Tabasco Brand Buffalo Style Hot Sauce

Category: Hot Sauce Style: Buffalo style cayenne sauce Commercial Product: Yes Product of: USA Manufacturer: McIlhenny Co. Website: Visit Ingredients: Red cayenne peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt, garlic

JayT's Rating:  3.8  (0)

Label/Packaging: The label is a traditional Tabasco diamond shape, but the color is brown. I think they could have done more. Maybe a picture of a chicken wing or something.

Appearance/Aroma: The appearance is a deep reddish-orange. It seems to be a little thicker than traditional Tabasco sauce. The aroma is strong of vinegar and aged cayenne peppers. It really does smell like Buffalo sauce.

I saw this sauce advertised on television, then again in a magazine.  I thought, "Tabasco wing sauce?  Yeah right."  Well, I feel it is my duty to give this a shot and report to you all.  I should start by saying that I have no real conviction about traditional Tabasco sauce one way or the other.  It is aged peppers in vinegar.  The sauce itself is very VERY vinegary and thin.  Not my favorite, but I don't hate it either.  The obvious difference is the use of cayenne peppers rather than tabasco peppers.  Cayenne has a little less heat and the burn hits you on a different part of your mouth.  Not to say that there is much burn at all from this sauce, but I will get to that later.  

The taste is exactly what it says it will be, Buffalo sauce.  Buffalo sauce is a vinegary cayenne sauce that is normally mixed with butter to make it creamy and give it that authentic Buffalo taste.  It originated at Anchor Bar, Buffalo NY, when the owner of the bar needed to make a snack for her son and his friends.  She threw some wings in some hot oil, and mixed up this type of sauce and Buffalo wings was born.  This Tabasco Brand version really does taste like you would expect, but with the same aging process that McIlhenny has been using for 144 years it has depth.  It is actually better than I expected.  I thought it was just going to be a normal, thin Tabasco sauce that tastes like Buffalo sauce.  This is actually thick enough to stick to wings.  I am pretty impressed so far.  Of course there is almost no heat, but that is to be expected from a sauce meant for the masses I guess.  Let's see how it works on food.

Heat Level: 2.5 From Nada to Naga (0-10, 10+ being Extreme) Suggested Uses: I first tried it on some pizza (I often use hot sauce on pizza and sometimes regular Tabasco). It works well with this. Next, I tried it on wings. Not nearly hot enough for me, and it could use some butter, but still pretty good as a base. That being said, I'll stick with my Defcon 1. You can use this anywhere you would use any other Buffalo sauce, like in dips, and on wings, shrimp, etc.