Noel's Serrano & Mango Hot Sauce Review

Noel's Serrano & Mango Hot Sauce

Amusingly, the label calls this one "All Supernatural", amusing because that is a very curious way of spelling "astringent", which is the dominating characteristic of this sauce. Using mango in a sauce is tough...most of them tend to be of the sour and not particularly ripe variety and the fruit itself is a bit delicate in that you only have a specific grace period. Fall outside of that and it's either overripe or, as is this one, excessively tart. This adds another sin by banking in an overly generous amount of vinegar and there is no hope for it at that point, certainly not anything the relatively weak serrano would be able to stand up to or combat in any way.

I've used this in a variety of settings and it immediately overpowers and distracts from nearly every type of food I tried, which is never a good trend. That it is not particularly good-tasting also creates its own problems, unless you're really really into hyper astringent (think vinegary-sour) tastes, then you may like this better. The heat is very minimal, naturally, given the use of Serranos and this less than stellar combination makes it difficult to see any place for this.

Bottom line: This is a sauce I wound up giving up on and tossing the remainder of the bottle, which is a rarity for me and speaks all it needs to the sauce itself.


Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 0
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1