SOSS Bros – Habanero Heat Creamy Hot Sauce
Bitter: 🟡🟡○○○
Salty: 🟡🟡○○○
Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡○○○
Sweet: 🟡🟡○○○
Umami: 🟡○○○○
Heat: 🟡🟡○○○○○○○○
Quick Flavor Notes: Smoky, oily, bright
Recommended: Conditional
Texture: Medium and emulsified
Ingredients: Mayonnaise (soybean oil, water, vinegar, egg yolks, eggs, sugar, salt, spices, citric acid, lemon juice concentrate, calcium disodium EDTA added to protect flavor), (water, chipotle peppers, tomato puree, vinegar, canola oil, sugar, salt, garlic), water, habanero chili peppers, lemon juice, natural flavor, spice.
SOSS Bros is a Miami based hot sauce company founded in 2024. Standing for Smoked Original Secret Sauce the founders Hesham Hafez, his brother Karim Hafez, and their friend Lance Ahmadian met while attending George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. Based on a family recipe the concept for their sauce was to be thicker than traditional hot sauces so that it would better coat foods and to compliment rather than overpower. Staying with their university roots the company has officially licensed sauces for a number of school including George Mason, Virginia Commonwealth University, James Madison University, Rutgers, the University of Maryland, Virginia Tech, and Florida International University. I had seen SOSS Bros post about their sauces on various hot sauce and spicy food forums on Reddit and has commented that being mayonnaise-based it sounded unpleasant. The company reached out to me and offered me a bottle with no strings attached. While this bottle was supplied free of charge to me my opinions about it are entirely my own.
The primary ingredient, and the one that made me skeptical of this sauce, is mayonnaise. Not just mayonnaise, but a soybean-oil based mayonnaise. I try to avoid soybean oil, not due to any health reasons as I’m not one to buy into seed-oils being bad for you, but because I find it often has a fishy rancid unpleasant flavor. On top of that the mayonnaise used has a number of additives that don’t need to be in mayonnaise such as citric acid, sugar, calcium disodium EDTA, and uses lemon juice concentrate instead of fresh lemons. While I realize that the logistics of having a long enough shelf-life prevent the use of a pure mayonnaise of the type that you can easily make at home with an immersion blender and only several minutes of time, the fact that shelf-stable creamy products tend to have so many additives and rely on lower-quality oils and creamy bases is one reason I avoid them. After the mayonnaise the label has an unlabeled parenthesized sub-ingredients list but from what’s listed – chipotle peppers, tomato puree, sugar, garlic, salt, and oil – it’s most likely chipotles in adobo, which is where the smoke in the sauce comes from. After the chipotles in adobo and some additional water we finally find the habaneros that are the namesake of this particular sauce. There are also some unnamed “spices” and the mysterious “natural flavor” as well as some lemon juice.
Despite the primary ingredient being mayonnaise this sauce is quite a bit thinner than mayo, though still closer to a medium consistency than a thin one. Texturally it’s smooth, creamy, and emulsified though there are some bits of spices and peppers suspended in it. The aroma is soybean-oil and mayonnaise dominant, with a slight bit of smoke in the background. Tasting this sauce straight the smoky chipotle flavor is more prominent than the fruity habanero but the habaneros also come through despite being rather low on the ingredients list. Unfortunately the soybean oil and cheap mayonnaise flavor is also very prominent, especially in the aftertaste. Chilling the sauce does reduce that stale soybean oil cheap mayonnaise aftertaste but it’s still present. SOSS Bros Habanero Heat has more acid than I expected for a creamy sauce and the lemon juice does good work there keeping it bright which helps it taste lighter and more vibrant than you’d expect a mayo-based sauce to be as well as helping bring out the pepper flavors. The cheap oily aftertaste, though not nearly so bad as Guy Fieri’s Donkey Sauce, limited my use of this as a hot sauce but did seem to be masked by more complex flavors if used as a mayonnaise. While the spices aren’t named I did pick up some black pepper and that garlic, while not prominent, does help fill it out some. The heat level was a bit higher than I expected from how far down the ingredients list the peppers are. Still very mild, but there is a noticeable warmth.
My first pairing with Soss Bros Habanero Heat was with some potato wedges and fried chicken strips I’d picked up from Publix on the way home. Using it as a dip the heavily seasoned potato wedges worked well and the creamy nature of the sauce was a plus there. With the chicken strips somehow that shelf-stable mayo flavor crept in more and the breaded fried chicken plus the fatty creamy sauce was a bit too much in combination, I find I prefer much more vinegar-forward sauces when it comes to breaded fried chicken. Similarly this doesn’t work with anything creamy or cheesy. I tried some dabs on pizza and penne ala vodka and in the former case the heat of the pizza really brought out the unpleasant aftertaste of the sauce and in the latter it was just too much creaminess and same on same. Where I did find a great use for this was essentially as a mayonnaise replacement on cold sandwiches. Using this on a turkey and ham sandwich it works surprisingly well and with the lettuce, tomato, onion, and pickles in addition to the lunch meats there’s enough going on that it masks the aftertaste.
At the end of the day SOSS Bros Habanero Heat Creamy Hot Sauce was both somewhat of what I was expecting while also surprising in other ways. I still can’t get behind shelf-stable creamy condiments because of the inevitable old oil taste, but this was brighter and a bit lighter than I expected to be, and, as I said, quite a bit better than Donkey Sauce. I’ll give this a conditional recommendation. If you generally like creamy sauces I think you’d like this. I know the Melinda’s spicy ranch has a lot of fans as do things like Hidden Valley Ranch and Wishbone Blue Cheese, even if I find them a big gag-inducing. If those are your bag then give SOSS Bros a shot. If you’re like me and think anything creamy that isn’t homemade or comes from the refrigerated section should be avoided then this won’t be for you.
