I’ve always known one thing: NOTHING is a more polarizing subject than hot sauce or barbecue sauce. But you can’t be moderate in your praise of Mama’s Fire Tibetan Barbecue Sauce and Mama’s Fire Tibetan Hot Sauce.
I know and love spicy food. When I lived in India and in Bangladesh as a journalist, I became passionate about spicy foods. When I did shows in Texas in my later entertainer incarnation I not only had chili at some of the best barbecues and chili restaurants in Texas but attended (and sampled) a major chili cook-off at a Texas fair. At home in San Diego I eat lots of Mexican, Indian, Chinese and Thai foods and use spices often.
But there is a big, ongoing debate about barbecue sauce and hot sauce among those who love it – one that’s often hotter than radio “hot talk” shows.
Just when is a sauce too spicy? Is it best to use a liberal amount? Conservative amount? Moderate amount? When you taste the food will the sauce bring out the flavor of the meat, fowl or fish? Or does it blast the flavor away, overpowering the food so you taste sauce on something but it’d taste the same, no matter what you used it on? Does the spice quickly evaporate? Or linger? And if in lingers, is it a mouthwatering linger or an unpleasant one?
So I eagerly ripped open my UPS-delivered carton containing Mama’s Fire Tibetan Barbecue Sauce with its red color and the greenish-grey jar of Mama’s Fire Tibetan Hot sauce and studied the recipes in the enclosed brochure. I got ready to go to the website for more recipes – and then it hit me. Why not try to see how it tastes if you’re on the run and don’t have time to do a special recipe? How would it fare in everyday, average, no-time-to-do-recipes cooking?
Could the barbecue sauce pass a test like being used at a housewarming party and served to people of all ages? Could the jar of hot sauce pass the test if I used it on something I quickly grabbed from my freezer?
THE FIRST TEST: I was invited to a housewarming party in San Diego and brought a box of about 12 chicken legs with me and a bottle of barbecue sauce. I gave it to the hosts, who marinated it in mama’s barbecue with instructions to grill it outside and let people sample and them know I would get their reactions.
Whenever anyone bit into it they’d go “MMMMMMM!” immediately. All ages loved it – particularly teenagers.
The normally talkative Cloey M,, 18, repeated over and over: “It was really really good. Really REALLYgood!” Joseph B, 17:”This is just excellent. It goes so well with chicken. Perfect! Honestly!” Greg S., 19, savored it as if he tasted fine wine. “It tastes flavorful, yet it’s not super strong on chicken. It’s sweet but with a kick of spice that kicks in later. It’s a nice flavor and it lingers. It’s really really good.”
The sentiments were echoed by older folks, typified by Jack P, 46: “This is very very VERY good. It lets the taste of the chicken come through – which is good. It doesn’t drown out the flavor of the food.”
By the time I left, there were some leftovers from the meal – but all of the chicken legs were gone..
THE SECOND TEST: Now it was time for me to take the plunge with the jar of Mama’s Fire Hot Sauce at home, using it on something from my freezer. I decided to use two exceedly boring pork chops and broil them. After a few minutes I coated the top of the chops. Then after a few minute turned them over and coated the other side. When these usually boring chops were done I tasted them — and suddenly uttered the words I thought I’d never utter: “Duh! Winning!!”
No joke: these were the BEST pork chops I ever had.
Mama’s Fire Tibetan Hot Sauce turned the boring pork chops into an exciting dish: you could taste the sauce, but it enhanced the flavor of the meat itself in two ways. The flavoring perfectly permeated the chop. And due to its ingredients and just the right amount of oil in it, the pork chop came out juicer than usual. It accentuated the delicious flavor of the pork chops itself yet you could tastes the wonderful sauce that was spicy but not too hot.
I needed another test for part two.
So the next night I decided to try it on some turkey burgers that I tried at Costco and loved but tasted bland when I got them home. I was read to throw them out. This time, I fried the turkey burgers for a few minutes, then put on a coating on top of each one and after a minute or so, flipped it over, and put another coating and covered it. Once again: Mama’s Fire Tibetan Hot Sauce with a mouthwatering flavor all its own, made the turkey burgers fry so they emerged jucier than usual, and enhancedthe flavor of the turkey itself.
My conclusion? Mama’s Fire Tibetan Barbcue Sauce and Mama’s Fire Tibetan Hot Sauce can be used for fine or quick cooking. The flavors are unlike any others you’ve had.
And Mama’s Tibetan Barbecue Sauce and Mama’s FireTibetan Hot Sauce will enhance the flavor of your food: it doesn’t compete with your meat.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.