El Yucateco Habanero & Chiltepin Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Habanero & Chiltepin

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

As part of their 50th year anniversary celebration, El Yucateco made a number of variants. For a while, they were available online only, with the plan to eventually get them to the Mexican market grocers and perhaps beyond. While I was wandering the aisles looking for other stuff, I happened to come across them. Some, such as the coffee one, held moderate interest for me (I may do one or both of the Marisqueras at some future point), but I held some hope for the Ghost pepper one, which regrettably also had onions. After poking around further, I eventually settled on this one.

Immediately, I noticed a sort of off flavor that I couldn't quite place and which never really went away. It's possible this is from the chiltepin, but there is also a number of spices and it could be one of those. Habanero and garlic also come into the mix a bit and, regrettably, so does the acetic acid and lemon. This creates a bit of an issue in that if you don't have something fairly strong-flavored to offset this, it notably detracts from the food. It's not awful or inedible, but is the sort of thing I wouldn't be inclined to do twice. 

Heat is very moderate, so if you wanted to add just a tinge of kick to the food, this might be a good one to go with. I could see this working very nicely in a chili, for instance, where you have a composite of flavors. By itself, it frankly isn't particularly good-tasting and this is somewhat of a problem that cuts down rather notably on flexibility. Most Mexican-style sauces I prefer to keep to that type of food, but the table sauces often will work well on things like pizza and ramen and maybe even mac & cheese in a pinch. That is definitely not the case with this one.

Bottom line: A sort of interesting variation, but for me, the whole is perhaps somewhat less than the sum of the parts and is one I consider sort of a misfire.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 3
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3

Overall: 3

High Desert ToMango Habanero Hot Sauce Review

High Desert ToMango Habanero

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook.

Here we have a bit of an oddity. While I can think of numerous Habanero-mango sauces, and have done quite a few this year as well, I can’t think of any that include tomatoes. Using tomatoes in a sauce will generally tend to make them a lot more flexible, however, in this case, it is sort of the inverse. While I do like that they are fire-roasted, they are a bit on the acidic side and pairing that with the usual vinegar-Habanero-mango combination, particularly, as the mangos here are also a bit on the sour side, we have a lot of astringency to this sauce. It is a pretty unique flavor and I can’t think of anything I’ve had quite like it.   

Heat-wise, High Desert calls this “Sorta Medium,” which is a fine thing to call it. It’s pretty low heat for me and chileheads won’t be challenged at all by it, but there is enough of a charge there for non-chileheads to at least be aware of it before slogging it onto whatever food they want. As to that, while it is a very nicely blended more or less medium thick sauce, I found it worked best when you can let it be the dominant flavor, so think lighter meats like fish, pork, or chicken, as in battered and fried or grilled or roasted.

Bottom line: This is a pretty novel, intensely curious sauce that I like more than I dislike, but finding things to pair with it proved to definitely be somewhat of a challenge.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 5

Overall: 4

Anderson Pepper Co. Don't Touch The Baby Hot Sauce Review

Anderson Pepper Co. Don't Touch The Baby

Well, it's been a long while since I've had one of these...we'd have to go all the way back, nearly three years, to June 2021 and the Xtreme hot sauce, for the last time this happened, which is a sauce I found so unpleasant that I binned it because I didn't want to experience it again, even for just shooting an FOH video. It comes with the territory of being a food explorer a bit, launching out there into the unknown, with sauce companies you're unfamiliar with, this one being another on Amazon who came up at the right time I needed something else added for free shipping. This one is also a touch on the expensive side for this kind of sauce, ordering it that way.

There is a lot, peripherally, to like. The label design here is fantastic, emphasizing the niftiness of the name, which itself ties back into the company's early days. This is the original sauce as well from the company, the first in the lineup. The color scheme and the font sizing, all of it works extremely well. The color of the sauce is a very nice and quite attractive slightly reddish orange. I found the name amusing and the idea of a nice sweet Habanero sauce to be a good entry point. I've mentioned this before, but onion granulate or onion powder (actual onions in the ingredients are a hard no) is somewhat of a crap shoot. Most of the time, I can tolerate sauces with either of those, as long as they're in smaller doses and with that ingredient listed last here,  I had hopes that would be the case here.

What was in the bottle, however...diplomatically, it wasn't quite what I'd hoped. The initial smell, when I opened the bottle, struck me as it being another sriracha. Not the end of the world, by any means, but I've had quite a few of those over the years and I'm fairly well-tired of that flavor by this point. Once I poured it out and tasted it, however, the sriracha impression ended. The first flavor was a blast of onion (listed as the last ingredient and in powder form) that nearly made me toss the bottle on the spot. Even when sauces are bad, which regrettably is how I'd classify this one, I usually won't toss them out immediately, but will try chilling them and agitating them as I get more space in the bottle. 

I was pretty gun shy for quite some time with this one, as if the flavor of a sauce makes me gag a bit, as this one did, I have little interest in continuing with it. Eventually, I got back to it and the temperature change and intense agitation did not change things. If anything, those elements made it a touch worse. So, regrettably, I had to break a nearly three year long streak and bin this, as I found it unusable and didn't want to go through it again on camera, which, considering some of the sauces I've done over time, is its own sort of statement. Granted, I didn't eat much of it, but of what I struggled down, I didn't find the heat to be particularly prominent. 

Bottom line: While I'm not sure entirely what they were going for here, this strikes me as aiming at a more "everyday" type vibe. Beyond the flavor issues I mentioned, I find it a touch too vinegar-forward for that, but YMMV.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 0
           Flavor: 0
           Flexibility: 0
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 0

Radiation Therapy Prototype C Hot Sauce Review

Radiation Therapy Prototype C

I have asked this question, aloud, rhetorically, into the thin air, before, of course, namely that which is if a sauce is not hot, regardless of which chiles are in it, can it verily be rightfully called a hot sauce? I suppose the answer varies by person and I'm not moving from my position of leaving it up to the sauce makers to determine if they intend on making a hot sauce or not and then reflecting that on the label, but this is another that raises that question. This, while pretty tasty overall, is very much an exceedingly mild sauce, to the point where I cannot give it a numerical value at all on the heat scale. 

Radiation Therapy is a newer company and this perhaps a relatively new sauce, as the batch number on this is in the low single digits. The label mentions chipotle prominently and that is definitely one of the more forward tastes here, but on the ingredient panel itself are many ingredients, but none of them are chipotle. I also strongly question the ordering of the ingredients on the label. The first one is orange, but there is little citrus here generally and I can't say I found the flavor of orange to be present at all. Certainly one would expect a lot more for a sauce with that as the first ingredient. There are a few other chiles as well, including Morita, Cayenne, and Ancho. At times, this sauce reminded me a bit of the old Ghost Of Ancho from Born To Hula (reviewed elsewhere here), which was my SOTY once upon a when (full list at right). 

While the label copy is suggestive of the idea that the company really meant for this to be an everyday "table" sauce, it's hard to see, given all the ingredients, which point pretty strongly to a Mexican-style or Southwestern sauce, that this would work out especially well. In addition to the Chipotle, which I could have actually used more of, there are old staples of onion (powder), garlic, cumin, and honey as well, though the honey again doesn't really show up as a flavor and of those others, garlic is by far the most prominent, though only as an accent. 

I did kick this around on a number of other foods, but definitely Mexican-style food is by far the best application here. It's not awful, per se, on things like chicken and pizza, but I definitely wanted something else. On Mexican food, it pairs very well with complex stuff like tacos, carne asada or shrimp or fish (not so much chicken or pork), but also in more stripped down foods, such as refrieds. I think it they marketed it more in that direction and ramped up the chipotle more, maybe added in some fire-roasted Habaneros, they'd have a pretty solid winner on their hands. As it is, this is more just a solid and somewhat promising entry.

Bottom line: Not quite ready for prime time, this one is more a sauce reflecting promise for the maker in the future rather than being an outright good sauce. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 0
           Flavor: 7
           Flexibility: 3
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4

Hot Ones Last Dab XXX Hot Sauce Review

Hot Ones Last Dab XXX

Note: This sauce appears on Seasons 10 - 12 of The Hot Ones.

This one is the first of the sauces in the #10 slot on that show for me to finally do a full review on and like most of the sauces slotted in the higher numbers on the show, this is definitely a sauce for chileheads only. This one is a modification of the original Last Dab, changing things around by adding in a couple variations of the Pepper X (hence the "XXX"moniker addition) to the mix. 

While I think I've found most of the stuff I've had Pepper X in to be favorable, I don't find that to be the case here and I believe it's because of the coriander element. That, along with cumin, points this a bit more over towards the Indian food side of things, which are flavor profiles I'm not generally a huge fan of. I don't know what Ed Currie had in mind when he was designing this sauce, but while I thought the taste was interesting initially, when it leaned a bit more towards the mustard and turmeric, it wore out its welcome fairly quickly after, given that I was not able to find any food where I thought it fit especially well. While I would not call this a bad sauce, it is not one that fits my palate particularly well.

I think it's okayish on chicken and I believe I'm going to take a wild swing and see what it does on hot dogs, at some point, but on red meat in general, while not awful, is not something I care to repeat. Even though I think it works marginally better on chicken, that is also not something I much care to repeat, as I'd rather have something else. If I liked Indian food, this would be more fitting, but I don't. The flavor profile of this also does not lend itself particularly well to meshing with other flavors, so I think to be able to reach for this, you'd have to like what's here and I can't really say that I do, though I also wouldn't say I outright dislike it, either. It is hot enough that tinkering with the heat is kind of amusing, but that's definitely lemonade out of lemons for me.

Bottom line: A sauce I find somewhat confusing, but for chileheads with a wider range of foods they enjoy, it may be worth a go. Definitely this is one where YMMV.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 3

High Desert Not Mama's Chamoy Hot Sauce Review

High Desert Sauce Co. Not Mama's Chamoy

 

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook.

I am officially going to add High Desert to the list of sauce companies with a streak of inventiveness and creativity as this is the third sauce in the row of theirs I’ve had which I’ve found highly unique and unlike nearly anything else that comes to mind. This time, they’re taking on a fruit-based sweet hot, with raspberry as the fruit. That berry is not one that I find used frequently in sauces, so I was already interested. Additionally, the reference was to chamoy, which I honestly am only familiar with in passing from those goofy red pickles that the kids like to eat in their short form videos.

The pepper here is a 7-Pot Douglah, a superhot I’m only passingly familiar with and intended to explore a bit more in 2024, but thus far, I can’t say I’ve had a sauce with it that I’ve really liked. The pepper reads to me as sour and part of my exploration was to determine if that was those particular sauces or the pepper itself. I still have at least one more Douglah sauce to go, but I’m leaning pretty hard towards the pepper itself being sour, as it is here. The Douglah is definitely a superhot, though, so this is probably a sauce better reserved not only more for chileheads, which the labeling is pretty clear about, but also chileheads who are also foodies, so as to better appreciate the balance and harmony of flavors masterfully created here.

This works to the sauce’s advantage in the right hands, though, such as here. The additional of the raspberries and honey, leaning in a bit and combining with the Douglah sour notes, creates a very intriguing and quite flavorful balance. While the sauce is definitely more on the tart side, it is overall quite pleasant. The thickness of the sauce also lends itself well to sticking to things and since this is a berry fruit-based sweet hot, it does very nicely with pretty much any meat you might care to throw at it. And cheeses. And chocolate. Honestly, part of the joy for me with this sauce was just trying it on different stuff to see how it would go, including everything suggested on the label. While I didn’t love everything, it was definitely a lot of fun.

Bottom line: A very intricately balanced sauce, leaning into the strengths of the ingredients, all which delivering a pretty satisfying heat charge. If you like fruit-based sweet hots and are a foodie chilehead, put this on the list. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 9
           Flexibility: 8
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7

Hellfire Angry Orange/Tangerine Hell Hot Sauce Review

Hellfire Angry Orange (formerly Tangerine Hell)

Note: This sauce comes courtesy of Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue for purposes of review. Check him out on Face book.

Here we have a sort of tale of two sauces, not so much in the naming convention, with the "Tangerine Hell" moniker being evidently a working title for the sauce before changing to Angry Orange, with a slight label copy change, but more in the actual flavor dynamics. When I first opened the bottle, I found myself a bit perplexed as this tasted more or less like a Reaper puree, with that being far and away the dominant, and for a while, nearly exclusive flavor. It rendered any of the inherent questions, such as whether or not it would be even possible to pick out tangerine flavor more or less than that of orange in this complex of a sauce, rather moot, as even the cherry description on the label seemed to be absent. Once I got into the bottle more, I found it more enjoyable. In some ways, it almost became a different sauce entirely...almost.

This is still a very Reaper forward sauce and presents, I think, a pretty good foot forward for that pepper. If you want to get a sense of the flavor characteristics of that pepper, both the sweetness of it, as well as the ever-present superhot bitterness, it's all there, but tamped down somewhat by the presence of everything else. Are you going to be able to pick out the pineapple, also in this sauce? Probably not, but depending on how you pair it, there will be a sort of lingering cherry grace note, along with a vague semi-tropical citrusy sweetness. I like sauces that teach me things and this one has demonstrated that, despite my lifelong disdain for cherries generally, they do pair particularly well with Reapers.

Of course, with Reapers, you're also going to get some good, solid heat and there is enough here that I will say this is more for chileheads only. It is an excellent entry point into a Reaper sauce, though, and I found the flexibility, thanks to the general low levels of other flavors, to be pretty high. I enjoyed this on a variety of meats, pizza, sandwiches, and I'd give good odds, it might even work in a cream sauce dish, in a pinch. 

Bottom line: Overall, what started as a somewhat confusing sauce, has developed into one of the more solid entries in the Hellfire lineup. If you like either Reapers or fruit-based sweet hots, this one is well worth a look.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 3
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 8
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 7

Silk City Turnip The Heat Hot Sauce Review

Silk City Turnip The Heat

I can say pretty confidently that this is the only sauce I've ever had with turnips as an ingredient, let alone Gilfeather turnips and slightly less but still very confidently that it's probably the only sauce I've ever had with butternut squash as an ingredient. I'd put it fairly close to the top of the more unique and eclectic sauces in general, let alone hot sauces, that I've ever experienced.

I ordered it and went into it not quite knowing what to expect. Jeff at Silk City is one of the more inventive and creative minds churning sauces out there, but with wild experimentation, such as seems his wont, it's not always a sure bet that the end result is going to be great or even good. To be sure, Silk City is one of my favorites and the only sauce company where I make it a point to do an annual sauce buy (or at least check out the offerings), and they've been in the running for SOTY at least a couple good times now, including this year, 2024, but failure is a part of all experiments and some of these concoctions work better than others.

This one is almost a case in point, but the novelty of it is almost enough by itself to win me over. Flavor and texture-wise, this seems almost more a vegetable puree than an actual sauce, though I suppose you could make the case that is the same for perhaps most hot sauces, but this one seems a bit more hard over towards the vegetable side. In any case, by itself, I think it's more on the just okayish side. I didn't really enjoy it much on the usual meats, but switching over to veggies was more the good move here. It is quite nice on vegetables similar to the ones in the bottle, so things like potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash, carrots, turnips, parsnips, etc., all do quite nicely, as well as on things like cooked peppers. While it doesn't list out the exact peppers, other than to say it is a "blend" on the website, it strikes me that there's enough heat here that, unless I miss my guess, one of those is Habanero.

This sauce seems, beyond where I mentioned it, more intended for things like creamy soups or gravies or maybe a creamy dish, like mac & cheese. Obviously I didn't get to it around Thanksgiving time, but I could definitely see it working there and intend on testing it in as many of those as possible. This is a pretty enjoyable sauce to play around with, to see where it works and where it doesn't (cruciferous vegetables, for instance), and that aspect I've enjoyed quite a lot. 

Bottom line: This is one where your mileage will definitely vary, depending on what you enjoy in a sauce and what you want out of it. If it's creativity along with a satisfying, but relatively low heat, this is a good one to try out. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 2
           Flavor: 6
           Flexibility: 4
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5

HAB Sauce Lord Hot Sauce Review

HAB Sauce Lord

Long-time readers and viewers of the FOH content on the Youtubes will know that I like a good bit of cheek, am an enjoyer of a certain cheekiness, and the label and name of this sauce could not have spoke more directly to that aspect of me if it tried. I think the dude on the label is the main guy whipping up the sauce creations, not entirely sure, but the sauce bottles in hand and all contributes to the aesthetic that tickles me a bit.

Unfortunately, I cannot say the same for the sauce. I do like the sauce color, which is orange-y enough to please even Bugs Bunny. The texture is a bit between runny and medium, not quite either, but more in the middle, and it is nicely blended, with no grit or chunks to be found. Heat-wise, given that is is Habanero only, it is pretty moderate. 

Where it falls down a bit for me is definitely in the flavor. At times, you can get hints of the Habanero and carrot, but it is mainly as accents underneath the tidal wave of garlic. That is by far the main flavor. Lime also shows up and here and there, but not in a way I would call good. The taste is not unpleasant, per se, but the big struggle here is in trying to find things to go with it. Even on things like chicken tendies, where it's acceptable, I'd still rather have something else.

Carrot-Habanero is not really a new style of sauce, but the intent of when it was more trendy, was as an everyday sauce. If you want a good everyday sauce, the one thing it has to be is flexible and for this one, not only does the food have to be something that works with garlic, but further has to work with lime. So, it misses the mark somewhat there, due mainly to the garlic trying to overpower everything. Even in foods with complex flavor, it winds up being a bunch of disparate flavors, all clashing and competing with each other, which is not great. Trying to find a place where this worked well was definitely one of the larger challenges with this sauce for me and I think you're better off where this can be the main star and the food component is sort of neutral.

Bottom line: Another diversion from an established sauce style from this company, but this one is perhaps a couple of veering left turns too far.

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 5
           Flexibility: 2
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3

Hot Ones Classic Chili Maple Hot Sauce Review

Hot Ones Classic Chili Maple

Note: This sauce appears on Seasons 19 - 21 of The Hot Ones.

Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYgvexWgwq8

The original Hot Ones Classic (reviewed elsewhere here) was not a sauce I enjoyed much. The Classic Garlic Fresno (also reviewed elsewhere here) was a sauce that I liked initially, but was a bit lukewarm on it for a while, until it eventually re-grew on me. When I first opened the bottle of this one, I was shocked, as it was incomprehensible that adding maple syrup to the Garlic Fresno could have somehow wrecked that sauce.

Thankfully, after clearing room in the bottle to agitate it better (this is why I don’t tend to review sauces initially upon opening the bottle), I’m now prepared to say that this is not only one of the better Hot Ones sauces and a definite improvement on the Garlic Fresno, it is one of the top Hot Ones-branded sauces generally.

Much of this will be a repeat to the Garlic Fresno, except that the little dash of maple syrup in there changes things considerably. Interestingly, it both brings out the black pepper and works with the apple cider vinegar in a way I found pleasant. Yes, I was just as shocked as long-time readers may be upon reading that, but it’s no less true. The various elements combine here (be sure to agitate this one frequently) in a way that is borderline spectacular and this is a solid upgrade over the Garlic Fresno. The application here is more or less as a Lousiana-style or Cajun sauce, though I think it may have a touch more flexibility than those tend to have.

I’ve actually had to move this up in the schedule so I could get the bottle safely in the lower shelf of my fridge door, where I keep all my FOH Wing Thing sauces, as I was having a lot of fun playing around with it and was getting nervous that my intended goal of keeping it around for successive Wing Things. Heat-wise, this is about the same as the other, which is quite moderate.

Bottom line: One of the better entries of the Hot Ones sauces and perhaps in the entirety of the show. 

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 10
           Flexibility: 7
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 7