Gindo's Honey Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Gindo's Honey Habanero Hot Sauce

Note: This sauce was provided for purposes of review by Roger Damptz of Burn Your Tongue. Check him out on Facebook or, better yet, head on over to his new online outlet where you can shop the widest selection available anywhere, www.burnyourtongueonline.com.

UPDATE: Video support available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYj3cc0J09s

Gindo's is seeming to be one of the latest small-batch, high end sauce makers, putting out limited runs and using exotic ingredients. Their move towards differentiation extends to the packaging, which is very classy in terms of the label, and unique in the square bottles they use. In many respects, this is kind of a neat idea, as it has the potential to utilize space better in the refrigerator moreso than do the round bottles, but this is also what held me back initially, as I wasn't sure it would fit in my fridge door. This is also why, as much as I like flasks, I don't buy them or have many of them open at once. 

I did mean to get to this last year, but that year was quite a bit less able to be scheduled than normal. This sauce in one in which I kind of regret not getting to it sooner, as it is delicious, but then again, I was more than ready to savor it, an aspect which there is much to be said for. The ingredient profile is one that was nearly tailor-made for me in that it has both honey and Habanero, two things that go exceedingly well together, plus pink Himalayan salt (my preference would have been Hawaiian, but I suppose that just smacks of me angling towards Blair's Pure Death, which is probably not wrong). 

I mentioned Blair's Pure Death just there, as I love that flavor profile, but here, finally, we have a sauce that really does and nice job of capturing the Habanero's innate fruitiness. I will readily admit that I didn't find that pepper particularly fruity and have waxed and waned on it for the better part of a couple decades, but here, in this exquisite concoction, we have a resulting fruitiness that perhaps leans on the yellow Bell peppers a bit, but definitely does a nice job of highlighting that aspect of the Habanero. Flavor-wise, we have a nice, sweet, extremely well-balanced sauce that does a nice job of capturing the best of that pepper. It is also somewhat mild, so you could use quite a bit and it is not a strong flavor, so it will go well with almost anything.

Indeed, it is like the Pure Death in that you can put it on anything and it will be good. Unlike the Pure Death, this one will not overpower your dish, but instead blend and sometimes accent, sometimes vanish nearly entirely, leaving a touch of sweet and a touch of heat. There is a litany of items to try this sauce on (good thing it's an 8 oz. bottle) and I like to follow the guidance of the makers, if nothing else, to put the sauce in its best setting. This one, clearly designed as an "everyday" sauce, has quite a list and I'm working my way through it, but everything I've tried thus far has been excellent, including an Asian dish, in which this was much better than the actual Asian-style sauce I was also testing. Heat-wise, this is rather minimal. The emphasis is clearly on flavor, as most boutique sauce-makers are wont to focus on, and the result is outstanding.

Bottom line: Accessible by nearly everyone, this is a great demonstration of the fruitiness of the Habanero, as well as an excellent way to introduce the pepper. Chileheads may be disappointed by the heat, with the focus on flavor, but this is ultimately a stunning example of the heights to which hot sauce is capable. It's also another candidate for Sauce Of The Year and if I'm being honest, this is also the frontrunner at this point.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8