Bitter: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰
Sweet: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Umami: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Heat: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Fresh, tangy, vegetal, pickle-y, earthy
Texture: Medium with moderate chunks
Recommended: Yes
Ingredients: Vermont jalapenos, organic distilled vinegar, ghost peppers, Vermont garlic scapes, Vermont cucumbers, dill, salt, black pepper
World Central Kitchen is a non-profit organization founded by famed Spanish chef Jose Andres dedicated to providing rapid food relief to areas stricken by disaster. Initially created to respond to the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti the organization has responded to over a dozen disasters and humanitarian crises and served over half a billion meals to those in need since then. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, through their Genersaucity program donates 5% of the sales of Ghost Verde Pickle to World Central Kitchen. This is the second Genersaucity sauce that I’ve tried from them, the first bring their Maple Sparkle Sriracha which benefits the Pride Center of Vermont.
Ghost Verde Pickle uses both green jalapenos and ghost peppers in the blend. The green jalapenos are the primary pepper with the ghost peppers acting as an accent. In addition to the peppers you see ingredients commonly used in pickles including cucumbers, vinegar, dill, and of course salt. As is common with Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sauces garlic scapes, the green chive-like shoots that grow from garlic bulbs, are used instead of the garlic cloves commonly found in many dill pickle recipes. While this appears to be a Butterfly Bakery of Vermont designed hot sauce I do wonder that, given the charity this supports, if Jose Andres himself would have been willing to design a hot sauce to be sold under their label. Looking it up it does appear that Lindera Farms carried two Jose Andres designed hot sauces but are unfortunately sold out of both.
Freshness is my number one priority in a verde sauce and from the aroma alone Ghost Verde Pickle was promising with a tangy, peppery, and pickle-y scent wafting up. This sauce is of medium consistency and has that more rustic and chunky texture that I love to see in sauces, with seeds and nice bits of peppers and vegetables in the sauce. The flavor is as fresh as the aroma with a great vegetal tang from the jalapenos and vinegar. The ghost peppers and green jalapenos compliment one another. Green jalapenos are fresh and grassy but don’t have a lot of “bass” in their taste, so sauces based on them alone can sometimes feel as if they’re lacking depth. Ghost peppers bring an earthy smoky slow building burn but used alone wouldn’t be appropriate for a verde sauce since they lack that green brightness the jalapenos bring. The result of combining them is that you get that fresh vibrant bright vegetal green jalapeno flavor combined with the ghost peppers adding their earthy smoky thump down below for a more fulfilling sauce. The cucumbers bring some freshness but they’re such a mild flavor it’s hard to pick them out, and thankfully the use of dill is restrained in this sauce so that it compliments the other ingredients and increases the pickle vibe without overpowering, as I felt it did in Butterfly Bakery of Vermont’s Hot House Hot Sauce. While this sauce does have ghost peppers and there’s a little bit of a lingering tingle the overall heat level is still on the milder side of medium.
Having previously tried Heartbeat Hot Sauce’s Dill Pickle Serrano and finding it extremely difficult to pair with must of anything I wasn’t sure how flexible this sauce would be. I shouldn’t have worried as somehow the addition of the ghost peppers here takes Ghost Verde Pickle away enough from “liquified pickle” to go with a wider variety of foods. I did try this first on a burger since that’s a place I found the Heartbeat sauce worked well and this was stellar in that regard also. Emboldened I tried this on a fried chicken sandwich (my Chick-Fil-A order is always the spicy chicken sandwich with extra extra pickles) and it’s just as great there, then again, what how sauce doesn’t go great with chicken? This sauce is great on breakfast as well, bright and vibrant is perfect with eggs and bacon. A surprising pairing that worked very well was with chili. I decided to make an “umami bomb” chili which as my kitchen experiences sometimes go turned into an “umami nuke” and I went a bit overboard with the addition of doenjang, marmite, Better than Bouillon, and shiitake powder, to the point that, while deep and rich in flavor, was too much bass and not enough treble. Ghost Verde Pickle was perfect for brightening it up and giving it the balance it needed.
Butterfly Bakery of Vermont Ghost Verde Pickle Genersaucity Hot Sauce is easy to recommend. It’s not only delicious it also helps support a good cause. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.
by MagnusAlbusPater
1 Comment
Bitter: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰
Sweet: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Umami: ⭐⭐✰✰✰
Heat: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Fresh, tangy, vegetal, pickle-y, earthy
Texture: Medium with moderate chunks
Recommended: Yes
Ingredients: Vermont jalapenos, organic distilled vinegar, ghost peppers, Vermont garlic scapes, Vermont cucumbers, dill, salt, black pepper
World Central Kitchen is a non-profit organization founded by famed Spanish chef Jose Andres dedicated to providing rapid food relief to areas stricken by disaster. Initially created to respond to the 2010 earthquakes in Haiti the organization has responded to over a dozen disasters and humanitarian crises and served over half a billion meals to those in need since then. Butterfly Bakery of Vermont, through their Genersaucity program donates 5% of the sales of Ghost Verde Pickle to World Central Kitchen. This is the second Genersaucity sauce that I’ve tried from them, the first bring their Maple Sparkle Sriracha which benefits the Pride Center of Vermont.
Ghost Verde Pickle uses both green jalapenos and ghost peppers in the blend. The green jalapenos are the primary pepper with the ghost peppers acting as an accent. In addition to the peppers you see ingredients commonly used in pickles including cucumbers, vinegar, dill, and of course salt. As is common with Butterfly Bakery of Vermont sauces garlic scapes, the green chive-like shoots that grow from garlic bulbs, are used instead of the garlic cloves commonly found in many dill pickle recipes. While this appears to be a Butterfly Bakery of Vermont designed hot sauce I do wonder that, given the charity this supports, if Jose Andres himself would have been willing to design a hot sauce to be sold under their label. Looking it up it does appear that Lindera Farms carried two Jose Andres designed hot sauces but are unfortunately sold out of both.
Freshness is my number one priority in a verde sauce and from the aroma alone Ghost Verde Pickle was promising with a tangy, peppery, and pickle-y scent wafting up. This sauce is of medium consistency and has that more rustic and chunky texture that I love to see in sauces, with seeds and nice bits of peppers and vegetables in the sauce. The flavor is as fresh as the aroma with a great vegetal tang from the jalapenos and vinegar. The ghost peppers and green jalapenos compliment one another. Green jalapenos are fresh and grassy but don’t have a lot of “bass” in their taste, so sauces based on them alone can sometimes feel as if they’re lacking depth. Ghost peppers bring an earthy smoky slow building burn but used alone wouldn’t be appropriate for a verde sauce since they lack that green brightness the jalapenos bring. The result of combining them is that you get that fresh vibrant bright vegetal green jalapeno flavor combined with the ghost peppers adding their earthy smoky thump down below for a more fulfilling sauce. The cucumbers bring some freshness but they’re such a mild flavor it’s hard to pick them out, and thankfully the use of dill is restrained in this sauce so that it compliments the other ingredients and increases the pickle vibe without overpowering, as I felt it did in Butterfly Bakery of Vermont’s Hot House Hot Sauce. While this sauce does have ghost peppers and there’s a little bit of a lingering tingle the overall heat level is still on the milder side of medium.
Having previously tried Heartbeat Hot Sauce’s Dill Pickle Serrano and finding it extremely difficult to pair with must of anything I wasn’t sure how flexible this sauce would be. I shouldn’t have worried as somehow the addition of the ghost peppers here takes Ghost Verde Pickle away enough from “liquified pickle” to go with a wider variety of foods. I did try this first on a burger since that’s a place I found the Heartbeat sauce worked well and this was stellar in that regard also. Emboldened I tried this on a fried chicken sandwich (my Chick-Fil-A order is always the spicy chicken sandwich with extra extra pickles) and it’s just as great there, then again, what how sauce doesn’t go great with chicken? This sauce is great on breakfast as well, bright and vibrant is perfect with eggs and bacon. A surprising pairing that worked very well was with chili. I decided to make an “umami bomb” chili which as my kitchen experiences sometimes go turned into an “umami nuke” and I went a bit overboard with the addition of doenjang, marmite, Better than Bouillon, and shiitake powder, to the point that, while deep and rich in flavor, was too much bass and not enough treble. Ghost Verde Pickle was perfect for brightening it up and giving it the balance it needed.
Butterfly Bakery of Vermont Ghost Verde Pickle Genersaucity Hot Sauce is easy to recommend. It’s not only delicious it also helps support a good cause. This sauce is also all natural with no artificial preservatives, colors, flavors, or thickeners.