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Multi-Review: Flaming Joe’s Island Fire Tropical Fruit & Habanero Marmalade
By Buddah | January 15, 2009 |
Review 1: Bill & Sandi
Ingredients: Sugar, Pineapple with juice, Mandarin Oranges, Lemon Juice, Habaneros, Jalapenos, Pectin, Dried green Mangos, dehydrated orange and lemon zests.
Straight out of the jar it has a tropical pineapple taste with the perfect marmalade texture, then the bite of the peppers! Because of the pineapple I decide that we should use it in our favorite homemade sweet and sour chicken. It is real simple to make you just need chicken, green peppers, mushrooms, green onion, cherry tomatoes and of course pineapple. Oh, you can’t forget the rice.
After sautéing the chicken low and slow, you cook the veggies a bit and then add the chopped chicken. In comes the marmalade. Note: We had to cook a different pan for Drew in case he couldn’t handle the heat.
Over the river and through the gums-
Look out tummy, here it comes.
Success! The boy-he likes it!!!
Andrew’s plate…he ate it all!
Bet we all know who’s plate THIS is!!
As a breakfast item Sandi had it with a bagel and cream cheese. Nice and fruity with some kick in the morning! Good flavor. We didn’t try it over the crackers and cream cheese as the label suggested. I just think of marmalade as something you would put on a toasted item, but the stuff really impressed me on the sweet and sour chicken. I usually just use the sweet and sour sauce that sits on the grocer’s shelves, but I honestly think that from now on the Flaming Joe’s will be the staple for it.
As usual a great big Thank You to all involved!!!
Review 2: BUDDAH:
Whilst at the Weekend of Fire show in Fairfield, Ohio at Jungle Jim’s International Market, Joe approached me twice. The first time was to ask if I would organize a review for his new habanero marmalade product, and the second time was to serve me a mini cup of ice cream with his new marmalade atop of it. Well, I told him he shouldn’t try to buy off a reviewer with ice cream. Well, he in fact swayed me with that small helping. Boy was it good on the ice cream. Vanilla I believe. It was such a small portion, that while Joe was distracted I took another mini cup. 
Well, as soon as I got into my new home, I wanted to crack open my review jar and get to the review process. Well my review process took me back to ice cream. Yeah, I all ready knew it worked with ice cream, but that was plain ol’ vanilla. I needed to take it further and see if it worked with another popular flavor. So I went out to the store and brought back some of the ever popular Pear Cinnamon Caramel. Folks, I do believe we have a winner here! There is no presence of heat for me, but that might be because I have a high heat tolerance. Note from Admin: Al you are such a stud! You still have a wonderful flavor with all the mixed fruits and the taste of habaneros is there. It was wonderful with the chunks of pears and caramel in the ice cream. D-Licious.
For the sake of understanding, I want to discuss the differences between jelly and marmalade. I found a great article discussing jelly terms at www.TheNibble.com. If you want to learn more terms like jam, preserves, chutney, etc. please visit the link and it will take you to that article. For our purposes, here are the explanations of jelly and marmalade:
Jelly: Jelly is simply sweetened and jelled fruit juice, a clear, bright product. It is generally made by cooking fruit juice and sugar with pectin as a jelling agent and lemon juice as an acid, to maintain a consistent texture. Jelly is firm and will hold its shape (it “shakes”). Generally, jelly contains no pieces of fruit, although specialty jellies, like pepper jelly, may include pieces of jalapeño or other pepper.
Marmalade: Marmalade is a soft jelly, often citrus-based, that includes the flesh and often the peel of the fruit suspended throughout the jelly base. The sweetness of the jelly is offset by the bitterness of the peel offsets. Some products that are called marmalade—onion and tomato marmalades, for example—are actually misnamed jams and preserves.
I am not sure if Joe is using the correct term, but to me it doesn’t really matter because whether you call it jelly, marmalade, preserves or whatever, you pretty much know what you are using once you read the label and open the jar. Without any further adieu let us get back to the review…
I had the craving to try the jelly on some warm corn bread. So I got a mini corn muffin and slapped some of the marmalade on it. In addition, I sliced up a 1/2 banana and applied it onto the banana. From the first bite of the corn bread to the last, I realized this wasn’t a good idea at all. Maybe the corn bread wasn’t the best, but I had it with butter and it was fine, but with the marmalade I didn’t care for it at all. Although, the marmalade was decent with the bananas I certainly would not want to do it again. Decent doesn’t make me want to repeat the quick recipe.
If the corn bread was a bad idea, then the next one falls into the disaster category. I bought some raspberry white chocolate peanut butter and spread some on a few club crackers, then added Joe’s marmalade on top of the peanut butter. The peanut butter is good on it’s own, but paired with the habanero jelly, whoa! I won’t discount the fact that using a specialty peanut butter was a good idea, in fact if I was to try it again, I would use a Jif crunchy peanut butter product. Yet, in my mind that match would not work either. Blech!
After striking out on three of my ideas, I had one left. Chicken. I had a precooked skinless thigh and leg that I wanted to spread the habanero marmalade on. It spread on the chicken a bit clumpy, but since it was sticky it worked well enough.
It very much reminded me of duck sauce or Saucy Susan from my childhood.
When it came out of the oven, it smelled and looked like a meal I really was looking forward to eating, as if it was from an Iron Chef. Okay, maybe not, but it did look good.
See, I told you it looked good. Yet, did it taste good? Except for the ice cream, this was the tops for the marmalade. I might’ve struck out with the 3 other ideas, but I hit a home run out of the ballpark with my Flaming Marmalade Chicken. I don’t think you will find a lot of heat from this product, but it does have a good sweet taste that I enjoyed on the chicken and especially the ice cream.
Anytime you buy a product, you have to treat it like an investment. If you experiment, that investment might yield something special. I think I proved that in the end. Who knows what the other reviewers will come up with? I hope they have more ideas since I still have more marmalade left. Thanks Joe!
Review 3: HUDD
While at Jungle Jim’s during Weekend of Fire, Buddah comes up and hands me a jar and says that I need to do a review on it. This review is on Flaming Joe’s Island Fire Tropical Fruit & Habanero Marmalade. I take a look at it and I immediately think it looks like jelly. I’ve never tried anything like this before so I was very interested in doing the review.
As usual, I checked out the website www.flamingjoes.com for recipes, company history and such. The website is just straight and to the point. There’s a list of the awards received, order page and a couple picture galleries. If you’ve had your picture taken with your head in the Flaming Joe’s label, your picture just may be there. I like the label, black with red and yellow lettering and the flaming head with Joe’s face smiling at you.
I looked through the website and didn’t find any recipes, just the same usage suggestions as on the side of the jar: “A tropical marmalade of pineapple, orange, mango & lemon balanced with heat from Habanero & Jalapeno peppers. Great over cream cheese with crackers. Use to glaze chicken, salmon, pork or ham. Even delicious over vanilla ice cream.”
So today I grill out some 1″ thick center cut pork chops. I grilled them on low heat and after I turned them the last time, I applied a nice big spoonful on a couple of them. While they were finishing up on the grill I took a spoonful and tasted it. Now I have to be truthful here, Island Fire has a very unique texture to it. It was the texture that bothered me most. It has a good fruity taste and just a slight burn from the habanero peppers, but the pieces of fruit and peppers mixed in with the jelly texture was just not to my liking. I can’t stand tapioca pudding for the same reason.
Okay, back to my dinner. The chops are about finished and the Island Fire has glazed over a bit and looks and smells really good. So dinner’s on. We have a small salad, pork chops, corn, and sliced tomatoes fresh from the garden. Like I said I was worried that I wasn’t going to like Island Fire on my juicy chop. I took a bite and I was amazed at the flavor. The fruit is a pretty even blend with maybe a bit more pineapple coming through than anything else. Nice sweet tasting and then comes the habanero. Nothing overbearing, just a nice little aftertaste/tingle on the lips and tongue. I eat my first chop without even offering a taste to my wife and son. The second one, I gave them each a piece, and they both agreed that it’s quite tasty and the habanero heat isn’t bad at all.
So dinner’s over and I was quite pleased with the Island Fire. The wife gets out some vanilla ice cream and serves up a couple of scoops to each of us. I asked, but had no takers on the Island Fire as a topping on the ice cream. I spooned a couple spoonfuls on top of mine and dug in. The ice cream and marmalade blended together as one. I didn’t even notice the chunks of fruit and peppers. Island Fire is delicious over vanilla ice cream.
Flaming Joe’s Island Fire is only six dollars for a 10 ounce jar. So for all the ways to use it I think that’s a fair price. As well as it worked the ways I used it tonight, I’m sure it would be just as good on grilled salmon and chicken breast. I will use it the next time I grill out chicken. Might even try it over cream cheese as suggested. I’m even thinking it would be good on nice warm home made biscuits, the kind Granny used to make. I recommend Flaming Joe’s Island Fire for something different. I think you will be pleased!
www.FlamingJoes.com
Contact Info: flamingjoes@gmail.com
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Topics: Hot Product Reviews, Reviews | 9 Comments »
Stud?
Flaming Joe’s on a roll.:dtu:
So did Andrew eat the regular recipe, or the milder one?
Love the pics of Andrew. That’s an endorsement if I ever saw one. So, how come there’s no pic of Bill’s plate? Couldn’t fit it in the camera frame?
Although I don’t eat marmalade, jam, or any other form of jelly, I enjoyed this review. Bill & Sandi’s recipe looks really delicious and I think maybe I would enjoy the product in something like that. May just have to give it a go.
Great reviews everyone.
Great review by all!
Now I’m hungry….that chicken of :nerd:’s looks really good, so does Bill and Sandi’s sweet and sour!
Thanks to all of you for the reviews!
I love seeing the ways other people use my products. I myself love to eat this on a nice toasted bagel with butter, or mixed with a little bit of vinegar for dipping egg rolls.
Sorry that my website is lacking in the recipe department. I guess I can start with Bill & Sandi’s Sweet and Sour Chicken.
:nerd:, I think it qualifies as a marmalade, citrus & peel, it’s in there.
I have something that might go better with peanut butter. Would you guys now want to review my latest product, Strawberry Jalapeño Jam?
Andrew ended up eating both! The pics of him were eating the regular version. He loves being a part of reviews. He’s practicing his own with sauces here at the house..one day he’ll write one.
:!: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!: :!:
Will the apple fall far from the tree?
Sandi here’s a little something that may help Drew…Hot Sauce Kids of Taste The Fear
CLICK HERE