Blind – Coconut Reaper

While I’m not a lover of tropical fruit-based hot sauces, I do love coconut. My favorite candy bars are Mounds (Almond Joy would be great if they subbed in pecans instead of almonds, which I always find taste dusty, but I digress…), I love German Chocolate Cake for that golden coconut frosting, macaroons will forever be better than macarons, and whenever I’m traveling abroad to a place where street vendors are selling green coconuts with a straw stuck in to drink the juice I can’t pass by without buying one. When I saw this hot sauce on Blind’s website which featured not only coconut, but also white Carolina Reaper, a color of the pepper I’d never seen before, I knew I had to try it.

Blind Hot Sauce, out of Montana, makes a variety of flavorful and inventive sauces. I’ve previously tried their Habanero Smoke Hot Sauce, still the smokiest hot sauce I’ve ever tasted, and their Montana Huckleberry Hot Sauce, which I found to be a great blend of sweet and savory heat. I don’t believe that coconuts grow in Montana, but I won’t hold that against them, and I do adore the coconut-husk-clad reaper on the label. It took me longer than I’d have liked to get to this bottle because as Carolina Reapers were listed as the first ingredient I had assumed this sauce would be brutally hot, and I try to only keep a small number of super-hot sauces open at a time as they take so much longer than milder sauces to get through and I don’t want to risk them going bad.

As it turns out there was no reason for me to have waited, as this sauce is only medium in heat. Perhaps the white version of Carolina Reapers are inherently milder than their red, orange, and green cousins, or perhaps the creamy fatty nature of the coconut milk used in the sauce naturally soothes away the capsaicin burn, or perhaps a combination of both. That bright fruity reaper flavor is there, and in this case wonderfully without any astringency, but with only a moderate amount of heat. The coconut flavor also comes through in droves – this is an amazing sauce for a coconut lover like me. Fruity reapers, creamy coconut, a little coconut texture, and at the very very back just a little acid from the vinegar makes this sauce both straightforward and delicious. You taste reapers and coconut, that’s it, but it’s a magic combination that I wonder why no one has tried before.

This sauce does require some vigorous shaking to bring all of the ingredients together if it hasn’t been used for a bit. The aroma is very coconutty with just a hint of that reaper pepper scent. Consistency is on the thicker side once it’s been thoroughly shaken and reintegrated.

Sweet and fruity with that tropical coconut flavor this sauce has been way more versatile than I expected. I love it mixed with beans and rice. It’s great on empanadas. It’s amazing to dip apple slices into. It’s perfect as an ice cream topping. It’s better than duck sauce to dip egg rolls in, and better than that nuclear red sauce to coat the chicken from sweet and sour chicken. Added to some rum and coconut milk it adds a delicious fruity spiciness, and while I haven’t tried it yet, I’m going to save some of the bottle for Christmas time as I think this will be a delicious addition to egg nog.

If you couldn’t tell, I can heartily recommend this sauce, especially if you love coconut. Unfortunately it doesn’t currently seem to be available on the Blind Hot Sauce website. I’m not sure if this one a one-off release or if it will return the next time they have White Carolina Reapers available. I do sincerely hope it comes back because I plan on buying several more bottles if it does.