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I had been spending another fine afternoon at home staring at walls whilst engaged in astral travel, when boom – out of the blue, I get a message from Big Boy Sauce asking me if I wanted to try some pepper sauce. After careful consideration over a 0.7 second period, I stated my willingness to participate and unfolded my lawn chair next to the post box to await the arrival.
Before I even get into tasting these let’s just take a minute and appreciate how beautiful both of these are. If you were thinking this was a trick of the modern hyper realistic photo filters we all use on Instagram, let me assure you these were actually that vibrant in real life.
The handy included business card informed me that I had been sent the ‘Big Dog’ and the ‘Kakariki Verde’, but which was which? 🤔
Thankfully Maori language week was only last week and I remembered that ‘kakariki’ means ‘green’ – ‘Verde’ means ‘green’ in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Romanian. Not sure what weeks those languages were in.
Anyways I am going to guess that Kakariki Verde is the green one…
And sh1t – it did taste green!
This was full of fresh and herbaceous vegetable flavour with a little sweet. I found myself closing my eyes and tasting it again and again at first cautiously, and then more liberally as I tried to work out the several layers of different flavours that unfolded before it ended with a vinegary, spicy kick of heat.
Next, the Big Dog.
Habanero is my favourite pepper and the fruity flavour of the pepper itself was thankfully put out in front, the other spices framed and accentuated it before the experience ended with a wave of intense fiery heat. This was about the level of heat I like my pepper sauce to be – hot as hell.
Both are fermented and prepared, by hand, using traditional methods and native ingredients and they had a perfect texture and consistency – thick, but still poured easily from the bottle.
I feel bad for the sh1t in the squares around these two boys, these are in a class much higher than what I have been reviewing recently.
Good Boys –
Kakariki Verde – 9.1/10
Big Dog – 9.2/10
