Tabasco Buffalo Hot Sauce Review

Tabasco Buffalo Style Hot Sauce

Note: This review has been edited as of 12/19/23 and is marked below accordingly.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVp-fGPDyas

While I applaud the Tabasco hot sauce company for what they've done for hot sauce in general, loosely, and more fervently applaud their attempts at innovation, I sometimes get the feeling they don't know what they're doing and are just resting on their considerable, though dated, laurels.

Case in point, this sauce. Buffalo sauce has been around a long while and while I feel it is mostly derived from the Cayenne-based Lousiana-style sauce, at least when it is best, it is a very well-established style. Those who do it well, do it well and everyone else takes a swinging pass at it, which is sometimes good and sometimes a salvo across the bow that is the exact kind of thing that could result in someone getting knocked out.

This one would be more towards the latter. Tabasco itself, we all know (and if you're me, mostly hate) and them stepping into this arena means a very harsh sort of loose Buffalo-flavored concoction with that sweetness associated with Tabasco peppers. Little to no heat to speak of, but a flavor that is best left unspeakable, actually. If I put a sauce down, such as I did with this, to reach for Original Tabasco, to me, it speaks that something is really wrong and this is a race to the gutter to find something as ill-conceived and delivered as this. Sure, you would be hard-pressed to do it, but could probably find something as dreadful, but this is not why we look to hot sauce. This is the kind of thing we avoid.

EDIT:  This sauce may have been re-formulated (and I say this because there is no Tabasco pepper in this sauce at all). In fact, I thought it was discontinued for a long time, but finally came across it recently and while I would say this is thicker than most Cayenne sauces and is closer to a Cajun sauce, or an upgraded version of Frank's. This is somewhat more pungent than other sauces of this type, slightly saltier, and a bit hotter, but I found the flavor kind of quickly becomes a bit one-note. Overall, I'd put it more to the middle or the upper middle of the pack.

Bottom line: One of the better sauces that Tabasco has made that, ironically, has no Tabasco pepper in it...which makes it, like the Tabasco Chipotle (reviewed elsewhere here), one of the better entries from the company where the Tabasco pepper flavor is entirely absent.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 7
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 6

El Yucateco Caribbean Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Caribbean Chile Habanero Sauce

 NOTE: This sauce appeared on Season 1 of The Hot Ones.

Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obl7R9ypI_E

Continuing along with another of the El Yucateco line-up, we have this sort of oddly-named sauce. When we see the name Caribbean on a hot sauce (as a commenter noted, there is a section of Mexico considered geographically Caribbean), we might think of a sort of Louisiana-styled sauce or we might think of something along the lines of a "jerk" seasoning. This, however, is neither.

In fact, this one is nothing so much as a sort of typical carrot-Habanero sauce, a style which I saw more of when this review was initially written in 2015 and much less now, when I'm updating it in early 2021. It also somewhat resembles its much tastier big brother, the Green sauce, though it is notably distant from that. The usual El Yucateco coloring weirdness is in full effect. So far, we have the ultra-bright Red, the borderline fluorescent Green, the black-flecked nauseating ashy Private Reserve and now this, baby-diarrhea Light Brown. That their sauces continue to sell so well points to one or maybe a combination of two factors: a dearth in the marketplace or the quality of their sauces. As wild popularity bears little to no relation to actual quality, I'm leaning more towards the former, though, to be fair, their sauces are unique and pretty solid overall.

This one doesn't quite get up to the lofty heights of the green and in fact, was one that had to grow on me a bit. It is not one I would consider immediately or readily accessible to the palate, as it reads a bit plain. It's around the same heat level as the Red, maybe a little less, slight compared to the Green, but the flavoring is low key enough to work at relatively the same ok-ish level with a fairly wide variety of foods. It definitely is not a bad flavor, but heat and taste are both somewhat minimal, comparatively.

Bottom line: It's worth a try if you haven't already had carrot-Habanero, but there are better version of this style out there. This is probably one of the more easier to find of that type, however.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 6
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 5