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    Ohio’s Own: RJ’s Hot Diavolo Sauce

    It sure looks like spaghetti sauce. It’s in one of those tallish glass jars with a metal lid, the contents are red. Then again, there’s also a pepper on the label and the words “hot” in bold black font, so you know pretty much what you’re getting into before you dump a jar of RJ’s Diavolo Sauce on your spaghetti noodles.

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    The jar of RJ’s Diavolo Sauce with Peppers comes out of Warren, Ohio  — from a place called RJ’s Pepper Pantry. As the name would indicate, RJ’s makes lots of pepper things. More precisely, it produces jars of peppers in oil, and two kinds of diavolo sauce: one is “hot”, the other is “medium hot”. Notable is the absence of not-hot sauces. Then again, diavolo sauce is supposed to be spicy, so the labeling choices do make sense. The version tested is the regular “hot” version.

    The hot RJ’s Diavolo Sauce doesn’t hit like a wing sauce, where your eyes sting by just looking at it. The sauce has a nice, natural texture, it’s a slurry of tomatoes and rounds of pepper slices. That texture gives it an agreeable clinginess, when it comes to melding with pasta.

    And it is spicy hot, indeed. The sauce starts out like a fresh, sweet tomato, and then ends with a smoldering heat.

    The label says it’s all natural, and the ingredient list back that up: it’s mostly tomatoes amped with Hungarian hot wax peppers and Cubanelle peppers. The list continues with more normal things like garlic, white wine, oregano, basil and parsley.

    The Pepper Pantry’s website says that the company is also committed to non-GMO ingredients. You can find its products in local gourmet groceries. The test jar came from The Hills Market up on the north end.

    PS: Although it’s not recommended on the label, nobody knows it’s not salsa, when you serve RJ’s Diavolo Sauce with tortilla chips.

    For more information, visit www.thepepperpantry.com.

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    Miriam Bowers Abbott
    Miriam Bowers Abbotthttps://columbusunderground.com
    Miriam Bowers Abbott is a freelancer contributor to Columbus Underground who reviews restaurants, writes food-centric featurettes and occasionally pens other community journalism pieces.
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