Valentina Black Label "Extra Hot" Salsa Picante Hot Sauce Review

Valentina Black Label Extra Hot

NOTE: This sauce appeared in Season Four of The Hot Ones.

UPDATE: Support video now available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmQFL0N77xk

Along with Cholula and Tapatio, this is the third leg of the triumvirate of large-scale Mexican-oriented hot sauces. It is probably the oldest of the three and easily the least popular (at least in Salt Lake). Cholula, in the United States, is far and away the king there, running away with a strong nationwide distribution and near-ubiquitous presence in so many places I've not lost count. They are also the only one, to my knowledge, to make the transition into sauce packets, which is a much bigger deal than it sounds. It's also probably the mildest of the three, though to my mind, it is also the best-tasting. So, to get to the point, if you've tried either of the others, you've basically tried this, though I think Valentina and Tapatio are closer to each other than to Cholula.

For $.99, I got a 12.5 oz. bottle and was very excited about it. This possibly could have been the prime standby Mexican sauce for which I've been searching, but sadly, oh so sadly, not to be. While it does have moderately more heat than either of the other two (Tapatio has an SHU of 3000, so I'd say this is maybe 3500 - 4000 somewhere), it is comparably less than a good jalapeno. The taste isn't good or bad; it's that same sort of "standard" Mexican sauce taste, which I've understood is malleable enough to use on almost everything.

So, while this is ok for what it is, which is for those people who want hotter versions of one of those sauce variations, I think my taste has moved on. It's very difficult eating this sauce on Mexican food when I have some El Yucateco left. It's doesn't even compare favorably to Texas Pete in several instances and despite it not being at all a bad-tasting sauce, it's a flavor that I find incredibly easy to tire of. The value is almost incomparable, except for it being almost entirely unpalatable to me. I can't imagine an instance in which I would intentionally choose it and unless my wife likes it (she likes the other two in the triumvirate), I may wind up having to pitch a mostly full bottle to make room for other and better sauces.


Bottom line: This is one of those sauces I call a "desert isle" sauce, not meaning that I would take it with me to a deserted island, but if I was cast adrift with nothing else (ignoring the more obvious larger concerns), this would do in a pinch. If I still ate ramen noodles, this is probably what I would use it for, assuming I was out of Red Devil or any other better-tasting sauce or if whatever Mexican restaurant I was at didn't have some good homemade sauce and was out of either of the other two in their table bottles.


Breakdown (Original):

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

Overall: 2
  
** Update 04/17/13 **

As I am wont to do ever so often, I've decided, after spending a lot more unexpected time with the Valentina lately -- for all its faults, it was one of the few palatable during my recent bout with food poisoning -- that I probably did it a bit of a disservice rating it as low as I did. I stand by most of my comments. This will never be mistaken for an actual good sauce and it remains mostly one of those "better than nothing" sauces, yet it does have its uses and in the interests of fairness, I'm giving it a re-rate. This should not be taken to mean I'm going to rush right out and buy more, but you could have worse things in the fridge.

 Breakdown (Re-rate):

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

Overall: 4

Video/Audio vs. Written Reviews

UPDATE 03/15/20: I came across this when updating the blog and largely forgotten I'd written it. I seem somewhat upset about video reviews. Part of the reason is that a lot of YouTube, then and now, comes across as eating challenges. With any kind of challenge, it's always a game of one-ups-manship. You got hot, someone else goes hotter, you eat 57 hot dogs, someone eats 70, etc., and that sort of thing remains of limited interest to me. It took me a while to think of a way to do the videos (at the time of writing, I was very against doing a YouTube channel at all) in a way that would add on to the written reviews (which I still consider a lot more important), and cover things that the written review could not, such as the motional viscosity and to a degree, the reaction with the sauces. I'm leaving this as I wrote it, as sort of a capsule, though some of the elements in it have obviously "evolved" over time.

Scott Roberts (go to his website if you haven't already) recently did his usual fantastic job of wrapping up the Weekend Of Fire 2012 and put up a post about a Bloggers roundtable he and some others did. I have not taken the time to go through the video (more on that in a bit), but in his blurb about the episode, he mentions the discussion of video/audio vs. written reviews.

I wrote on this briefly earlier when I mentioned there would be no pictures, etc. but while I may, at some point, add pictures of the bottle, at least, I won't be adding pictures of the sauce on food or videos of my reaction, etc. The reason for this is that I view the reviews for posterity and after doing literally thousands of them on other subjects, I think I've got them more or less nailed down, in terms of what I want to see.

What I don't want to see if having to pore through three and a half minutes or 45 seconds or whatever length of video to get to the information I want. If someone wants to be a star and be on camera or whatever, good on them. Go for it, do it up, go crazy, but if there's a review in there, it's worthless to me. Take a look at any of my written-only reviews and you can find the information (the most important of which is should you spend your money on whatever the thing being reviewed is) in seconds and if you decide you're tired of reading the strings of letters some asshole has cobbled together, then you can skip out and no real harm done. If you're like me and you sit through a few minutes of video, it had damn better be worth your while or you're going to be disappointed or possibly pissed that someone just wasted your time. If you want to go back to it, are you really going to remember the time stamp of when some cutesy fucker said just the right pithy thing that kinda sorta stuck in your mind? I don't think most people have the time to sit through those and if they're like me, they also lack the inclination.

Perhaps equally important is the idea that something written, by nature, is inherently more considered than off-the-cuff remarks, even if they're as practiced and well (perhaps over) rehearsed as those of any given politician. Take a look at literally any random YouTube sauce review (and I say this having seen exactly zero of them) and tell me if they seem polished or outlined or scripted out at all. There might be some general framework and continuity and may even border on cohesive, but are they useful, other than possibly as (light) entertainment? If you're looking for some guidance before you plonk down your dancing-for-tip money for a bottle of magic elixir you haven't tried yet, do you want to see some schnook prancing and dancing around trying to get to whatever point there is to be made or do you want to see something organized or at least static, so you can stare at it to glean whatever useful knowledge there is to be had?

Even if this blog somehow takes off and people stream here by the droves, you won't see video reviews (*ahem* see update) or audio reviews and probably not much in the way of pictures. What you will get is hard, truthful information. Just the facts, kids. Just the facts.

Orange Krush Hot Sauce Review

Orange Krush

My first impression, on peeling back the plastic, was that this was an older bottle. After cleaning out the neck carefully of some discolored sauce, I shook it up and went for the straight test. It immediately reminded me on the El Yucateco red, though noticeably more initial heat. At 9,400 SHU, it's not quite double the El Yucateco, but most of the heat here is what I call the "flash" variety, meaning it hits immediately but has little to no staying power.

Despite having a laundry list of ingredients, the main star here is the "bright" taste of the sauce, again, very similar to El Yucateco. You won't be marveling at being able to flush out the celery seed taste or pondering how nicely the mace is integrated or how well the cardamom shines through, but that complexity does a nice job of smoothing and mellowing the flavor, which adds greatly to the flexibility here, unlike the El Yucateco, which is somewhat of a one-trick pony. Unfortunately, this sauce does not taste as good as the El Yucateco, so it's decidedly advantageous that it is not as overpowering and backs off a bit in intensity there.

I ran this through the usual suspects, up to and including a Subway sandwich and at times it would blend well enough to blunt and mask the initial taste and blend and accent in a way to add a nice degree of heat to whatever it was, from microwaved macaroni & cheese on to stepping up a few other more mundane sauces. Also like the El Yucateco, this did not do well with flavors not prominent enough to hold their own and this is not a good enough tasting sauce to either keep around or ever buy again, ultimately. At $5.99 for a 5 oz. bottle (they have since changed the bottle size), the cost to enjoyment ratio is not staggeringly low, but low nonetheless. There are simply better and more enjoyable sauces out there.

Of course, no review of this particular product would be complete without mentioning the absurd disclaimer on the bottle label about Experienced Chileheads Only! As if 9K SHU would be anything any self-respecting chilehead would ever bat an eye about...it does do a nice job of frightening off several people I work with, since I've moved the bottle to work instead of home. I guess there's that...

Bottom line: This is one of those products that's been out a while, that has generated some noise for itself, but is not in any way what I would consider a high-end product. The taste is not bad, certainly, but not good enough to make me want to use it frequently. It doesn't really fit into any particular area of sauces I would keep on hand nor go especially well with dishes I would normally cook/eat and it's not particularly available easily. I'm not unhappy I tried it, but this is a one-and-done sauce.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 4