Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Review. Show all posts


I am absolutely in love with these pickles.  When I eat these pickles, I wonder why people currently make or have ever historically endeavored to make any other kind of pickles, ever.  Later, when enough time has passed for the lingering tangy flavor to leave my tongue and for me to regain perspective and recover from my own hyperbole, I remember my abiding love for cornichons, too.  And, you know...a good standard dill pickle is nice sometimes.  But Archer Farms Bloody Mary Pickle Spears, man...they're just way too good.  Just, like, really swell.

As far as I know, Archer Farms is a house brand at Target, so you'll have to look for them there if you want to try them for yourself.  I don't believe they're distributed through any other stores.

Rather than a clear, vinegary brine, these pickles come suspended in a thick, opaque, tomato-tinged liquid.  Some batches of brine are thinner than others, but usually the pickles look like they're floating in a thick tomato sauce.

The flavor is very close to that of a decent Bloody Mary, minus the vodka, of course.  The pickles are so tasty, we decided to test whether you could actually just add vodka to the brine and happily drink it as a Bloody Mary.

Thankfully, when we tried it, we did it using unambitious little shot glasses.  It turns out the brine is actually far too salty and strong to actually be considered a beverage.  But maybe Bloody Mary pickle brine vodka shots could somehow be incorporated into a drinking game at your next party, with the strength and saltiness of the brine adding that extra bit of challenge.  Just be sure to have a glass of water (or several) handy.
As is the current fashion, we added every garnish we had on hand:  Tiny celery stalks, capers, onions, jalapeño olives, and the aforementioned cornichons.
But the pickles.  Oh, the pickles.

Tangy, savory, spicy, crunchy.  They're so perfect.  So delicious.  And all for less than three bucks.

I highly, highly, highly recommend you pick up a jar of these if they sound at all interesting to you.  And if you're getting one jar, go ahead and grab another while you're there.  It'll stave off the waves of abject disappointment when you finish the first jar way faster than you thought you would.




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Undeterred by my decidedly unspicy experience with Maruchan's Sriracha Chicken Flavor Ramen, I grabbed another one of their products that claimed to be hot and spicy: Maruchan Instant Lunch - Hot & Spicy Beef Flavor.


I associate these cup-style ramen delivery systems more with grade school than with poor college students.  I was always immediately jealous if some kid at school had one in their lunch.  The noodles always seem lower quality than what's in regular ramen packets, a perception that's probably enhanced by the fact that they never quite hydrate properly even if you follow the directions perfectly.  But they come in their own little Styrofoam cup and have little vegetables in them, so from a kid's point of view, they seem vastly fancier.

The words "Hot" and "Spicy" appear on the packaging many times.  It's like they're trying to tell us something...

Mmmm...powdery...

Yep, this is both instant and lunch.

Noodles enlarged to show noodleyness.
The flavor and quality is exactly what you'd expect from an instant noodle in a cup.  But I was actually pleasantly surprised by the level of heat in these noodles.  To my taste, they're by no means "hot", but the heat level definitely reads as intentional.  Where the Sriracha ramen from the same brand had no noticeable heat, this flavor definitely has a mild, enjoyable edge of spicy to it.

Would I recommend it?  Well, that depends.  If you can get your hands on some Shin Ramyun instead, I'd say do that without hesitation.  But if you're shopping for Maruchan Instant Lunch anyway and the Hot & Spicy Beef flavor is available, I say grab it.
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Still on the entitlement train for my birthday early in February, I got myself a bottle of High River Sauces' Rogue Moruga Blood Orange Scorpion Pepper Sauce.


I was enticed by the promise of high heat from the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion and Ghost Peppers, each of which have been declared the hottest pepper on earth in recent history before being eclipsed by another.  I was also drawn to the delicious-sounding combo of fruits, which includes blood oranges and pears.


The color on this sauce is really beautiful, but I have to warn you that it's very thin and watery.  It's very, very easy to dump an eighth of the bottle onto your food when you're trying to just add a dash.


My wife commented that the flavor is very vinegary, but I find the combo of the use of apple cider vinegar along with the sweet tang of the fruit ingredients makes the sharp flavor vibrant and keeps it out of the dreaded Tabasco zone.

The heat level is nice, but not overwhelming.  On the many occasions that I've accidentally dumped way more of the thin sauce than I meant to on my food, I've still enjoyed the flavor and heat and not found it too spicy for my tastes.  The sauce's sweetness and the fact that the hot peppers are relatively low on the ingredients list probably contributes to that.

The good:  Sharp, fruity flavor.  Decent heat.

The bad:  Very runny consistency.  Could be hotter.


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I'm not that into chips in general.  It's not that I'm not a snacky person, but when I'm craving something to munch on, chips are not my first choice.  There are exceptions, of course.  Tortilla chips with salsa or guacamole are great now and then.  And I enjoy the occasional salt and vinegar kettle chip or those barbecue twist Fritos.  But generally a bag of chips sitting near me isn't a huge temptation.

But my prodigious waistline and I have found a way.  The exception that overrules all other exceptions.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you Turbos Flamas by Sabritas.

Sabritas was a potato chip company founded in Mexico in the '40s, but Pepsico bought it in the '60s and it's now the Mexican brand and distributor of all Frito-Lay products.  Those of us in states bordering Mexico can also find some of their products next to the Lay's in the chip aisle.  And that's just where I found Turbos Flamas.

I was first drawn to them by their physical resemblance to the aforementioned Frito Honey BBQ Flavor Twists, the texture of which I really like.  The rotini-like shape led my wife and I to call them "noodle chips".  They have a finer grind than tortilla chips or regular Fritos, but still not so fine that they just go to mush in your mouth.  And while I'm not generally in love with chili/lime everything, the hyperbolic promise of high levels of heat made me think I should at least try Turbos Flamas once.  And then I tried them, like, a hundred times.


These crunchy little cornmeal twists covered in a chili-lime flavored red powder are a real weakness for me.  In fact, the only thing that keeps me from inhaling whole bags in one sitting is the sheer intensity of flavor.  The heat alone is not enough to dissuade me, although it does build up nicely as you eat them.  But along with the spicy heat is a tart, tangy lime flavor that escalates alongside it, the combo of the two eventually making it feel as though if you don't stop eating them, you'll be whistling through holes in both cheeks.

And it's so good.  It's so intense.  This is a snack with absolutely zero subtlety.

And by the time you've cried "uncle" your fingers are coated in a thick layer of  radioactive magenta dust.  Ungodly red swirls around the drain when you wash your hands afterward in an unintentional tribute to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.

I hate and love these snacks.

They're going to kill me someday, I know it.


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I chose Elijah's Xtreme Reaper Sauce because it won a first place Scovie for 2017 in the XXX Hot Sauce category.  On top of that, it just sounded really interesting from the ingredients list, which includes black cherries, cranberry sauce, Kentucky bourbon whiskey and vanilla.

I also grabbed it because the Carolina Reaper secured a Guinness World Record certification as the  hottest chili pepper in the world in 2013. 

Yes, I finished a third of the bottle before remembering to photograph it...
 You can immediately smell the cherries and vanilla as soon as you open the bottle.  The ad copy for the sauce proclaimed "tastes great on just about everything… even ice cream!"  So I immediately put it on ice some vanilla ice cream.  The flavor and aroma are so desserty that I'm actually having a hard time imagining putting it on anything else.  Maybe it would be good on some pork or chicken where the sweet, fruity taste might make a good complement.  But I definitely wouldn't add this to soup or a burrito.
Look at that beautiful texture.  You can see little chunks of cherry and cranberry.
It tastes pretty much exactly like it smells.  I don't detect as much tartness from the cranberries as I might have liked, but the cherry flavor tinged with vanilla is really prominent and quite good.

Iced cream, anyone?  With a little leftover birthday cake bonus.
And the Carolina Reaper heat delivers.  I thought it wasn't all that hot when I took my first taste, but it really built up on me.  I think the sweetness of the sauce masks the heat a bit at first, and that effect was probably enhanced by the sugar and milk of the ice cream I was eating it with.  I think I'd also hyped it up in my mind as the sauce that would definitely kill me due to the Carolina Reaper's world record heat.  But whatever my preconceptions, the sauce definitely packs a high, lingering spicy heat.  The end result is really exciting and delicious.

I recommend this sauce if you perk up at the idea of a very spicy, sweet sauce drizzled over ice cream.  But to my taste, this sauce's uses are somewhat limited by the desserty flavor profile, which makes this a little bit of a gimmick sauce in my book.

Very tasty, but I can't see using it every day.

Side note:  My wife had a bit of an allergic reaction to this sauce, which sucks because she found it really delicious, despite not being into super-spicy foods.  She has a really severe allergy to bell peppers, but she's always had good luck with jalapeños, habañeros, serranos, etc.  So generally the mildest of peppers makes her throat close, but hot peppers are fine.  This was her first time tasting anything containing Carolina Reaper peppers, so it's possible she's actually allergic to those.  None of the other listed ingredients are foods she reacts to, so it's either the Reapers or maybe there's a little bit of unlisted bell pepper in this sauce.


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YouTube is rife with videos of people taking the "Fire Noodle Challenge".  This is the common nickname for people's attempts to eat a serving of Samyang Foods' famously spicy Buldak Bokkeum Myun (불닭볶음면 - Hot Chicken Flavor Ramyun).  Many mortals absolutely lose their minds with distress and anguish over how spicy it is.  A few curiously shrug it off like it's nothing special.

Introduced in 2012 by Samyang Foods,  Buldak Bokkeum Myun is considered one of the spiciest commercial ramyun in Korea.




The usual gist of the challenge is to consume the spicy noodles as quickly as possible.  I guess this keeps people from trying to eat a bit of noodles every half-hour or so, taking advantage of plenty of recovery time between bites, and then claiming they "won" the challenge.  On top of that, who wants to watch a four-hour video of someone crying over noodles?

But I'm not really interested in wolfing noodles as fast as possible on video.  My question is, are these noodles spicy hot and enjoyable?  Will it burn my face off?  Will I die weeping in a puddle of sticky, spicy sauce?

Let's find out.

The packet on the left is a mix of sesame seeds and flakes of laver (seaweed).  The packet on the right is the sauce.

Buldak Bokkeum Myun differs from the standard ramen soup we eat in America in that the "soup base" isn't a powder that's intended to be mixed with water to make a broth.  Instead, you get a little packet filled with a thick pre-mixed sauce.  Instead of mixing the soup base into the boiling water with the noodles, you cook the noodles and drain them as though you're making spaghetti.

Naked ramyun.  NSFW.
Then you add the sauce.  It squeezes out of its little packet looking almost black, like thick crude oil sludge tinged with red.

Black gold.  Texas tea.
Stirring it up reveals the deep red-orange of the sauce.  Plenty of chili oil and chili powder in there.  Promising...and scary?  It certainly smells good.


I skipped the little packet of sprinkly stuff because of the seaweed.  My wife wanted to taste it with me and seaweed tends to trigger her severe shrimp allergy.  I'm also just not a huge fan of seaweed, myself.  It's like dried lawn clippings that taste like the wharf.  Pass.

The first thing that hit me about the sauce was a noticeable sweetness, which then faded to a savory flavor that I compared to a concentrated ramen soup base packet.  It's quite tasty, but it's intense.  Then the spiciness crept up on me.  I think the initial sweetness cuts the heat a bit, making it almost unnoticeable at first.  Maybe this is by design, like a tricky flavor special effect.

So here's where you're either going to be disappointed or super impressed with my spicy food-eating prowess.  While Buldak Bokkeum Myun is definitely quite spicy - definitely far spicier than most American palates can handle - I personally didn't get sent into paroxysms of agony and panic over it.  It had a nice, lingering, burning heat and I was left doing that little hissing, breathing-through-the-teeth thing I do when something really hot sticks with me for a while.  But I also found it completely tolerable and not too spicy to eat casually.

My wife, who proclaims herself not to be a huge fan of spicy foods, took a few decent-sized bites and declared that it wasn't way too hot for her, either.  She described how her lips burned afterward and definitely expressed some discomfort.  But she also didn't scream or cry or eagerly grope for something to drink.  And she went back for more.  If I'd bought more than one package, I think she'd have asked me to make her one, too.  Now, to be fair, she has been living with me for about 15 years, so her sense of what's way too hot is almost definitely skewed compared to the palate of the average Midwesterner.  But I typically can tolerate far hotter foods than she can and this didn't utterly destroy her.

All gone.
So, despite not gorging on these noodles as quickly as possible, I think it's fair to say I "won" the challenge.  I ate the whole thing (minus a few bites that went to my wife) and lived to tell about it.

Was it tasty?  Yes, despite a little bit of an over-processed undertone to the flavor of the sauce.

Was it hot?  Yes, but I didn't find it debilitating.

Would I buy it again?  Absolutely...probably a four-pack next time.


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I found the cup version of Shin Black, which is the less spicy, more flavorful cousin to Nongshim's Shin Ramyun.  I was excited to try it because I've enjoyed the original Shin Ramyun so much.


Shin Black's extra savory flavor comes from an additional broth packet.

Two packets is more flavor than one packet.


The additional packet is labeled "SUL-LONG-TANG" (설렁탕 - Seolleongtang), which refers to a traditional Korean broth made from slow-simmered ox bones.  The ingredient list on the package tells me Shin Black's answer to this is "beef bone extract".


Shin Black also appears to have more quantity and variety of dehydrated vegetables compared to the regular version.  I can clearly identify two kinds of mushrooms, scallions and little rings of sliced red chilies.

Spicy soup powder on the left, bone broth powder on the right.

When cooked, the broth smells absolutely delicious.  The flavor is less spicy, but deeper, richer and more complex than regular Shin Ramyun.  I was raised in America, so my palate is not finely tuned in detecting umami, but I'd be willing to wager this broth is umami as fuck.



Do I prefer Shin Black over the original flavor of Shin Ramyun?  No, not really.  Mind you, this is a really delicious instant soup.  But personally, I'm more fond of the spicier broth of Shin Ramyun and if given the choice, I'll reach for that.  But I'd still recommend Shin Black if you're in the mood for a deep, meaty, complex instant noodle experience.
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After I bemoaned the complete lack of spiciness in the Sriracha ramen I tried recently, a friend recommended I try Shin Ramyun (thanks, Cindy!).  Not to ruin the ending, but I was not disappointed.

Ramyun is Korean for "ramen".
Shin Ramyun is made by Nongshim and is the most popular instant noodle in South Korea.  It's exported all over the world from plants in South Korea, China and the United States.  The version I'm eating was manufactured in the U.S.

Shin Ramyun is a big step up in quality compared to the average $0.25/package ramen that's a daily staple of so many American dorm-dwellers and stoners and the price tag reflects that.  I found a four-pack at a nearby Wal-Mart for under $4.00, but you can expect to pay over a dollar per pack at most stores.


The noodles come in a cute bowl- and pot-friendly round puck unlike the usual square blocks of cheap noodles we all know so well.  Along with the usual soup/seasoning powder is a separate pack of dehydrated vegetables and beef.

When cooked, the noodles are springy and have a really nice texture.  The beef-based broth has a rich, deep flavor and you can see little beads of fat shimmering on the surface. 



And compared to the weak, apologetic heat of most "spicy" foods on the American market, this product has a really respectable heat to it.  I find it by no means overpowering, but it builds up nicely as you eat it.  You definitely know you're eating something intentionally spicy.

When my wife first tasted some of from my bowl, she said she could barely taste any flavor in the broth except for spicy.  But later, she asked for a serving of her own and made "yum" noises all the way through.

Of course, I'm a savage garbage person who craves even more heat, so I usually add some Sriracha and a dash of whatever habañero-based sauce I'm in the mood for at the moment, as well as some accoutrements such as sliced onion, peas and an egg.

...plus some sliced roast beef.  Why not?  I'm fat.
I highly recommend Shin Ramyun.  I've already gone back to buy more and my second round of it is already gone.  I'm probably consuming too much sodium, honestly.


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I can't keep this sauce on my shelf.  I go through it so fast.  The savory, lightly smoky flavor and really excellent heat-per-dollar ratio make it a no-brainer favorite.  I put a little bit too much of it on pretty much everything.  And I can get it for under two bucks at just about any grocery store near me.

It's distinctly hotter than the other El Yucateco offerings, but not so hot that I ever hesitate to reach for it.  And the flavor is just miles above the brand's other variations.
A closeup to show off the beautiful texture - the ingredients don't list any food coloring.

I tried it for the first time just a few months ago and I've gone through several bottles.  I wish it came in a big-ass bottle like Sriracha does.  I'd sleep with it next to me.

Cheap.  Delicious.  Hot.  Favorite.

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Instant ramen is a pretty amazing food.  It's cheap.  It's fast.  And if you're not stuck eating it for every single meal out of desperate financial necessity, it can be pretty tasty.  Thankfully, it's been about ten years since I've been on a largely ramen-based diet, so instant noodles from a plastic package have had time to go back to being a quick, steamy treat instead of a dreary, repetitive food slog.

So the last time the mood for ramen struck me, I spotted some Maruchan Sriracha Chicken Flavor ramen at the grocery store and snagged a couple. Maruchan's jumped on the popular Sriracha bandwagon, so I wanted to see how their effort stacked up.


First impression from a ramen point of view?  Fine.  It was the standard Maruchan ramen experience.  Noodly.  Salty.  No complaints.

First impression from a Sriracha perspective?  Disappointing.  The broth had a hint of orange tint to it, attempting to imply that some beautiful red Sriracha sauce had been waved near it.  Of course, I didn't expect it to come out looking like a broth when I'm done adding hot sauce to it, looking as though it's running red with the blood of my peppery enemies.  But I'd still largely categorize the color of this broth as "powdered chicken yellow".

And tasting the broth only yielded the faintest, most distant waft of Sriracha flavor and absolutely no heat that I could discern.  I could easily convince myself this was just a standard chicken broth with food coloring added and maybe a tiny pinch of extra garlic.  If I cared more, I'd arrange a blind taste test with some other chicken-based flavors and try to guess which broth was supposed to contain Sriracha flavoring.  But...I don't care that much.

Yep.  That's ramen.
What did I expect for $0.18?  

Honestly, brothy noodle soups are one of the best things to add actual Sriracha sauce to, so why try to skip that step by infusing the flavor packet with weak, nebulous Sriracha-like flavor?

Taste testing done, I dressed up the ramen with the best resources currently available in my kitchen.

Ahhh...much better.
You want delicious Sriracha flavor on your ramen?  This is how you do it.  Also added:  An egg, some peas, some thinly sliced onion and a few dashes of ghost pepper sauce on top of the Sriracha because I'm a savage.

The good:  Ramen.

The bad:  Disappointing lack of Sriracha flavor and no detectable heat.
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As an early Xmas gift, my wife and I received a really nice bundle of three Pain Is Good hot sauces from a friend (thanks, Jennifer!).  One was an old favorite, one was a sauce I'd tried before and didn't hate and the third was new to me and has now become a solid favorite.

I was introduced to this brand years ago at a Ross (Dress for Less!) of all places.  They usually have a tiny aisle full of weird "discounted" kitchen gadgets and such and the next aisle over is usually stocked with odds and ends of snacks and stuff like cocoa mixes, weird cookies and occasionally random hot sauces.  I was probably drawn to the sauces by the eye-catching label art, featuring various faces contorted in hot sauce-induced agony (ecstasy?).  But their respectable heat and good attention to flavor kept me coming back for more.


Pain Is Good Batch #37 Garlic Style Hot Sauce
This is one I'd had before and liked it well enough, but not enough to buy it over and over again.  It has decent heat and a very sharp flavor.  Not quite in that hated Tabasco range of vinegary garbage flavor, but enough to overpower the garlic just enough.  But a little on some potatoes or on pasta or in a soup is fine if you're in the mood for a more piquant flavor and some heat.  It's not my favorite, but I'm not kicking it out of my food-bed.


Pain Is Good Batch #114 Jamaican Style Hot Sauce
This one's definitely an old favorite.  I think this is the first one I ever bought from this brand and I've purchased it several times since.  It was my introduction to habañero-based sauces as well as to jerk spices in general.  I really like the flavor on this one.  It's sweet from the pineapple juice and the jerk spices give it an exotic kick.  I liberally use it on foods with existing flavor profiles that are probably not appropriate for the addition of jerk seasoning because I'm a goddamn savage.  Italian pasta?  Yep.  Now it's Jamaican jerk Italian marinara, motherfucker!  Chinese fried rice?  Yeah!  Welcome to Jamaica!  On a side note, Pain Is Good also makes a Jamaican Pineapple Salsa that's milder, but has the same flavor profile as the Batch #114 sauce.  It's really, really good.  I actually avoid getting it because we go through it too fast to justify the price tag.


Pain Is Good Habañero Pepper Sauce
I'd never tried this particular one before and it's such a new favorite that the bottle's already almost empty.  When I first got it, I swabbed some on my finger and tasted it and immediately let out the longest "Mmmmmm".  (This, by the way, is my usual method odf first tasting any hot sauce.)  It's mustard-based and tastes like a delicious barbecue sauce with a really nice level of habañero heat.  It's savory and smoky and tangy.  I'm still a savage, so I also throw it on pasta and soup and such, but because of the mustard and barbecue aspects, it's really perfect for slathering on burgers and sandwiches.  I'm definitely a fan of this one and need to pick up some more soon.  My bottle's woefully close to empty.

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