Apart from the nasal carpet-bombing that’s easy to find at a Chinese restaurant, there really aren’t many hot mustards out there. So I was pleased when I received Flash Point Sauces’ Blazin’ Mustard in my Fuego Box today. (Put a splash of serendipity on it too: I grilled hamburgers and hot dogs Saturday night, and there were a few leftovers.)
The most recent hot mustard I can remember trying was Mad Anthony’s, and while it was tasty enough, I ended up adding a slosh or two of XXXTRA HOT Private Reserve to it to kick it up. Does Blazin’ Mustard have what it takes to stand on its own? What do we have here?
Ingredients: Prepared mustard (vinegar, water, mustard seed, salt, turmeric, paprika), cider vinegar, scorpion peppers, brown sugar, water, kosher salt, and spices.
So Flash Point starts with regular old yellow mustard, which is a fine call for such a product. No demerits there. Scorpion peppers check in third, but behind more vinegar, so we’ll see. Water is unfortunate, but low on the list. Finally, you don’t often see the nebulous “spices” entry on a boutique sauce ingredient panel, but there it is.
The smell is pleasant, and seems consistent with what’s in it, though there is little or no olfactory heat alarm. The mustard is a uniform burnt orange, with dark flecks here and there. Normally, for a product that might hurt I’d have a little taste on something neutral like a tortilla chip before plunging in, but this time I decided I’d load a hot dog up with Blazin’ Mustard as the only topping and take a big bite.
Mustard hits first as you would expect, but the peppers aren’t far behind. There’s a little less sweetness than I anticipated. It’s a good, robust sauce that would work anywhere you’d use regular mustard, I think. My dog was good. I’d have it on a hamburger. I may have a ham sandwich with it tomorrow.
The peppers deliver most of their heat quickly, which in my experience is atypical for Capsicum chinense cultivars (as scorpion peppers are). The slow build is more characteristic. In any case, the heat peak is a good bit beyond a hill, but not an especially imposing mountain. I finished the hot dog at a normal pace before having a drink, and was only just ready for one. A goodly swallow of Diet Rite and another three or four minutes, and the fire was out. Call the heat a 5 (but my usual warnings apply—this rating is based on my warped palette. This product is much hotter than any sauce you can easily find in a grocery store, so be careful.)
A solid sauce indeed, and though it’s not an especially long list, my favorite hot mustard that I’ve tried to date.
7/10
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