Volcanic Peppers – Smokin’ Hot Scarlett

Bitter: ⭐✰✰✰✰

Salty: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰

Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰

Sweet: ⭐✰✰✰✰

Umami: ⭐⭐✰✰✰

Heat: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰

Quick Flavor Notes: Fresh, tangy, bright, earthy, smoky

Texture: Medium-thin with some seeds and garlic bits

Recommended: Yes

Ingredients: Chile Peppers (Cayenne, Ghost), Vinegar, Water, Sugar, Garlic, Xanthan Gum, Vitamin C

Hailing from Nebraska Volcanic Peppers’ origin started way back in 2009 with a simple farmer’s market stand selling vegetables, including hot peppers. As public interest in hotter peppers grew demand for their hotter peppers grew with it until the first product of what would become Volcanic Peppers was born – their Volcano Dust ground dried peppers. Volcanic Peppers still makes their dried spices but has also grown a lineup of hot sauces that goes from mild to extreme levels of heat. I decided to open up a sauce from the middle of their heat range for my first taste of their wares.

Smokin’ Hot Scarlett is the hottest of the three cayenne-based Scarlett sauces that Volcanic Peppers makes. This Smokin’ variety adds ghost peppers to the cayenne and garlic. It’s a straightforward hot sauce recipe – chile peppers, cayenne and ghost, up front, followed by vinegar, with garlic, salt, and a bit of sugar in the mix to round it all out. It does use xanthan gum, something I’m generally not a fan of, but it doesn’t seem as they use much as the consistency is still on the medium-thin side of things. It does come with an orifice reducer installed by default but I find it just slightly too thick to effectively use with that so I recommend removing it. The garlic and fresh pepper aromas come through in the aroma, and you can see little bits of pepper seeds and perhaps garlic floating in the sauce.

Cayenne based sauces seem to have more variability in quality than those based on any other pepper. Even price isn’t necessarily a good indicator as there are some cheap ones that are still excellent (so some of the worst are also at that cheap end). I was very happy to find on my first taste of Smokin’ Hot Scarlett that Volcanic Peppers used a very fresh tasting high quality cayenne base. Fresh cayennes and vinegar give the sauce a bright tangy slightly vegetal flavor. The ghost peppers are an amazing foil to the cayenne – dark, earthy, slightly smoky, the ghost peppers hit the notes that the cayenne peppers lack and vice versa for excellent synergy. This sauce is also quite garlicky despite the garlic being fairly down on the ingredients list. It reminded me of Pepper Palace Ghostly Garlic Fusion but quite a bit hotter and with much better pepper flavor. While I’d enjoyed Ghostly Garlic Fusion my big complaints about that sauce were that Pepper Palace’s cayenne base tasted old and stale and they only gave the ghost peppers a tiny nod despite their top billing by throwing in a tiny bit of ghost pepper powder at the end. Volcanic Peppers fixes both of those issues by using much higher quality cayennes in their sauce and by using a solid amount of ghost peppers so that you can feel some real heat and get that ghost pepper flavor. While Ghostly Garlic does have more garlic bits floating around the garlic flavor in Smokin’ Hot Scarlett comes through nice and strong. If you’re a fan of Ghostly Garlic Fusion then Smokin’ Hot Scarlett is definitely one to try to upgrade the experience.

One of the strengths of cayenne based sauces is that they can go on almost anything. Since Volcanic Peppers Smokin’ Hot Scarlett has a strong vinegar element, just a little bit less than a typical Louisiana Style hot sauce, it’s great on things where you want to add tang and acid. I loved this in some gouda macaroni and cheese I impulse bought from the Publix deli case. It’s also, as expected, a great sandwich sauce and goes amazing on wings. I’d made some psuedo-feijoada as a means to use up some leftover pork products and sausages from other cooking endeavors and found Smokin’ Hot Scarlett to be a phenomenal pairing with black beans and pork as well.

Volcanic Peppers Smokin’ Hot Scarlett earns my recommendation. It’s another bottle of hot sauce that went way faster than I expected both because it’s so tasty and because it goes so well with everything. Instead of spending $17 for Ghostly Garlic Fusion (seriously, Pepper Palace have lost their dang minds with their pricing) spend $7 on Smokin’ Hot Scarlett and get a better tasting sauce with much higher quality of ingredients and more heat.