Louisiana Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Louisiana Brand Habanero Hot Sauce

Louisiana is a maker, perhaps the original maker, as the story goes, of the first vinegar-based hot sauce of Louisiana, though that name is now ubiquitous with that style, which is mostly vinegar combined with pepper mash in a thin and typically runny sauce. As the Original sauce (red dot, yellow label) falls, it is a good standby, maybe a slight step up from Crystal, but utilizing the Cayenne pepper, which puts it above Tabasco in my book, though not as tasty as Red Devil, but perhaps a touch hotter. This is their entry into the Habanero derivatives.

I've mentioned it before, but I don't find either Jalapeno or Habanero peppers to be particularly well-suited for this style of sauce. After having this sauce, again, I'm not moved from that thought. The sauce this is most similar in taste to is probably either the Amazon Habanero (though a bit less hot and not as good-tasting) or the Tabasco Habanero (hotter, but without the attendant sweetness from the Tabasco peppers).

I think a lot of my issue with those peppers in this style of sauce is the food that normally accompanies it. Mexican food, in general, does not need a lot of vinegar to "cut" anything, which renders these sauces a bit jarring when used there. The foods that are wanting a bit of that astringency to "cut" them tend to clash with the Habanero, whereas Cayenne is generally easy-going enough to blend and play nicer on the palate. Yes, it's hotter, but it too easily can dominate the dish and frankly, the sauce is not good enough tasting to carry things if that happens.

One of the issues I have with this is the actual dropper bottle itself. Having that sort of spout molded onto the bottle is fine when it's just regular Cayenne sauce, but by not restricting it more for this sauce, the chances go higher of wrecking foods due to inappropriate sauce flow. This thing can't decide if it wants to be a dropper or a free-flowing pourer and this sort of middle in-between ground is nothing more than a gigantic pain, which interferes with control and portion size.

Bottom line: After the Tabasco Habanero and Blazin' Saddles sauces (both reviewed here elsewhere), I didn't want to intentionally get this a sauce that utilizes Habanero in this manner, then along came the Amazon and now this one. This probably will be the very last of this sort of thing as I hadn't had Louisiana Brand in a while and wanted to see the results of them giving this pepper a go. The results are decidedly mixed, though my final conclusion is not. I don't see a need for this kind of sauce and once it runs out, will not be re-upping it.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 4
           Flavor: 5
           Flexibility: 5
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 4

Gastronomically Correct launches

Very rarely do I post non-hot sauce related things in this blog, however, a website at which I'm a Staff Writer (covering wine) is in the process of launching and if you're interested in reading about the wine list I've built, all of which are under $20/bottle, then head on over to www.gastronomicallycorrect.com. The column is called The Happy Sippin' Companion. I also chime in on a few various other random topics here and there, so click around, see what you like, if you're so inclined. I should note it is still in the Beta phase right now, so some of the stuff may look odd...

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Castillo Salsa Habanera (Green) Hot Sauce Review

Castillo Salsa Habanera (Green) Hot Sauce

I got this one at the same time as I got the Red from Castillo (reviewed elsewhere here) and while I expected the Red to be somewhere along the lines of the Valentina, I wasn't sure what to expect from the Green. Greens can range from fairly mild to hotter than the Reds, so it was kind of a crap shoot.

In this case, the Green is more similar to the Red version, but has a very unripe "greenish" aspect to it that I didn't find particularly pleasant upfront. Unlike the El Yucateco Red vs. Green (both reviewed elsewhere here), we have a Red that is overall fairly decent and a Green that is notably less tasty and somewhat less hot, which differs from the El Yucateco in that both of them are pretty good tasting, but the Red is a blast upfront and the Green comes on slower and the Green is one of the best-tasting sauces of that type around, despite its very odd coloring. Here we have the Red with a slow build and the Green with more of a punch, but overall, the Red is hotter. Neither one of them quite reach the El Yucateco Green, though, not in heat and certainly not in flavor.

That aside, this one does do slightly better with milder meats, such as chicken and pork, than does the Red, which overall has a much wider gamut. I nearly threw out the Green, in fact, the first time I had it, due to the unripe, nearly sour aspect of it, but it's not quite to that level. I probably will use the bottle, but don't see that I'll ever get another.

Bottom line: If you're deciding which of the two Castillos to get and there's nothing else around, opt for the Red. The Green is just not that good of a sauce and while it's probably better than nothing, it's probably not much more than that.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 4
           Flexibility:  3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4