Arooga’s – Kangarooga Sauce
Bitter: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Sweet: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Umami: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Heat: ⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Celery, soybean oil, carrot, generic Louisiana style hot sauce
Texture: Thick and very chunky
Recommended: No
Ingredients: Hot Sauce (Cayenne Red Peppers, Vinegar, Salt, and Garlic), Water, Soybean Oil, Carrots, Jalapeno Peppers, Onion, Green Bell Peppers, Lactic Acid, Modified Food Starch, Salt, Celery, Spice, Xanthan Gum, Chili Powder (Spices, Onion, Salt, and Garlic), Sodium Benzoate (Less than 0..1% added as a preservative), Polysorbate, Cilantro Flavor (Modified Food Starch and Natural Flavor), and Propylene Glycol Alginate.
Arooga’s is a small chain of sports bars in the Mid-Atlantic region. I would have never heard of them other than seeing someone post in Reddit’s hot sauce community about this particular sauce which caught my eye. I love celery and carrots with buffalo wings, so the idea of incorporating the celery and carrots directly into the buffalo wing sauce seemed like a very cool idea. At the time Arooga’s was selling this sauce on their site (at the moment they seem to only have their Ghost Face Killa sauce available) so I picked it up along with a couple of their other options.
Kangarooga Sauce begins with a hot sauce base that looks very similar to Frank’s Red Hot – cayenne peppers, vinegar, salt, and garlic. Things go well with the addition of jalapenos, bell peppers, onion, carrots, and celery, all of which do give this sauce a very chunky texture which I’m a fan of. Buffalo style sauces do usually have a fat element, traditionally it’s butter when it’s a homemade sauce and in the higher quality bottled sauces, though Arooga’s opted for soybean oil. I’m not part of the anti-seed oil bandwagon but I’m disappointed in the choice of soybean oil. While many soy products are absolutely delicious – miso, soy sauce, douchi, tofu, and more – soybean oil always has an unpleasant off taste to me, almost a subtle fishiness. Compounding the choice of a cheap unpleasant oil the sauce also contains an artificial preservative in the form of sodium benzoate, cilantro ‘flavor’ instead of real cilantro, and a bevy of thickeners and emulsifiers including food starch, xanthan gum, polysorbate, and propylene glycol alginate. All of this does result in quite a thick sauce. There are some hints of the celery and carrots as well as the hot sauce in the aroma, but also that unpleasant soybean oil odor.
Taking a taste right out of the bottle the flavor is unpleasant. There are some positive elements in that the celery, carrot, and bell pepper flavors come through, and the consistency is nice with good chew, but it’s the soybean oil and artificial preservative taste that quickly take over. I’ve loved sauces that include celery in the past such as Poirier’s Louisiana Style and Gindo’s Frankie’s Deli Giardiniera so I wanted to give Kangarooga a fair shake. Since it’s a wing sauce and not meant to be eaten straight I air-fried up some wings (bare) as well as some breaded chicken tenders. Being thick and chunky the sauce grips both well and combined with the chicken the unpleasant flavors of the sauce are greatly reduced with the better flavors of the hot sauce, celery, carrots, onions, and peppers coming through more strongly. There is still an unpleasant soybean oil and overly processed taste that sits under the surface. The food starch may also be a culprit here as I can’t recall a sauce or salsa I’ve loved that’s made use of it, it tends to mute flavors and create something of a sludgy film in the mouth, a reason many overly-starched Americanized Chinese dishes also have an unpleasant mouthfeel. As expected when starting out with something that’s essentially Frank’s and then diluting it from there the heat level in this sauce is minimal.
Other than wings and chicken breast tenders I didn’t find other situations where this sauce works. Putting it on a sandwich didn’t do enough to distract from the unpleasant soybean oil and added-adulterant flavors, similar to most shelf-stable creamy sauces such as Guy Fieri’s Donkey Sauce. Kangarooga sauce is also not tangy enough to overcome its inherent oiliness so doesn’t bring brightness to foods.
Unfortunately I can’t recommend Arooga’s Kangarooga sauce. I think there’s a great concept here just let down by some low quality ingredients and too many thickeners and artificial preservatives. I’ve never eaten at the Arooga’s restaurants so perhaps if this sauce is made fresh there it could be better. I think taking the same ingredients, removing the artificial preservatives and thickeners, and replacing the soybean oil with real butter could create a winner of a sauce.
