Habanero Hot Sauce
Secret Aardvark calls its sauce a Caribbean / Tex-Mex hybrid sauce with a combination of habanero peppers and roasted tomatoes. They highly encourage you to dump the sauce on everything, that's their line, but I have to say its valid. You really can put this sauce on all of the things. Tacos, burritos, rice bowls, nachos, pizza...anything I wanted a little extra heat on all worked. Then there is the ease of the squeeze bottle, with no awkward over pours, or wrong placement for saucing a bite. All of the flavor and very easy delivery of the sauce through the squeeze bottle had this go into the immediate repeat rotation.
Secret Aardvark started in Portland in 2004. Scott Moritz began selling this habanero sauce at farmers markets. It is still the original bottle. The company says he died in 2009 and that Stacy Moritz has run it since. Packed near Portland.
This is a sauce that continued to grow on me the more I used it, which is always a good sign. I knew I was really sold on the versatility when I found myself squeezing some onto a quick sandwich I made because I wanted a bit of heat. I primarily used it as a finishing sauce rather than something I would cook with, but that is also in large part because I don't cook that often. It works on cold food and hot food. Pizza is the easy test for that one. The hot sauce had the familiar habanero sweetness that I have come to expect, followed by a building heat that doesn't overwhelm, but makes its presence known and lingers for a bit.
After taking a few bites back to back this sauce builds to near my peak spice level preference. The sweetness still shows, but the heat takes over a bit. I think the reason it never got overwhelming is partially because of the tomato base. One of the things that stands out about the sauce is despite the growing spice level I found myself continuously adding more to each bite. That's a real tasting note I love to see, the desire to go back and add more is always a good sign. Aardvark's tomato and pepper is a combination I am loving, with the tomato helping the heat never feel overpowering. It has a delicious kind of heat that keeps me coming back bite after bite.
I am discovering I am not a huge vinegar first hot sauce guy, and the tomato base added a level of thickness to the sauce that not only balanced the heat but kept it from running all over the plate or off my food (big fan of this). This is an easy Take My Money rating, and will be a staple in the hot sauces I consistently use.