CaJohn’s Black Garlic Hot Sauce Review

Garlic: once you go black, you’ll never go back. Except for seconds. Or to try new recipes. Or just to sit there mainlining it down your piehole with your eyes rolled back in your head. If you’re a garlic junky like myself but you haven’t discovered black garlic on your own, let’s just say it’s your idea of candy. Just don’t hand it out on Halloween. The last thing we want is for the cops taking you away in cuffs just because the vampire who lives down the street thinks you poisoned his/her kid’s trick-or-treat bag. Or as it’s called around my neighborhood, The Great Mark Masker Candy Fiasco of 2017.

CaJohn’s Fiery Foods also knows the dark magic of black garlic; they’ve even put forth the culinary alchemy to bottle it into a damn fine sweet hot sauce. Not only does CaJohn’s Black Garlic Hot Sauce contain black and white garlic, it’s balanced with Fresno pepper, apple cider cinegar, sweet soy sauce, brown sugar, salt, and cayenne powder. CaJohn’s aimed for balance with this sauce and hit the target. Not only does it give you the earthy, fermented flavor of the black garlic and its associated sweetness, you also get salt, sour, and a kiss of fire at the finish when you eat it. Balanced sauces make for broader consumer appeal and more versatility for cooking than straight ramping up the heat, so it’s a win-win for company and consumer alike. You can marinate with it, use it as the flagship flavor in a glaze, punch up dishes like fried rice, or experiment with it like I did in this Banzai Burger recipe:

I was extremely happy with the results. The one caution I offer with the black garlic hot sauce is that it’s not mild. It’s pretty bold; you don’t need to blorp it like A-1 on diner shoe leather to get the flavor across.
A little goes a long way, which means your bottle goes a long way unless you’re a garlic fiend. In that case, you’ll want a straw, an intervention, or both.