Our sauce today is the High River Cheeba Gold Barbados style Scotch Bonnet Pepper Sauce. Whew, that’s a long name. This has been one of our favorite sauces for the past year or so. I’m a sucker for sweet sauces and scotch bonnet peppers so this sauce is right up my alley. Just the right level of spice, mixed with a proper flavor profile with a backbone of peach and curry. Love it.

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Smell

Curry is one of my favorite flavors profiles in a hot sauce. Something about the complexity and depth of that spice blend just goes so well with so many different peppers. Right off the bat this sauce hits with the curry scent, then is backed up by a hint of scotch bonnet. I’ll say this all the time, but pound for pound, the scotch bonnet pepper makes better sauces than most peppers. It’s not cray cray spicy so sauce makers have the ability to play with more delicate flavors and compose more complex sauces. It also has my favorite scend of the medium-ish not gonna kill you peppers. Reapers and ghost peppers assault your nose, scotch bonnet invites you in, hands you a beer, and says “let’s party” then tosses on a Afro-Cuban All Stars album. I got a little side tracked there….curry, some scotch bonnet, some sweetness, garlic, and a little black pepper are the main notes coming off this sauce. 

Taste

Wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. I don’t often rave about hot sauces, but this is one of those exceptions to the rules. There’s so much sweetness from the peach and brown sugar it threatens to overwhelm the sauce. But after that initial sweet tang, you’re led down a curry hallway and into a room full of scotch bonnet and garlic. I can get down with this sauce all day. After eating the whole bottle (something that regrettably happens less and less around here) I can confidently say this sauce will get re-stocked. I love the sweetness of this sauce and it’s a great sauce for your friends who say they like spicy but you don’t want to ruin a friendship by giving them some last dab or random reaper sauce no. 22 (TM that name you idea stealing jackals).  

Eat It With

High River Cheeba Gold is one of those ‘try it on everything because it will probably taste good’ sauces. It’s a great wing sauce and goes really well with fish and grilled meats. I probably wouldn’t pair it with something that’s already sticky sweet but it would still be delicious on some ribs especially dry rubbed, or some dry rubbed jerk chicken (after all that’s truly where the scotch bonnet shines). You might want to stay away from using it for dipping, it’s a little chunky for fries or onion rings.