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Multi-Review: All Spice Cafe – Garlic Chipotle Sauce
By Buddah | August 15, 2008 |
All Spice Cafe’s Garlic Chipotle:
BUDDAH
Every hot sauce review needs to give the product a fair shake, and sometimes there are some misses here and there that you might not want to mention. I found some nice uses for the All Spice Cafe Garlic Chipotle , but I want to start off with a bad choice. Under the name of the sauce on the label was the product description, “A delicious and smoky blend of chipotle, garlic and cayenne.” I envisioned the flavors to be something completely different before I poured some of this sauce on my sliced Hot Links, which are Hillshire Farms’ spicy pre-cooked sausages. I sliced the hot links and put them on a low flame to soak up all the flavors of the sauce.
I usually use the hot links in a number of different meals because they taste so good and coat well in thick sauces. Especially with barbeque sauces. The sausages absorbed the All Spice Cafe Garlic Chipotle very nicely, but the flavors were a mismatch. This is a different kind of Garlic Chipotle sauce than I envisioned. I knew I had made a mistake after the first bite. It wasn’t a horrible meal by any stretch, but it wasn’t exactly a recipe I would entertain again. So maybe a look at the ingredients wouldn’t be bad thing:
Ingredients: Aged Red Peppers, Distilled Vinegar, Canola Oil, Chipotle Peppers, Granulated Garlic, Habanero Peppers, Liquid Smoke, Salt, Xantham Gum.
After looking at all those ingredients you would think that this reviewer had a plan in mind now. Well you would be sadly mistaken good reader. I am a novice cook and an amateur in figuring out how ingredients taste together. This is why I don’t bother examining ingredients beforehand when I do my taste testing. I usually call it right because I choose chicken most of the time, and chicken goes with the majority of sauces. Once I know how the sauce tastes with chicken I know where to proceed after that. So let us see how chicken goes with this sauce. I marinated a chicken thigh with the All Spice Cafe Garlic Chipotle for a couple of days, then put it in a pan and on low flame in the oven. Not on the stovetop. Yes, you can put pans in the oven. I saw that on the food network. 
This chicken was really tasty with this sauce. The flavors were definitely garlicky, and I had the slightest of tongue tingles going on. This sauce is perfect for families who want their food to be spicy, but not mouth burning. I also noticed a change in color, consistency, and a little with the flavor when cooked because the sample I had right out of the bottle wasn’t as good as it was on the chicken. It coated the bird very well as it seemed to thicken on the skin and hold onto the meat. If I had a bbq grill, the charcoal flavor with this product would be the ideal cooking technique to enhance the taste further. I loved it because the garlic stood right out and all the peppery flavors blended so well together. Every bite of my chicken was like music in my mouth.
I then went back to the first All Spice Cafe sauce review for Caribbean Spice, and remembered how much I enjoyed the stuffed tilapia. I wanted to give it a whirl with the All Spice Cafe Garlic Chipotle and see if the fishy flavor didn’t ruin the sauce. So once again, using the pan, I cooked on a low temperature in the oven, pouring the sauce on the fish rather than marinating it. The tilapia has a crab meat stuffing, so there is no reason to drown the stuffed fish with a sauce. I all ready knew from the previous two meals that the sauce will thicken when hot and coat the food.
The first few bites of my tilapia were spot on good. I ate the fish much too fast and the memory lingered in my mouth like a vacation gone by. It’s over. Where did my fishy friend go? If I only had more. Well, they do sell the stuffed tilapia in two packs. I repeated the meal again the next day, not for me mind you, but to give my reader a better understanding for my review. Good people, the All Spice Cafe Garlic Chipotle kicked serious fishy buttocks. I am so happy I sacrificed for you folks.
I wouldn’t recommend this sauce so much on pork sausages. Sausages were a bad idea, but with fish, and definitely chicken you can’t go wrong. Just let me know if I am right with the grilling of the chicken. Another important note about this product is that it is All Natural, has no preservatives, no carbs, no sugar, and no fat. It is sauce worthy of experimenting on like I did. Even if you swing and miss once or twice, you will still knock the ball out of the kitchen before all said and done.
SANDI:
Again I would like to compliment the label on these sauces. Very creative. This sauce had a nice bright orange color. You can see the flecks of pepper through the bottle. When opening it for a sniff it is very smokey smelling with a hint of vinegar.
It was a little thick put pourable for a spoon sample. The flavor was also very smokey. I’m not sure if it is the chipotles or the liquid smoke that stood out the most. The heat was definitely present, and lasted a few minutes. I was really surprised at how “chunky” this sauce was. You could chew the bits of pepper. It tasted like a wing sauce, so I had to go with wings right off the bat.
What an incredible flavor this sauce had on wings! Definitely a wing sauce. It tastes like Defcon 2, (my favorite wing sauce), but with a smokey garlic taste and a bit more heat. I hate to say this, but this sauce gives Defcon 2 a challenge!
I tried the All Spice Cafe Garlic Chipotle on pizza, but it was too vinegary. I had the same reaction with beef and pork. However after trying Parker’s Defcon jerky, I’d be curious about how this sauce would work. That’s an adventure for another day. Thank you very much JD for allowing me to do this review for you and have fun with your sauces.
STEVE & MELANIE:
Back for the second of three reviews of All Spice Cafe sauces, this time Melanie and I will be reviewing the Chipotle Garlic Sauce.
After enjoying the Caribbean Spice sauce, I was pretty confident that we would like the Chipotle style, since it was made with more familiar ingredients for us- Aged Red Peppers, Chipotle Peppers, Granulated Garlic, Habanero Peppers and Liquid Smoke, among others. The color was darker than the Caribbean Spice. We shook the bottle and took a whiff of the sauce. Right away you could smell its smoky, garlic aroma. Again, similar to the Caribbean, the consistency looked like it would cover food very nicely.
We couldn’t wait to try the sauce on food. We were dippers and did not cook with the sauce (although the recipes recommend it), but will try that in the future. We tried it with four types of BBQ; shrimp, chicken, chicken kabobs and steak. We thought it would go well with the shrimp, and give us a chance to really taste the sauce with a food that would not over power it. At first dip, we both enjoyed the flavor. You could really taste the liquid smoke, garlic and chipotle peppers. Although the bottle says hot, we both felt it was more in the medium range, although you did know the heat was there.
Next up was the chicken breast. The flavors stood up to the test. It was a very pleasant blend and I would like to cook in foil next time to really bake it into the chicken. And now onto the chicken kabobs… Unlike the Caribbean style, that took me a while to get used to the flavors, the Chipotle blend rocked with the roasted red and green peppers, onions and chicken. Both Melanie and I thought that it was great and was not overpowered by the mixture of ingredients.
And finally, on to the steak, a couple of BBQ’ed filets. Based on the kabobs, we felt that the sauce would hold up well and we were not disappointed. We dipped the steak into the sauce, coated it well and savored the flavor – which was a tasty blend. The label includes a recipe for Tri Tip, which is probably very good too. To be honest though, we really enjoyed this most on the kabobs.
In summary, the All Spice Cafe Chipotle Garlic Sauce was another good product. It went well with all the food we tried it with, especially with the peppers on the kabobs, and we are interested in cooking/marinading with it. It is not too hot, but has a nice flavor that you can enjoy on anything.
Since our last review for JD Cowles’ All Spice Cafe Company, he was lucky enough to get his products featured in the August issue of Los Angelos Magazine. Although you can not read it here because of size restrictions, TTF wanted to recognize how hard it is to break through like this and to applaud this achievement. Congratulations JD!
Related Posts
- Multi-Review: All Spice Cafe- Caribbean Spice
- Multi-Review: All Spice Cafe- Cayenne Habanero
- Multi-Review: 4 Brothers Hot Pepper Sauce…Smokey Garlic Habanero
- Multi-Review: Mild to Wild Pepper Co – Smokin’ Chipotle Sauce
- Multi-Review: Kato’s Island Sauce
Topics: General, Hot Product Reviews, Reviews | 21 Comments »
Damn Krewe, you guys are pumping out reviews left and right. Excellent job to all and congrats to All Spice Cafe on another sauce success.
It’s surprising that this sauce didn’t get a more favorable response with pork looking at its ingredients. Maybe JD can weigh in on some recipes that this particular sauce meshes well with. It sounds delicious from the ingedients.
I want wings! Thanks Sandi, now I know what I’ll be using my bottle of this sauce on this weekend!
You’ll love it Cap’n. This sauce screams WINGS!
Mmmmmmmm
Wings
:inserthomersimpsondrooling:
This site is kicking ass. Period.
Great reviews gang !!!!!!
Thanks for the great reviews! The Chipotle Garlic is probably my best seller, used on everything from eggs, chicken (wings too :), grilled asparagus and especially on tri tip. Tri the marinate recipe on the bottle and brush a little extra on the beef while it’s cooking on the grill. It also works great as a dipping sauce with the tri tip. You should also have a look at the tasty recipes on the web site. Recipes for all 3 sauces and a pretty good one from Chile Pepper magazine for Chipotle Spinach Artichoke Dip (although I would add a bit more than the recipe calls for).
I find it interesting that 95% of the people who try the Chipotle Garlic find it hot and true chileheads find it mild ( I agree that it’s not too hot but has a nice level of heat to it). For me it’s more about flavor than heat and most people find the heat a little too hot (always getting requests for a milder version).
I wish I could cook up some grub for you guys to try the sauces with. Doing a demo with some baby back ribs, venison tenderloin and frogs legs tomorrow at Surfas in Culver City, CA. Wish you guys could be there!
Thanks again for the review and you guys rock for putting this site together!
JD
There are recipes included on the bottle labels. Another brilliant marketing strategy!
Great review, Nice job JD
Amen brotha.
Hello Turk[E]!
I gotta say that I’ve been VERY busy today and have not had a chance to read this review. Sounds like a must read from the comments.
Hey bro…good review and well worth the time to read. Looking forward to meeting JD someday.
Yep, I just read :nerd:’s review. I read slow, so bear with me. Sandi, looks like your up next.
:nerd:, the chicken looks great bro!
Just finished reading Sandi’s review.
Hotter than Defcon 2? Ok, I KNOW I gotta try this sauce. If someone makes a comparison with the DC 2, then it’s GOTTA be good! I want to try it with the wings for sure, especially with it being described as vinegary flavored like a wing sauce. I think it would work well as a jerky marinade Sandi, probably more so than the Defcon 2 because of the absence of dairy product in the ingredients.
Great reviews so far
and Sandi. One more to go and i already want to buy this sauce. 
So it’s Steve and Melanie next. BRB.
Great review Steve and Melanie. Sounds like it makes a great dipping sauce as well as for cooking. Now I’ll have something else to try with my Cracklin’s!
Nice reveiws by everyone. Very different points of view and uses by all.
JD, congrats on the magazine feature. Looking forward to ordering some sauce from you soon.
LOOKING AT THE INGREDIENTS, VERY SURPRISED IT DID NOT FLY WITH PORK…….TRY IT ON A PORK RIB CHOP
………OR GRILLED GROUPER…….NICE REVIEW
Thanks for all the kind words.
JD’s sauces are very unique in the marketplace and there is a lot of flavor in those bottles. Before you decide to purchase and experiment with them yourself, we have one more sauce review to go, and I think the last one is a must buy, Cayenne Habanero.
My personal feeling is that that sauce tastes a lot like Defcon 2 and makes a great wing sauce.
The Cayenne Habanero in my book absolutely kicks ass! I like to mix a little mayo in with it to thicken it and use it to dip french fries, soo good. It tastes exactly like a traditional wing sauce. I love this stuff.
Congrats on the magazine coverage JD! Are we going to see you @ ZF? If you’re not planning on going, you should really consider it. I know where there is a mechanical bull with your name on it!
You guys are awesome!
I cooked up some rigs this weekend and made a delicious glaze for the final touches. Chipotle Garlic, honey, muscovado sugar and a few other spices. Very tasty – might be one of the next sauces for All Spice Cafe!
I’ll be coming to Zest Fest Fri afternoon and unfortunately have to fly to NY on Sat. Hoping to hook up with some of you Fri night!
JD
Fri. night is the awards banquet. Everyone will be there, tickets are $25. but there is an open bar for 2 hours. Last year the DC krewe set a goal and succeeded in emptying 100 bottles of beer while it was still free!