extreme-heat Your thoughts on sauces with extract
- Thread starter The Hot Pepper
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Ever since the first time I tried Dave's Insanity sauce I absolutely hated sauces with extract. To my palette extract's overpower all other flavors and leave an after taste I can't stand.
I generally avoid extract sauces because I have a preference for all natural hot sauces, preferably with ingredients sourced from local farms or home grown by the producers.
Marie Sharp's Belizean Heat and Beware do apparently use a bit of extract, but those don't have the typical extract bitter chemical taste, so it's possible they're just using a tiny bit or that it's not an extremely concentrated extract. Both sauces are still only medium in heat so I suppose it makes sense they're not using much.
I've heard heard Hellfire Double Doomed still tastes good, but I haven't tried it myself.
Marie Sharp's Belizean Heat and Beware do apparently use a bit of extract, but those don't have the typical extract bitter chemical taste, so it's possible they're just using a tiny bit or that it's not an extremely concentrated extract. Both sauces are still only medium in heat so I suppose it makes sense they're not using much.
I've heard heard Hellfire Double Doomed still tastes good, but I haven't tried it myself.
I've seen it in snacks like chips, and it's in a popular supermarket salsa, Desert Pepper (Hot), and I cannot distinguish it. I think balance is key so I guess that's what I'll vote for.
Tomatoes, Jalapeno Peppers, Tomato Paste, Salt, Dehydrated Garlic, Chili Pepper Extract.
Tomatoes, Jalapeno Peppers, Tomato Paste, Salt, Dehydrated Garlic, Chili Pepper Extract.
In snacks and such, the amount of extract is probably such a small percentage of the ingredients that the extract flavor is indiscernible. Those items are prolly 1-2/10 on the heat scale. Dave's, Satan's Blood, DaBomb, etc have a lot higher concentration of extract to other ingredients. I used to make a hot sauce using PureCap (500,000 shu) which was, backintheday, the hottest stuff you could find. That sauce has been retired, mostly because of the recipe using extract.
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So balance is key 
Is extract to add heat, flavor or both?
That Aji Amarillo spice you just mentioned in another thread has extract in it. If you get it let us know how it is!
Food industry tends to make choices to make the most money. Once you bought the product the job is done. if it tasted like crap, you will have already bought it. Then marketing is used to make you buy it again.
So if extract is made in such a way it tastes good, it a fine choice to use.
if the extract is crap, the final product will be crap.
a bigger question is why make an extract to make something unnaturally hot when you can add the original product. Dried reaper powder or what not will get your ears to drop off all the same.
So if extract is made in such a way it tastes good, it a fine choice to use.
if the extract is crap, the final product will be crap.
a bigger question is why make an extract to make something unnaturally hot when you can add the original product. Dried reaper powder or what not will get your ears to drop off all the same.
Not everyone is after hot sauces for flavor and there's a lot of novelty behind it. Extract is also easier to come by than fresh or dried peppers, depending on the variety you need to use for the heat level. Makes mass production easier and more consistent. You can get the bulk of your chilis for your sauce and extract to really boost it's heat all from one Jalapeno farm with being able to supplement from other growers if needed.
with all due respect, DementedWelde, this is the result of the industry neglecting flavor. If flavor was most important, it would not be the most difficult thing to come buy. i think its shameful how much technology and money is needed and wasted to produce generally crap food.
HellfireFarm
eXtreme
They're catering to the craze for "more heat", which apparently continues unabated, even if fueled mostly by charlatans.
Reminds me a lot of the IPA craze in beer. Which at least appears to be easing somewhat.
That's one thing I like about the NC (Oxford) Hot Sauce Festival - the contest explicitly excludes any sauce that uses extracts, and all but one of the awards are flavor based (they have the obligatory "hottest" - which i've never seen win best of show)
My opinion is that heat without flavor is pointless - and my customer base reflects that.
Reminds me a lot of the IPA craze in beer. Which at least appears to be easing somewhat.
That's one thing I like about the NC (Oxford) Hot Sauce Festival - the contest explicitly excludes any sauce that uses extracts, and all but one of the awards are flavor based (they have the obligatory "hottest" - which i've never seen win best of show)
My opinion is that heat without flavor is pointless - and my customer base reflects that.
Sure does! McCormick has long specialized in flavors. The simple fact that they use it in their products tells me that extracts are useful. On a commercial scale consistency is probably more important than anything else and extracts help achieve a certain Heat/flavor balance that people expect every time.
McCormick® Aji Amarillo Seasoning | McCormick
The McCormick 2025 Flavor of the Year Aji Amarillo Seasoning is a sweet, spicy blend with medium heat and tropical notes, oak smoke, garlic, and onion. Inspired by the pepper grown in Peru and native to South America, this unique blend can be used to enhance dishes from seafood to poultry to sauces.
www.mccormick.com
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Sometimes flavor just isn't the main goal of the sauce, so it's not really neglecting anything. A good portion of people won't even be able to discern the differences in flavor once you start getting above the heat of Jalapenos. I still absolutely hate sauces with extract because of how I use hot sauces, but If I were the type to follow the instructions on the labels of some sauces and just add a drop or two to increase the spice of the main sauce I'm using, they'd be just fine at doing what they're intended.
My dad for example only buys hot sauces as gifts. Usually they taste quite bad, like spicy taco sauce, but when you've got images of fire blowing out of cartoon butt's and names like "Blow Your Grandma's Britches Off", I think it'd be more negligent using a bunch of harder to get ingredients when the main selling point is a gag.
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Congrats with the finish of the construction of your house. Doesnt it need a roof?
No the main goal of this house is not to be lived in so it doesn't matter if it's only half of whats in the brochure.
i'm sorry, i just cant take this.
if you produce something to be eaten, flavor shoud be THE goal, ever!
if not, you can survive for years on plain flower porridge and sunflower seeds of whatever has just nutrition.
That's a bit unfair in my opinion. Instant ramen is made to be cheap and easy, not with ultimate flavor as goal. Booger and dishwater and rotten eggs and vomet flavored jelly beans probably gross more money a year than some hot sauce companies do in a decade, and their goal is being disgusting. But not all instant ramen is flavorless crap and not all jelly beans are disgusting. There's more than one audience.
My favourite hot sauce only uses a mix of real fermented peppers and other ingredients, is all about the flavor, but is pricy, slightly different every year due to harvests, and only available for a short time also due to harvests.
More often than not I'm using the mass produced, easy to control sauces that are all about just consistency and ok flavor because they're always available, cheap, and work. Never about being the ultimate best flavor, just the easiest way to add birds eye or habanero peppers and some acidity. Those sauces are vastly more popular too even without flavor being the ultimate goal.
Our very own @salsalady sells a product called Pure Evil which adds heat via capsaicin drops with ZERO flavor. There is a market for heat with no flavor and no, the audience is not always novelty. You may have perfected the perfect chili for example and don't want to add any more flavor, not even pepper flavor. But you may want to crank up the heat with only a few drops of something, There's actually many use cases here, and yes, there is a market for it. She sells Drops and Extract, the Drops are known to not have the extract flavor. They are clean. So you're zero flavor argument is flawed. The flavor can already be there and you just want heat.