Bravado Spice Co – Serrano & Basil Hot Sauce
Bitter: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
Sweet: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Umami: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰
Heat: ⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Tangy, Basil, Tomato
Texture: Thin with small bits
Recommended: Yes
Ingredients: Red Serrano Pepper Purée (red serrano peppers, salt and acetic acid), White Wine Vinegar, Tomato Purée (roma tomatoes, citric acid), Garlic (garlic, water), Brown Sugar (cane sugar and molasses), Basil, Sea Salt.
Bravado is one of the more popular craft hot sauce makers out there and one with one of the best retail distribution networks. I’ve previously reviewed their Arbol Chili & Garlic Hot Sauce as well as their Black Garlic Caroline Reaper Hot Sauce and enjoyed the latter quite a bit. Going through my boxes of older hot sauce purchases that I needed to put into rotation I found this one, and always having been a fan of serrano peppers, it looked like a great candidate for my next sauce.
Bravado Spice Co Serrano & Basil starts with red serranos, a great choice as I can’t recall ever having a bad sauce based on that pepper. Red serranos have a nice blend of vegetal/grassy flavor with fruity ripe pepper fruit flavor and just a hint of earthiness. Basil is often used in Italian cooking and Bravado doubles (or triples) down on that by also including tomato paste, a great source of both concentrated tomato flavor and umami, as well as white wine vinegar, which is typically a softer more nuanced vinegar than the typical distilled white and one often used in Italian cooking. Adding garlic, which is always welcome in any savory hot sauce, and brown sugar for a touch of sweetness (not something I personally love to see but at least it’s pretty far down the list) and the result should be a sauce harnessing Italian flavors with one of my favorite peppers. Serrano & Basil Hot Sauce is very thin in texture, almost Tabasco consistency, though you can see some small bits of peppers, herbs, and spices in it, there’s no real chew to this sauce. The serranos come through in the aroma as does the garlic and the vinegar.
In terms of flavor this sauce is super tangy – the vinegar is very forward, and is also on the saltier side, especially for a craft hot sauce. Since basil is a sweet herb it actually works well with the brown sugar which reinforces the basil sweetness. The tomato paste combined with the basil and garlic does give this sauce an Italian vibe in flavor as well while the serranos add some fruitiness and more vegetable flavor, though the sauce is quite mild. The umami from the tomato paste combined with the garlic and the peppers keep this sauce firmly rooted in savory territory despite the subtle background sweetness. Though the ingredients are quite different I was reminded a lot in flavor of Hank Sauce. Perhaps it’s the white wine vinegar and basil that pulled me there, though both sauces also have a similar strong tangy flavor and thin consistency.
Because of the Italian flavors in this I decided to try this on some grilled Italian sausage that I’d had leftover from the 4th of July first. Throwing the sausage on the bun with some peppers and onions and dousing it with Bravado’s Serrano & Basil Hot Sauce was delicious, the bright tangy flavor of this sauce a great compliment to the fatty sausage and the basil and garlic getting along great with both the peppers and onions as well as the fennel in the sausage itself. Thinking I may have found a great all-purpose hot sauce for Italian food I tried it out with some Publix deli chicken alfredo, which it was absolutely phenomenal again, that tanginess and the Italian flavors giving great contrast to the too-creamy pasta. This hot sauce is also absolutely amazing on pizza, perhaps the best pizza hot sauce I’ve yet tried. When combined with pasta with tomato sauce however I found it less compelling – since tomato sauce based pasta dishes are already acid-heavy this didn’t pair well, the gold standard for hot sauces for tomato based pastas is still Casa Firelli’s Italian Hot Sauce for me (though that’s admittedly a very narrow use case for it).
I’m happy to recommend Bravado Spice Co’s Serrano & Basil Hot Sauce. It’s flavorful, super tangy, amazing on creamy pasta and pizza, and while low heat it’s packed with flavor. If you’re a lover of tangy sauces and Italian flavors this is one to absolutely check out.
