Little Willie’s Grenade Sauce – Hot

Little Willie’s Grenade Sauce – Hot

Appearance:

One of the first things that strikes you is that this doesn’t look like your standard salsa (it says “Sauce”, but it strikes me more as salsa so I will run with it).  From the outside, it has an orangish dull yellow color with noticeable chunks of onions and carrots.  The orange-yellow color is a bit odd, but intruiging.  The chunks are pretty finely cut without much in the way of thick sauce.  There is more a juice than the thick medium we are accustomed to.  The lack of tomatoes is an interesting step by Little Willie’s.  This, of course, accounts as to why it doesn’t have the typical red color of other salsas.

Label:

The label is eye-catching, but not gaudy.  The color scheme actually compliments the look of the contents very well.  It has a nice blend of cartoon with actual photography which you don’t see often.  It actually takes a moment to notice the photographs they are so well designed and implemented.  The banner style brand and large font of the product name make it easy to recognize and distinguish.  It looks like a lot of thought went into this design.
Aroma:

As with the Pineapple Mango Salsa, this one is hard to nail down.  I still think I am smelling Ginger, but the onions and lime juice are also present in the aroma.  It is inviting, but not overpowering and doesn’t really give you a sense for how it will taste.

Taste:

The onions, lime, and habenero give it the overall flavor of salsa and the texture has just enough bulk to make it chewable without having one bite be overpowered by a single ingredient.  The carrots are a nice addition and there is a hint of them in the flavor.  You don’t even miss the tomatoes that we have been conditioned to expect in salsa.  Overall it is quite unique and enjoyable.
Heat Level:

This is labeled as “Hot”, and I feel that this is pretty accurate.  I am someone who enjoys spicy foods but doesn’t go for insane heat.  I like to be able to taste the food, not just scorch the tongue.  This salsa is an excellent mix of heat and flavor.  Not only that, but it is a sneaky heat.  You are exposed to so many flavors at once that you don’t notice the heat creeping in.  But it slowly begins to hit every part of your tongue as a nice full heat rather than the sharp, biting heat of some.  I was eating a few more chip fulls as I was typing and stopped for a few minutes to finish up one section.  After a couple minutes, I noticed that the heat on my tongue, while not getting more intense, was also not faltering.  So it definitely falls solidly under the “Hot” category as far as salsas go, but also get honorable mention in the “Sneaky” and “Lingering” catagories.
Overall Opinion:

Little Willie’s did an excellent job of taking a food that we all know and love and removing a major ingredient to take it into a new direction.  They did a wonderful job of creating a new and innovative product with a unique flavor and the perfect amount of heat to make it a scoopable favorite.  This is definitely worth a shot for those times when plain old salsa just won’t fit the bill.