Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Hot Sauce Review

Maritime Madness Mustard Pickle Secret Weapon

This is not a hot sauce, at least in my estimation. This is basically something I made a few times, albeit in a much smoother form, when I mixed a yellow mustard with the Dillanero (FOH video available, if interested). I don’t know that they used a relish, but this is essentially what it’s named after, mustard pickle or pickle mustard. This is not to say it’s a bad product. On the contrary, I am absolutely enjoying this and it’s easily my favorite product so far that I’ve gotten from Maritime Madness. I just don’t consider it a hot sauce, but a mustard or mustard-adjacent product.

Still, if the manufacturer wants to market it as a hot sauce, I’m not going to argue (much). Instead, we will just view this as a hot sauce. One of the reasons I have not included mustards in these pages is because I don’t think it’s fair. I like mustards if fairly narrow applications, mostly on phallic-shaped meats or burgers or certain deli sandwiches or on in specific salads. Sometimes on oven-baked pork chops as well, but as I rarely make those, I’m not really counting that. I don’t find that mustard is particularly flexible outside of that, discounting perhaps sweet mustards, which can be ok on fried chicken type foods. The other side is that mustards tend to have their heat from allyl isothiocyanate rather than capsaicin and it’s just another category entirely. There can be some bridging, sure, but at heart, it is truly a mustard and thus, does not really fit into a hot sauce blog.

That aside, heat here is rather low. The bottle calls it a 6, I call it a 1. I believe the peppers used here are Habanero, but they don’t really interact with the flavor much. Instead, we have the yellow mustard, heavily sweetened by sugar, and with a healthy dose of (probably) sweet pickles, the end result being heavenly...at least where you’d normally use yellow mustard and/or pickles.

Bottom line: This is a failure as a hot sauce (which is reflected in the individual rating numbers), but as a pickle mustard, it is absolutely fantastic, particularly if you like sweeter mustards or relishes.  

Breakdown:

           Heat level: 1
           Flavor: 8
           Flexibility: 0
           Enjoyment to dollar factor: 10

Overall: 5