The Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce Review

Let’s cut to the cool stuff first: The Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce is made from serrano peppers grown in community gardens in The Bronx. Your purchase of this sauce directly supports those community gardens. Pretty rad. And a great idea from Small Axe Peppers. I love that direct level of local urban garden support. And The Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce has a delicious sweet and earthy taste, so its money well spent. But of course, we’re here to get into the details. So, while it may be tasty is The Bronx Greenmarket well-balanced in the heat department? And how usable is it? Let’s break it all down.

Flavor

Overall, The Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce hits a lot of the right notes with its simple ingredients list, providing a sweet, earthy, and tangy flavor to the table. The ingredients: apple cider vinegar, serrano peppers, garlic, onion, cane sugar, and salt.

Visually, you can see those fresh pepper seeds floating amid this beautiful green sauce. It’s a great clue of what’s coming. Small Axe Peppers and those community gardens certainly found a way to bring the taste of a fresh garden right to your door via their verde hot sauce.

The freshness of the ingredients, especially those serranos, shine through soon after you taste it. But first the sweet, tangy taste of apple cider vinegar hits, soon followed with a mild bite from those serranos. The cane sugar amplifies the sweetness of the sauce without overwhelming it. It’s not overly sweet — just enough. Then finally you get a touch of pungency from the garlic and onion. It’s very much what you’d expect by looking at the ingredients in order.

Heat Balance

The Bronx Green Market Hot Sauce is definitely on the mild end of medium heat. At 5,500 Scoville heat units it’s just a touch hotter than Tabasco Original Red Sauce (which ranges from 2,500 to 5,000 SHU.) Serrano peppers have a range from 10,000 to 23,000 SHU, but (like any sauce) that heat is diluted with the other ingredients. In this case, the end heat is more akin to eating a fresh jalapeño pepper (2,500 to 8,000 SHU.)

It’s actually a pretty decent showing from the serranos in terms of heat, but the spiciness subsides pretty quickly. It only reaches to mid-tongue, never making it to the back of your throat. And the heat only slightly builds as you eat more.

It’s a spiciness that most can enjoy without concern. I could use tons of this sauce on my plate and wouldn’t have to worry about a thing. That’s a good thing if you’re looking for a “hot sauce for everyone”, but it feels to me like it could do with a touch more heat.

On the sodium — it sits at 50 mg per teaspoon serving. That’s pretty mid-range for a hot sauce. There’s enough salt here that you won’t go reaching for more (likely one of the reasons I’ve enjoyed The Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce as much as I have!)

Usability

Usability is a bit mixed, but overall good. The Bronx Greenmarket pairs perfectly with tacos, burritos, and other Mexican dishes. It’s less successful (for me) with pizza or beef. It works as a simple chip dip, especially when I want a hot sauce on the lower end of medium heat.

This bottle does not come with a stopper, so be careful. The thin nature of the sauce can make it easy to pour half the bottle out all over your plate. Definitely give it a good shake as well — you need to get all those fresh ingredients blended nicely.

Collectibility

I love how the simplicity and authenticity of the label. A serrano pepper acts as a background to some very cool font work focused on the three things that make this sauce special: community gardens, The Bronx, and fresh flavor (through the “Greenmarket” flag.) It makes an obvious statement about where it’s from and what it is. It has that homemade feel, as though it was paper-wrapped, just for you, by the urban farmers who made it.

And if you love hot sauces with purpose, this is plenty collectible too. Remember it’s made with Bronx-grown serrano peppers and supports urban farmers in the borough.

The Score

The Bronx Greenmarket Hot Sauce is a delicious mix of earthy, sweet, and tangy with a low-medium heat. It’s a sauce by Small Axe Peppers that supports (via their sauces) urban gardeners throughout the USA — so great purpose here!