As stated above, Reggae Reggae Sauce is a Jamaican style hot sauce that promises to "put some music in your food" that first came to prominence when featured on Dragons' Den in 2007. Unlike the above noder, I cannot be arsed with any sort of fartarsing around with the morality of this product and am here to tell you what it is like as a sauce.

Given that this is a supermarket sauce, I didn't exactly expect it to be particularly hot. While it is made with lovely fruity Scotch Bonnet chillies, these are way down the list of ingredients on the label and as such neither the heat nor the fruitiness really comes to the fore. Granted, it's a bit hot, more so than tabasco but that's about it really. I couldn't find a source for how many Scovilles it is so I'm going to guess at around 17,500 or so. This means it's 3.5 times hotter than Tabasco but under 10% the heat of Dave's Insanity Sauce and a mere 1.17% the heat of the frankly psychotic Da' Bomb Final Answer. I rather suspect that so as not to scare off the punters the manufacturers de-seeded the chillies before putting them in, thus making the fatal error that heat and taste are mutually exclusive (they are not).

Taste-wise, it's fairly average barbecue sauce. I've had nicer. Claims of authenticity as a jerk spice mix are cast into doubt by the fact it's sold in supermarkets. There is also, as already set out, a disturbing lack of heat herein. There are better jerk sauces out there which are both tastier and hotter, I'm afraid, not least from the mighty Dave's Gourmet or even if you go into any West Indian store or takeaway anywhere in London for that matter.

Now don't get me wrong, it's not repulsive like certain products I can name but I have had better. As it is, it's just a slightly fancified barbecue sauce with a bit of chilli in it. Had it not been for its creator singing on Dragons' Den it would not be so popular. I personally have no real use for it. Sorry.


(IRON NODER 2011 2/30)