Butterfly Bakery of Vermont – Hot House Hot Sauce

The third and final of the new Hot Ones heat pack sauces I’ve reviewed, this one took my the longest to write up and figure out my thoughts on. Microsaucerie Piko Peppers’ Volkano was a straightforward (though absolutely delicious) habanero sauce and Queen Majesty’s Sicilian Scorpion was just brutal heat with a scorpion flavor that overwhelmed everything else in the sauce. Hot House Hot Sauce on the other hand has a lot of different and seemingly disparate things going on, something that’s a bit out of the ordinary for a Butterfly Bakery of Vermont Sauce.

Sitting in the number seven position for season twenty-six, right in front of the infamous Da Bomb, this sauce is designed to evoke fresh garden flavors. Most Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sauces come in at around 3-6 ingredients, something I’ve always admired about them – willing to let just a few high quality ingredients shine at their best (and I especially enjoy their single varietal sauces). This sauce sits in at 13 ingredients (not including water) and features a blend of five peppers including serrano, habanero, reaper, ghost, and carmen (a type of sweet pepper) plus herbs including cilantro and dill as well as lemon juice in addition to the vinegar and tomatoes. The texture is maybe just a tiny hair thicker than most Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sauces, which is to stay it’s still on the thinner side of medium, and it has an aroma that does evoke a fresh blend of garden ingredients, with dill being especially prominent.

Dill is also a major flavor element in Hot House Hot Sauce. It’s not an herb I personally love, though I don’t have a revulsion to it either. Dill has such a strong flavor that it easily overpowers everything else and aside from dill pickles and that spinach dill dip that’s served inside of bread bowls at parties (both of which I do love) I can’t recall places where I’ve longed for its presence. The Cilantro does thankfully provide a nice refreshing note in this sauce, and the tomatoes add richness and some umami. The pepper blend is interesting in that I can’t pick out the notes of the peppers individually but they do meld into a tasty whole with plenty of fresh pepper flavor. What I got when first tasting this sauce was a wave of peppers followed closely by dill, a nice tanginess from the vinegar and a bit of tartness from the lemon, and if I concentrate I could pick up the tomatoes and cilantro, but they’re playing more background roles that freshen and fill out the sauce instead of drawing attention to themselves. The heat level of this sauce is interesting – very little heat up front, but it has a heat that grows more and more over time and can create a pretty big wave by the end.

The strong dill element does make this sauce more limited in terms of pairing. I found it worked great on tuna melt as well as on some salmon that I marinated in it and then used a little more fresh sauce to taste after grilling the fish. It also worked well when added to a bowl of tomato soup, though I don’t know if I’d always want that dill flavor introduced. Less successful were attempted pairings with Chinese food, empanadas, and a cheesesteak. As long as it’s a food that normally associates with dill this sauce should go well with it.

I’m glad I got to try this sauce, and I enjoyed it. I also think that this is a rare Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sauce that I probably wouldn’t buy again, just because I’m not a huge fan of dill. If you’re a dill lover this will be right up your alley and I highly suggest checking it out. This sauce is all natural with no artificial preservatives, flavors, colors, or thickeners.

Ingredients: Chili peppers* (serranos, habaneros, reapers, ghosts, carmens), distilled vinegar, tomatoes, water, cilantro, salt, olive oil, lemon juice concentrate, dill*, black pepper. *Grown within 200 miles of Butterfly Bakery of Vermont

Heat Level: 5/10 This one doesn’t have a big initial attack but the heat grows consistently and can reach high peaks