The Crabby Shack – Zesty Lemon Pepper Hot Sauce

Bitter: 🟡🟡○○○

Salty: 🟡🟡○○○

Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡🟡🟡○

Sweet: 🟡🟡🟡○○

Umami: 🟡○○○○

Heat: 🟡○○○○○○○○○

Quick Flavor Notes: Sour, tart, lemon, sweet

Recommended: Yes

Texture: Thin with some small spice bits

Ingredients: tomatillos, filtered water, yellow bell peppers, white distilled vinegar, habanero pepper, lemon pepper seasoning (sugar, citric acid, black pepper, garlic powder, salt, onion powder, lemon peel, thyme)

The Crabby Shack is a seafood restaurant in Brooklyn, NY that’s been open since 2014 specializing in crab, lobster, and other NY seafood. The Crabby Shack is proudly black-woman owned. The restaurant makes and sells four different hot sauces (and I’ll have to order and try the others eventually as some sound very fun) but this particular sauce is what they say is their best-seller. This sauce also appeared in the number three position for Hot Ones season twenty-one. Since I’ve been on a seafood kick lately I was excited to give this one a try.

Lemon pepper has long been associated as a spice mix for seafood but something I hadn’t realized until doing more research is that lemon pepper has a long historical association with the American black community, especially in the south. Some of the earliest cookbooks published by black authors featured dishes incorporating lemon pepper and it had a strong preference amongst the hip-hop community in the ’90s and ’00s, even showing up as plot point in Donald Glover’s Atlanta TV show. Zesty Lemon Pepper Hot Sauce starts with tomatillos, that while they look like green tomatoes are actually a member of the gooseberry family and have a pleasing tart flavor. The peppers used are yellow bells and habaneros. The namesake of the sauce, the lemon pepper seasoning, is similar to many commercial dry lemon pepper seasonings with black pepper, lemon peel, citric acid (which adds sourness and tartness), sugar, and onion and garlic powders. The unique ingredient in the blend used here is thyme which I don’t often see in lemon pepper seasoning blends. Thyme is common in a number of world cuisines, especially French where it’s often used fresh and in Middle-Eastern where it’s part of the classic Za’Atar seasoning blend. The probable link here however would come from Cajun or Caribbean cuisine where dried thyme is often used in seafood boil recipes or in jerk sauce recipes.

The Crabby Shack Zesty Lemon Pepper Hot Sauce has a thin consistency and minimal texture – just some small bits of spices floating around. It has a dark ochre color and the aroma is tart with plenty of citrus and vinegar on the nose. The first time I tasted it I had to run back to take a look at the bottle again because it tasted like it had a ton of apple cider vinegar in it only for me to confirm that it actually has none. I think it’s the blend of the distilled vinegar, lemon peel, sugar, and citric acid that gave me the ACV hallucination. This sauce is very sour and tart and quite vinegar forward. The use of the lemon peel and tomatillos give complimentary tartness so the vinegar doesn’t dominate the sauce. There’s not a lot of chile pepper flavor here and I find the habaneros mostly get lost in the shuffle, though the lemon pepper flavors come through and that’s how the sauce is advertised. With just a bit of sugar this sauce was sweeter than I expected it to be though the garlic, onion, and thyme do a good job giving it a savory anchor. The thyme in particular gives it a subtle woodsy camphor flavor in the background that adds a surprising amount of depth to the sauce. Heat level is minimal as would be expected.

With a Red Lobster giftcard burning a hole in my pocket I picked up some lobster and snow crab legs and decided those would be a perfect place to try this sauce. It does do a great job with lobster, especially when butter is involved as well, and the sweetness and tartness of the sauce is a great match for the naturally sweet meat of snow crab legs. After getting some takeout from a local Chinese place that was getting rave reviews online I discovered their fried rice lived up to the hype, their hot & sour soup and shrimp toast not so much. This sauce is excellent on shrimp toast however and elevated the overcooked less-than-shrimpy-enough version they served nicely (and on a side note if you ever want to rescue bad hot and sour soup – get yourself some Shanxi vinegar and a white peppercorn grinder, a few glugs of the Shanxi vinegar and some healthy grinds of fresh white pepper will take it from zero to hero). My final test was doing some wings thinking this would work as “lemon pepper wet” and this sauce is quite tasty on them, though I do still prefer a traditional red hot sauce style on wings.

I’ll recommend The Crabby Shack Zesty Lemon Pepper Hot Sauce as it does have a unique flavor profile and I personally enjoy very sour and tart hot sauces. Some more heat would be nice, but for fans of mild hot sauces this one still packs a lot of flavor. the same company does make others including one using Lavender, one with Hibiscus, and one with flavors that seem to blend Old Bay and Bloody Mary mix which sound tasty and I look forward to trying in the future.