CaJohn’s – Select Serrano Puree

Bitter: ⭐✰✰✰✰

Salty: ⭐⭐✰✰✰

Sour: ⭐✰✰✰✰

Sweet: ⭐⭐✰✰✰

Umami: ⭐✰✰✰✰

Heat: ⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰

Quick Flavor Notes: Fresh, grassy, vegetal, fruity

Texture: Thick and extra chunky

Recommended: Yes

Ingredients: Red Serrano Pepper Mash (Red Serrano Peppers, Salt), Water, Distilled Vinegar

CaJohn’s Fiery Foods was founded by former fire-protection engineer John Hard back in 1997, making it one of the earlier full range craft hot sauce companies. While John Hard sold the company in 2018 to Hot Shots Distributing / United Sauces following a successful fight with cancer they decided to carry on the full line of the brand’s sauces. CaJohn’s lineup has everything from very mild sauces to extremely hot extract-laden sauces that are more about heat and chest-thumping than anything else, but I decided to try my first sauce from the company with one based on a pepper I’ve always loved – the red serrano.

CaJohn’s Select Serrano Puree is just what the label says it is – it’s almost all red serrano pepper with just a bit of vinegar, salt, and water to make it pourable. According to the United Sauces’ website the amount of vinegar used is just enough to preserve the puree, though the salt level is quite high for a craft sauce at 200mg per teaspoon. In that way it’s similar to the Louisiana Pepper Exchange Red Habanero Puree which I reviewed in the past, though that had even more salt in order to preserve it and no vinegar at all. This sauce is quite thick and chunky, it comes out in little blobs of pepper more than pours as a traditional liquid. The aroma is of fresh serrano peppers.

Much like the Louisiana Pepper Exchange purees I believe the intended use for Select Serrano Puree is more of a cooking ingredient than as a typical hot sauce. Tasting the sauce on its own it’s extremely fresh tasting, you get the bright grassy notes of the serranos as well as their natural pepper fruity and sweet notes. This sauce tastes as close to eating fresh red serranos as I believe any sauce could come. With as high a sodium content as this sauce has it strangely does not taste salty. The low vinegar content may be responsible for that as tangy/sour seems to accentuate the saltiness of foods, so with this sauce being less acidic than something like Louisiana Brand hot sauce, which has the same sodium level, it tastes much less salty.

While I’ve enjoyed other single varietal hot sauces in the past such as Butterfly Bakery of Vermont’s Vermont Habs and Dutchess Mystery Pepper hot sauce this sauce had a much different presentation due to both being much thicker and chunkier and having a much lower acidity. That doesn’t mean that it can’t work as a traditional hot sauce – and in fact I enjoyed it very much as a topping on a hamburger where it added the freshness of a raw vegetable while also adding heat. I also decided to give this a shot as a cooking ingredient. I sauteed some shrimp along with some garlic, butter, and several large glugs of CaJohn’s Select Serrano Puree and the result was amazing – that fresh pepper flavor still came through and it was much more convenient than buying fresh serranos to chop myself, if I can even find the red ones locally, which is rare.

I’m happy to recommend CaJohn’s Select Serrano Puree. It’s not exactly a hot sauce but it works well as one and also works great as a means to add fresh pepper flavor to your cooking. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.