Page 6 - July 2020 Barbecue News Magazine

bbq reviews
PRODUCT REVIEWS
Croix Valley Pineapple Habanero Sauce
Raymond Cato catoraymond40@ gmail.com
With so many BBQ sauces out
it's not often that I find one
which stands out from the rest.
It is even less often that I get ex-
cited over one. This was the case however when I happened
across this Pineapple Habanero
sauce from the team at Croix
Valley foods. When I first laid
eyes on the sauce the tantalizing
color and specs of flavor brought thoughts of one of my guilty
pleasures which wings from a
chain pizza franchise. I had to
see if this sauce could satisfy my cravings for a copycat recipe of
those wings. With the first taste I was definitely thinking that this was going to be an exciting ride into the realms of flavor. I contacted the husband and wife team at Croix Valley to offer my excite- ment and to get any tips they may be able to provide. With their blessing I dove into the sauce ready to deliver my findings to the rest of the BBQ world. I began the test with my all-time favorite chick wings. First batch I cooked naked and sauced them up after the cook. The results were outstanding however the heat that I was looking for wasn't there, so I decided to try to coax some of the spices out with heat and on my next
trial glazed the wings and let the sauce cook on for the last 10-15 minutes of cooking. Once again the flavor was won- derful but was still missing the heat I was after. I turned my trials to seafood and grilled some shrimp which once again had a delicious flavor but didn't get any of the habanero heat. I finally decided to take the rec- ommendation I had received and topped off some vanilla ice cream with the sauce. The fla- vor was great. While this sauce didn't exactly provide the copy-
cat recipe I was hoping for it definitely belongs out in front of my other sauces. If you are in the market for a great wing sauce don't let the name scare you off because while it may have the Habanero moniker it is defi- nitely consumer friendly. I will defi- nitely keep a bottle of this in stock and I recommend it to anyone. Thank you to Damon and Lu-Barbecue Holter for your great sauces and recipes. You can find this and other sauces and rubs at www.croixvalleyfoods.com, on Face- book or at an ever growing list of specialty retailers and hardware stores.
BarbecueNews.com - 6
JULY 2020