Panola Fuego Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Panola Fuego Habanero Salsa

This is another of those Big Lots potentials, where for $.70, you might have a gold mine of a great sauce for a handful of change, but then again, you may have a bottle of shit on your hands and the worst is that you're only out $.70. So, for $1 or under, I'm never afraid to pick one of those up because you never know. From experience, what you encounter is what I like to call modified gems. This is one of them.

What we have here is a taste that rather uniquely blends habanero and blunts it with jalapeno. "Fuego," of course, is Spanish for "fire", but the heat is moderate, around El Yucateco Green, basically not into firehead territory but enough to be noticed. It is a taste that is unlike any other sauce and there's where it goes off the rail a bit. Somehow, in some way, it has a sort of creamy aspect to it. That facet I find quite jarring and in conjunction with the unique taste, which I wouldn't say was good, but don't find it exactly bad either, renders this as something of a miss rather than a hit.

It's a very runny sauce and probably could use a dropper cap. I fully expected it to be a Louisiana style sauce, but it threw me for a loop by heading off into...almost a hot wing sort of thing. Hot wings are something I almost never have these days, but I think this would be a very nice change of pace from the usual Buffalo (Louisiana) style sauces that I run across most of the time. I don't think I'd want it a lot there, though, either. It's one of those sauces that is interesting for the first half a bottle and afterwards, you find yourself struggling to use it. In my case, I'm saved by the expiration date (I picked this up at least half a year ago) and can toss it without any qualms. Also, $.70.

Bottom line: Perhaps a shining example of something that will do in a pinch, but you'll find yourself wishing you had something else. The unique taste was refreshing, for a while, but didn't really mesh too well with anything I tried it on, including tacos. I'm not sorry I tried it, but can't imagine a reason to ever get it again.

Breakdown:

      Heat level: 4
      Flavor: 3
      Flexibility: 2
      Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3