Ghosting Is OK When It’s a Hot Sauce

EW looks at Ghost Scream Hot Sauce for another shameless review

Back during the peak of summer, a public relations firm reached out to me about Ghost Scream Hot Sauce. Now that I’ve had over a month to think over the hot sauce, I figured it’s time to explore Ghost Scream Hot Sauce for another post about weird stuff they send people who work at newspapers.

The hot sauce is supposed to pair with tequila for some sort of Bloody Mary concoction, the PR firm told me.

They were wrong.

Alcohol would only bastardize something beautiful like Ghost Scream Hot Sauce. It’s meant to be cherished and make any item of food pop. That’s what I think, at least. And, being something of a hot sauce aficionado, my opinion matters.

Ghost Scream Hot Sauce batches are handcrafted in California and features homegrown ingredients. The ingredient list reads more like something you should eat, rather than a long list of chemicals.

Somehow, the hot sauce doesn’t pack a ton of sodium either. One teaspoon of Ghost Scream (honestly, that’s a serving size for an ant) is 75 mg of sodium. Compare that to Tapatío, which has 110mg of sodium.

That freshness has a price, though. At a price of $8 for a 5.5 oz bottle, it’s a little steep in price — especially when there’s a long line of cheap hot sauces out there. And you can only find it online.

Ghost Scream Hot Sauce isn’t overwhelming with spiciness or vinegar. A hot sauce can easily go too far on either spectrum. Ghost Scream balances spiciness with vinegar well. A pour of the sauce shows it’s a sauce of peppers, not chili liquid.

It plays well with food, too, like any hot sauce worth its salt should. A good hot sauce should accent a slice of pizza or sandwich. And it can’t overpower a chip’s flavor. Ghost Scream delivers. When it’s pizza day at Eugene Weekly, Ghost Scream didn’t scream its notes all over a slice of Eugene’s TrackTown Pizza. On breakfast day, Ghost Scream gave a savory pop to a bland quiche. And when I put a few drops on a rice chip, it gave it a strong kick. The sauce has so much taste, that I also thought about drinking it straight when I didn’t have food to put it on.

My desk space isn’t the cleanest or tidiest at EW. In fact, I even had spiders living atop of computer monitor for a few weeks. But I have an excuse as for why I keep an empty bottle of Ghost Scream Hot Sauce. I do it so I can open it and enjoy the scent of a hot sauce that once gave my taste buds so much joy.