Torchbearer Sauces – Sweet Onion Habanero Sauce
Torchbearer can always be counted on to have some amusing bottle art, and the amorous onion putting the moves on the dapper habanero on this one is no exception. This is a sauce I’ve heard good things about, but one that was sadly languishing in the back of my cupboard waiting for me to find time for it in the rotation. I’m happy that I finally did as (spoiler alert) this may be one of my favorite sauces from the company.
I love onions. Most of my favorite recipes begin with sauteing some onions and garlic together to form a delicious base for whatever I’m going to cook. While this sauce doesn’t contain garlic, it does have onion in the first ingredient by volume which ensures it will have a prominent role in the flavor. The rest of the list is pretty simple – habanero peppers, vinegar, a little sugar, onion flakes, salt, and the surprising hidden ingredient – scorpion peppers. I’m a fan of sauces with simple clean ingredients that let them shine, and while I don’t feel the sugar is really necessary here, the list is unobjectionable.
Giving the bottle a smell the aroma of onions wafts up before anything else. Onions are also the first thing that hits your tastebuds in this sauce, and in a beautifully complex way. The sulfurous compounds are there, the pungency of raw onion hits you, but there are also mellower flavors almost like slowly cooked onions with the sweetness and savory nature of onions also cascading down over your palate. The habaneros play a slight second fiddle to the onions here but still come through with their fruity and vegetal nature which is a great foil for the onion. I don’t specifically taste the scorpion peppers in this, perhaps they add a tad of floral note and some extra heat. Despite the sugar I wouldn’t call this a sweet sauce. There is a hint of sweetness, but it tastes of the natural sweetness of onions vs the sweetness of added sugar to me. The vinegar isn’t overly strong in this sauce, just enough tang to keep it interesting without being vinegar-forward. The texture is medium-thick though it pours relatively well.
Since onions go well with almost any type of food I expected this sauce to be quite flexible and it is. With some grilled shrimp, chicken, and steak it’s absolutely perfect. It was great on pulled pork nachos. It’s a very nice sauce for chicken wings. Sweet Onion Habanero even makes a great sauce to kick up a simple turkey sandwich or BLT. Even though this sauce doesn’t have any Mexican flavors in it I loved it on some birria tacos. Since this sauce of of a medium-low heat level it’s also easy to add to food without overpowering the natural flavors with heat.
I’m happy to recommend Torchbearer’s Sweet Onion Habanero. I always enjoy flavorful medium-heat sauces because sometimes I just want flavor without too much burn and this absolutely fits the bill. Though garlic sauces are pretty common these days sauces that are onion dominant don’t seem to be as ubiquitous so this is also a great change of pace. This sauce is also all-natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.
Ingredients: Onion, Habanero Peppers, Distilled White Vinegar, Water, Sugar, Scorpion Peppers, Onion Flakes, Salt
Heat Level: 3/10. There’s a tiny bit of burn but this sauce is low-medium heat level overall, just enough heat to let you know its there without causing discomfort
