Butterfly Bakery of Vermont – Cauliflower Garlic Hot Sauce
Bitter: 🟡🟡○○○
Salty: 🟡🟡○○○
Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡🟡🟡○
Sweet: 🟡🟡○○○
Umami: 🟡🟡○○○
Heat: 🟡🟡○○○○○○○○
Quick Flavor Notes: Tangy, fresh, nutty, vegetal, sweet
Recommended: Yes
Texture: Medium thin with lots of seeds and small bits
Ingredients: White vinegar, Honey Field Farm red serrano, Pete’s Greens garlic scapes, Dog River Farm onions, Breadseed Farm green stem cauliflower, salt, olive oil, black pepper
As I continue to go through my older boxes of Butterfly Bakery of Vermont hot sauces I keep stumbling upon micro-batch releases that I wish I’d gotten around to reviewing while they were still available. The good thing is that Butterfly Bakery of Vermont occasionally re-releases micro batches, but even if they don’t I’ve noticed that some have come back as a new variation so there’s a chance we may see something similar to this again even if it’s not this exact sauce.
Cauliflower has been somewhat of an in-vogue vegetable lately. Not only is it a popular low-carb choice in the form of cauliflower rice, cauliflower pizza crust, and cauliflower macaroni and cheese those same products are also often popular with the gluten-free crowd. At the same time the combination of cauliflower and hot sauce may seem unexpected but cauliflower has also been used as a substitute for chicken wings by vegetarians in the form of buffalo cauliflower, and the sweet and spicy Indian Chinese dish Gobi (cauliflower) Manchurian has a history dating back decades. In addition to the cauliflower in this sauce it also includes red serranos, one of my favorite medium heat chile peppers, onions, olive oil, and black pepper. I tend to enjoy hot sauces that include a bit of oil as a means to both make the sauce a bit richer in flavor and improve mouthfeel as well as to bring out the oil soluble flavors in the ingredients, and olive oil is always a great high quality choice. Plus, as usual Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sources their ingredients from local farms so that you know the sauce is made with the freshest local ingredients picked at the peak of their season. This sauce is medium-thin in texture and has lots of seeds in it which I love to see. The aroma is tangy with hints of onion and cauliflower.
Sometimes when a unique ingredient is used in a sauce, especially if it’s a headline ingredient, it doesn’t come through as strongly as I’d like in the sauce. That’s not at all the case here as Butterfly Bakery of Vermont Cauliflower Garlic Hot Sauce has both big cauliflower and good garlic flavor. Both of those surprised me to a degree as cauliflower is a mild vegetable by its nature and the use garlic scapes instead of bulb garlic tends to give a milder garlic flavor as well. The cauliflower in this sauce gives it a nutty sweet-vegetable richness with none of the sulfuric flavor that cauliflower can sometimes have, especially when cooked. The bright fruity zingy flavor of the red serranos are the perfect pairing for the cauliflower, and the onions and olive oil add that richness and fullness the sauce needs to fill in the gaps between. Cauliflower Garlic Hot Sauce is very tangy but also fresh from the serranos and the cauliflower so it doesn’t feel vinegar dominant. Overall this sauce is fresh, earthy, nutty, tangy, richer than expected with a natural vegetable sweetness. Heat level is just a little bit above very mild, and as is common with serranos they have a quick bite of heat without much of any linger.
The bottle suggests using this on duck, roasted vegetables, and buffalo wings with grass fed butter. I didn’t have any duck in my freezer but I did have some frozen wings so I made some with this sauce (and although I don’t have grass fed butter I did have some Plugra which I figured would be the next best thing) and this is an awesome wing sauce. With the added richness of the butter the cauliflower flavor almost takes on that roasted vegetable energy which is very appealing. I can’t say that I’ve been a fan of the cauliflower crust pizzas that I’ve tried, but I did enjoy this sauce on pizza. The cauliflower flavor is a bit more muted when it’s competing with cured meats, sauce, and cheese but this sauce has such great tang it’s still an awesome pizza sauce. My final test was with a sandwich made from some leftover pot roast. Roasted meats and cauliflower are a natural combination and tangy sauces are typically great on sandwiches thus it was no surprise that it worked amazingly well in that regard as well.
I’m happy to recommend this one thoroughly if you can still find a bottle somewhere. Elsewise keep on the lookout at the Butterfly Bakery of Vermont website to see the next time they release a cauliflower micro-batch if this sounds like your cup of tea. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, flavors, colors, or thickeners.
