Top Chef by Heatonist – Garlic Hot Sauce

I’ve long been a fan of Bravo’s cooking competition TV show Top Chef, appreciating that they keep the focus on high quality cooking competition and don’t devote much screen time to personal drama. When I saw that Heatonist had a line of hot sauces made in collaboration with the Bravo Top Chef team I knew that I had to give them a try. I picked up the trio of the Top Chef sauces including this one, Garlic, as well as two others – Herbs and Peppercorn.

I love garlic. With fresh garlic as the second ingredient in this sauce and granulated garlic appearing later in the ingredients list it promises a strong garlic flavor. Garlic does comes across strongly when you give it a sniff. The texture of this is less a liquid and more of a loose paste. Even after vigorous shaking this sauce comes out in little plops instead of flowing like a traditional hot sauce.

Garlic dominates the flavor of this sauce in a wonderful way. The jalapenos used help reinforce the vegetal green garlic flavor, but there’s also that characteristic garlic bite and a more subtle savory note from the granulated garlic. The Top Chef Garlic Hot Sauce takes you on a journey through the full flavor profile of fresh garlic. Perhaps a special edition of this sauce that also incorporates roasted and black garlic could be arranged for an even more immersive experience. The jalapenos take a back seat here, though they do add a little bit of their grassy vegetal flavor notes which meld well with garlic. The apple cider vinegar and lemon juice add some brightness and acidity plus help reinforce the sweeter notes of the garlic flavor.

I did find that this didn’t come off as a hot sauce in the traditional way. There’s a bit of heat, but it’s not a pepper-forward flavor and the garlic flavor being so strong almost makes this want to sit into a different kind of condiment category. Using this in conjunction with other sauces on food can work very well however. I found it had a strong affinity with Louisiana style sauces as well as with Mexican or taco style sauces – they provided more of that pepper-forward nature and this provided more of that umami garlic punch.

On food this is good on sandwiches, where it acts almost like a garlic spread, and in soups where it adds a great aromatic garlic element plus an additional level of flavor. When combining with other sauces this is solid for breakfast (depending on your garlic threshold) as well as on Mexican food. It’s nice in tomato centered pasta dishes as well as garlic is often a flavor used in those sauces. Using some as a marinade for pork and steak also proved to be successful, giving the meats a solid garlic flavor after grilling.

If you love garlic I can easily recommend this sauce. While it’s not a traditional hot sauce this does have a more garlic-dominated flavor than any other sauce I’ve tried. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, or thickeners.

Ingredients: Jalapeno Peppers, Garlic, Apple Cider Vinegar, Distilled White Vinegar, Water, Canola Oil, Lemon Juice, Granulated Garlic, Chili Powder, Salt, Pepper

Heat Level: 1/10. This sauce is quite mild when it comes to capsaicin heat, though it does have a pungent garlic kick.