also fails to bring the earthy and smoky pepper flavor that ghost peppers are known for, perhaps just adding a tiny bit of extra heat from the minute amount used in the sauce. As a garlic cayenne sauce this sauce is solid, but marketing it as a ghost pepper sauce when no fresh ghost peppers are used and just a minute amount of ghost pepper powder makes it into the bottle strikes me as inherently dishonest marketing.

Being essentially a cayenne garlic sauce Ghostly Garlic Fusion is very flexible in terms of pairing. It’s excellent on wings, on pizza, on grilled pork chops, used to dip some grilled leeks into (alliums always seem to have a natural affinity for one another), and excellent on savory breakfast foods such as hash brown, scrambled eggs, and sausage.

When it comes to whether or not I’d recommend this sauce it gets tricky. Had this been marketed as a cayenne garlic sauce I’d feel much better about it. I will also give Pepper Palace credit for using actual fresh minced garlic, and quite a lot of it, in this sauce instead of granulated dry garlic or garlic powder as many sauces do. The real elephant in the room however is the price tag of $17 for this sauce. The quality and type of ingredients used in this sauce simply don’t support that price point. Had this sauce used fresh ghost peppers in lieu of the cayenne sauce as the base I could potentially see an argument for a price point that high, as Pepper Palace is primarily a retail outlet and will have higher costs than companies who primarily sell direct. As it sits now however, given the ingredients used and their quality this sauce should be priced at $5-$7 max, so I cannot recommend it at the current $17 price point.

Ingredients: Cayenne Hot Sauce (Aged Cayenne Peppers, Distilled Vinegar, Water, Salt, Garlic Powder), Minced Garlic, Red Habanero Mash, Lemon Juice Concentrate, Brown Sugar, Ghost Pepper Powder, Cayenne Powder, Xanthan Gum

Heat Level: 3/10. Despite ghost peppers being in the name of this sauce this is primarily a cayenne pepper sauce with a small amount of habanero and a minute amount of ghost pepper mixed in.