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