Frank's RH Buffalo Sauce - SR

Over the last little while, I've had a number of people ask me what I thought of Frank's Red Hot Buffalo sauce. Is it good? Is it authentic? Do you use it on your wings?






Well, I used it in a review a WHILE BACK, when doing 'Buffalo Chicken Fingers', but it wasn't properly done. So I decided I had a bottle on the shelf, it was time to break it out and do some re-tasting.





The point of this sauce is to recreate an 'authentic' restaurant Buffalo wing sauce. As the history of the Buffalo wing goes, the Anchor bar used the classic Frank's hot sauce in their mix with butter/margarine and possibly vinegar.

Since then hundreds if not thousands of bars and restaurants have been using this as the base of their sauce. Frank's wanted to cut out the extra work on your part and add in butter flavouring.

2008 SAUCE SCORE v1.0: Frank’s Red Hot Buffalo Wing Sauce

BOTTLE INFO
TYPE:	cayenne based hot sauce
PRICE & BOTTLE SIZE:	$4 approx for 354 ml
OTHER SAUCES:	§ Original § Chili ‘n Lime § Xtra Hot
INGREDIENTS:	distilled vinegar, aged cayenne red peppers, water, salt, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, paprika, xanthan gum, oleoresin paprika, sodium benzoate (preservative), flavour (contains milk & soybean ingredients), mon0-, di-and triglycerides, guar gum, polysorbate 60, garlic powder, ground habanero peppers, tocopherol (vitamin e), ascorbyl palitate and citric acid.
CLAIMS/SLOGANS:	“authentic restaurant taste” “the secret to the original wings”
WEBSITE:	franksredhot.com
THE SENSES
APPEARANCE /TEXTURE:	red/orange, runny sauce
SMELL:	buttery cayenne
FLAVOUR:	buttery cayenne sauce
THE PAIN
HEAT:	Tingle – not that hot, but this sauce is more about the flavour	1/3
BURN CHRONOLOGY:	Beginning Burn Middle Burn After Burn	X
TASTE:		2/3
FINAL SCORE		3/6
OTHER:	It’s a decent sauce. It doesn’t replace making making Buffalo sauce yourself, but it will do in a pinch.

The look of this sauce is a slightly more orange that the traditional red sauce. The bottle and the cap are even orange.

I tossed the sauce on my PC Crispy & Crunchy wings which really needed a boost. They were pretty plain so there was little contamination in my analysis.

The smell of the sauce is cayenne and butter, but clearly there is no butter in the sauce because it would go bad after a while. The flavour comes across as Frank's with butter, but its just not authentic in my humble opinion. Its more artificial tasting, but not to the point where the sauce is gross.

The spice in the sauce is not strong. It's pretty mild even for Frank's. I think the butter flavour dumbs it down a bit. There's no initial heat, it rises and sinks in its bite, then is gone from the mouth. Really, you want a hot sauce to hurt you at least a little bit.

FINAL SCORE:

With this sauce, I believe Frank's is just capitalizing on their history with the Anchor Bar. It is not an authentic restaurant taste, but its not a bad sauce. It will do in a pinch, but I wouldn't rely on it to sauce my wings properly. 3/6

Frank's Red Hot Buffalo Wing Sauce