Burn After Eating Hot Sauce Review

Holy hell hot sauce! Burn After Eating Hot Sauce is terrifyingly spicy. I might be dazed and confused because my tongue has been burning for five minutes straight. But is there more to this super-hot sauce than pure fire, or is it solely brain-numbing heat? And how usable is it being so incredibly hot? Let’s dig into Burn After Eating to see what’s under the hood.

Video Review

Flavor

When a hot sauce claims a mix of “brutally hot” peppers and leads its ingredients list with exactly that — you know you are in for a big-time high-heat experience.

So you know I’m not joking, here’s the ingredient list word for word: Brutally hot peppers, white vinegar, garlic, salt, ajwain seed, amchoor, hing powder (rice flour, gum arabic, asafoetida, turmeric), ginger extract.

Yeah, it’s super-hot, but we’ll get into the heat more down below. What’s amazing about Burn After Eating Hot Sauce is that somehow, even with this incredible spiciness, they manage to pull out a really decent flavor.

A large part of that comes from the use of fresh super-hot peppers, not pepper extract. So you do taste that natural pepper sweetness and smokiness. But this sauce also leads with a nice vinegar tang, too, before those scary chilies come in and the hammer hits.

The garlic, salt, and ginger extract give this a much-needed zing which balances out this sauce and makes it go down a little smoother. The ajwain seeds and hing provide a touch of bitterness, earthiness to the mix. And the amchoor (also known as mango powder) adds a touch of fruity sweetness.

All together, Karma Sauce (the brand behind Burn After Eating) brought many exotic spices and flavor to this scorching hot sauce. This is hard to pull off at a certain level of hot sauce spiciness, so kudos to them.

Note in terms of sodium: Burn After Eating has 45 mg of sodium per teaspoon serving. But really, for sauces this hot most don’t use more than a dash or two, so the sodium level is pretty moot.

Heat Balance

The bottle reads, “This sauce requires top-level heat tolerance. Consider yourself warned.” And I would counter that by saying, “THE FONT ON THAT WARNING IS TOO SMALL!”

Seriously — the list of “brutally hot peppers” that Burn After Eating taps into is pretty insane. It’s a secret combo, but it includes the likes of ghost pepper, 7-pot primo, scorpion peppers, Carolina Reaper, and 7-pot brown peppers. Ouch.

All-in, Burn After Eating lands on the Scoville Scale at 669,000 Scoville heat units. That’s crazy hot, particularly for a sauce using fresh peppers and not extract. Compare it to Tabasco Scorpion (Tabasco’s scorpion pepper sauce) which sits at 50,000 SHU. Burn After Eating is about 12 times hotter. It’s really close to the potential low-end heat of a fresh ghost pepper (855,000 SHU.)

This is a heat that should only be played with by extreme eaters and hot sauce super-fans. It lingers on your tongue and will hit the back of your throat for a good five minutes after eating. The kick happens right after you get that sweet tang at the top, then the hell kicks in.

Yet, beyond that heat, there’s still flavor. It’s hard for super-hot hot sauces to thread this needle, but Burn After Eating’s bold ingredients pair well with the big heat.

Usability

Like any extreme hot sauce, the usability here comes down to the heat level you can take. Just a drop or two will do for most heat seekers, but really a drop or two will just provide heat and not unleash the flavor here.

This is great with chili, but I only used a drop in one bowl and that made it spicy enough for my taste. I also tried the smallest amount mixed in with my omelette and it was delish, but I used so little! It’s simply too hot to be eaten in large amounts on its own. Unless you’re a crazy hot sauce robot who feels no pain.

Burn After Eating Hot Sauce also works very well when added to another condiment base. Mix a regular wing sauce with a few dashes of Burn After Eating and you end up with an amazing mix. Again, the unique flavors of this hot sauce won’t completely shine through, but you’ll have plenty of kick.

This is not sauce you want to pour out quickly, which is probably why they made it have the consistency of a paste rather than a sauce. They knew they should make it a little harder for everyone to pour this sauce out because it’s that savage.

Collectibility

Love the bottle label. It showcases a burning piece of paper, already turning to ash at the edges. Which is exactly the kind of ride your tongue is about to experience. It has that “spy sense” (like “burn after reading”) which adds to the cool factor. The label and overall hot sauce branding, like the sauce, pulls no punches and stands out among the pack.

The Score

Be ready to buckle up for a strong burn. Burn After Eating Hot Sauce pairs a murderer’s row of super-hot peppers with bold spices. It’s surprisingly tasty, but with 669,000 Scoville heat units, it’s not for the timid. The little amount that most users will use won’t showcase how delicious the sauce is.

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