Humble House Ancho & Morita
Note: This sauce appears in Season 5 of The Hot Ones.
Note: Support video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34pPji7tnrM
Initially, this one caused me some confusion. On the label is the slogan, "not hot not sorry," which is fine to just have a tamarind sauce and roll with that, but it creates a conundrum for me. If you eliminate half of the words of "hot sauce," it leaves you with just a sauce and I've steadfastly refused to do anything not actual hot sauces on this blog (see the earliest posts for more info, if interested), including BBQ sauces, wing sauces, and mustards. Indeed, the last category sometimes gives me fits when manufacturers label something that is clearly a straightforward spicy mustard as a hot sauce. If you look through the nearly 350 (as of this writing) posts to this blog, you can see this pop up from time to time. Nowhere on this label do the words "hot sauce" appear together. We have "flavor first, heat second," which I can always get behind as I live that (and you can again check through the blog for many instances of me citing myself as a foodie first and chilehead second). Under the name of this sauce is the slogan "Smokey Tamarind Sauce." Indeed, in the ingredient list, Ancho, despite being the first word of the name, is dead last.
Ok, fine, if you want to make a tamarind sauce, roll with it. I'm good with that idea, though it probably isn't anything I'd be interested in especially, as I find tamarinds to be overly sour as a flavor most of the time. Having a sauce based around that is several steps too far. So, this left me a new question: should I shoot a video without a written review. The FOH series is mainly devised to support the blog, with the Hot Ones being perhaps the most famous mainstream tie-in. Did they use a non-hot sauce in one of the past seasons, which, if true, then means my understanding of the show is in complete. If that is the case, do I keep the integrity of the blog intact (yes) and isolate it alone as perhaps the only sauce on the show that winds up without a written review? In fact, I had planned to do just that very thing when I went to their website to conclude my research into things. On the website, it is listed as an actual hot sauce, which gave me the latitude to do this review. Also, this sauce wraps up Season 5 of The Hot Ones, which means I have now completed entirely 7 of the 17 seasons of the show.
They are very definitely correct when they say this is not hot. I will spare the questioning of calling a sauce a hot sauce if there is no heat, as examples abound in the Louisiana-style category (in fact, to give you an idea of the tameness, this was the lead sauce of that season, followed by the Louisiana Original (Mini-Review available elsewhere here) in the 2 slot. The main flavors here are largely the sour tamarind and the smokiness of the Morita, with a back roundness supplied by the garlic and Ancho. It definitely is a sauce more on the sour side overall, despite both raisins and sugar being additional ingredients. The bottle, nicely, is nearly 10 oz. and is set up to be a squeeze bottle, but they chose the plastic poorly here. While better than some of the other thicker, more opaque ones I've come across, it is not the softness of the Yellowbird bottles. I do like the cap system on this much, much better than the Yellowbird sauces and I suppose combining those would give one a best of both worlds.
Despite the calls to Latin-inspired cuisine on the labeling and the presence of the Ancho and Morita, tamarind to me will always mean one thing first and sometimes only. That is Asian cuisine. It was in Asian foods and in Asian households that I first experienced it and that impression is locked in my mind, though I do know that it is a strong component in Mexican culture as well. I don't, however, find that overall this sauce leads me to Mexican-style dishes. Quite the contrary, in fact, it brings to mind more Asian dishes or Asian influenced ones, particularly the crazy sweet notes that are often found in Hawaiian food. That someone would put it out there for use on wings kind of amazes me, actually, as I never would have thought of this working well there (and I will find out how that goes for the Q2 2022 FOH Wing Thing, coming up at the end of Q2 2022).
Bottom line: Much more of an accent sauce than an actual hot sauce, the smokiness and tamarind are mostly in balance, though the latter is stronger than the former. The sourness inherent here makes a strong case that this will work best where there is a strong sweet component to the food...unless you're heavily into sour.
Breakdown:
Heat level: 0
Flavor: 3
Flexibility: 3
Enjoyment to dollar factor: 3
Overall: 2
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