Hot Sauce Review: Hurt Berry Farm’s Starless Mole Sauce

Starless is a smoky mole sauce made by Hurt Berry Farm. It is dark, chocolatey, and just a little sweet.

Mole pairs well with chicken, Mexican food, scrambled eggs, rumour has it, even ice cream!

This hot sauce is made with a complex list of ingredients including 3 types of mushrooms which give it a rich and earthy flavour.

Introducing: Hurt Berry Farm’s Starless Mole Sauce

Starless is a smoky mole-style hot sauce made by Hurt Berry Farms. It is dark, rich, creamy, sweet, smoky, crunchy, and earthy all at the same time.

Just take a look at the ingredients. With a list that long it’s no wonder, that this sauce packs a complex flavour profile.

Hurt Berry Farms uses locally sourced, fresh ingredients in all of its hot sauces. Starless has locally made maple syrup and Canadian-grown mushrooms.

You can find Starless on many of the Canadian online hot sauce retailers for $13-$16 dollars.

Starless is a great unique hot sauce that would be a great gift or treat to keep in your fridge.

Manufacturer: Hurt Berry Farm
Made In: Ontario
Heat Rating: 1/10
Size: 148mL
Price Range: $13-$16
Buy At Hurt Berry Farm

Ingredients: Water, White Vinegar, Ontario Grade A Dark Maple Syrup, Chipolte Morita Chiles, Pasilla Chiles, Tahini, Ancho Chiles, 70% Dark Cocoa, Kosher Salt, Roasted Garlic, Coffee, Sumac, Za’atar, Porcini Mushrooms, Morel Mushrooms, Chanterelle Mushrooms, Xanthan Gum

Appearance

Starless comes in a woozy bottle with a label adorned with cool graphics.

Inside the bottle is a dark and rich chocolate-coloured hot sauce. The sauce pours out incredibly easily and washes over anything you put it on.

Floating around the darkness are bits of ingredients that are hard to pick out. There is a little bit of a crunchy texture as well.

Starless is very finely blended, save for the few chunks, and is like creamy chocolate syrup.

Smell

In the words of Ron Burgandy, “rich mahogany and leatherbound books”.

In other words, Starless smells very rich and earthy.

I could smell notes of cocoa, coffee, and the earthiness of the mushrooms.

Starless has a pretty soft and non-aggressive aroma that doesn’t smell spicy at all.

Taste

The cocoa and coffee are the first things I tasted and the sauce has a powdery texture. There is a bit of sweetness from the maple syrup, and I could taste the tanginess of the vinegar.

Starless is very very rich and dark. The mushroom trifecta adds a bit of earthiness while the Mexican peppers add a smoky heat.

Heat Level

This sauce isn’t really about the heat. It’s all about flavour.

All of the peppers used are mild peppers and are used to add a smoky flavour to the sauce.

On my personal heat scale, I would rate this at a 1 out of 10 because there is a tiny bit of heat.

There was no sweating or sting with this hot sauce, it is suitable for just about anyone.

Flavour

Just like Mole.

Starless is chocolatey, dark, rich, and earthy. So many things.

This is for sure a flavour over heat hot sauce. The flavour profile is as complex as the ingredient list.

Tahini adds a bit of creaminess, cocoa and coffee provide a dark richness, and the mushrooms create an earthy base for it all to sit on.

Conclusion: Overall Thoughts

This was a really interesting hot sauce and I’m glad I tried it.

I liked how chocolatey it was and the perfect balance of sweet and spice. It was my favourite on some vanilla ice cream.

The flavour of Starless was great but I did find its meal pairings to be limited.

Try this hot sauce if you want to add a kick to a Mexican dish or something sweet!

Please remember that taste is subjective and everyone will experience hot sauce uniquely. These reviews contain my own thoughts and opinions. If you think you’ll enjoy a hot sauce then you should definitely try it out.