Adoboloco Jalapeno Chico Hot Sauce Review

Adoboloco Jalapeno Chico

Note: This sauce appeared in Season 21 of The Hot Ones.

Adoboloco is one of those sauce companies where I like some of their stuff, but find them overall generally favorable, rather than a brand that piques my immediate interest. I think the likelihood that I would have tried out their stuff without doing this little Hot Ones sauce project of mine is pretty low and a few of the sauces I got only because of coverage of that aforementioned project. Still, I will hand it to them that when they get it right, they get it way right.

You may know where I’m going already with this, but I backburnered this sauce for a while, as I found the name kind of baffling. What is the meaning of Jalapeno Boy (or Boy Jalapeno, I suppose, possibly)? I could not fathom what that meant, but this happened to go on sale and I figured it had been a while since Adoboloco had been in the Wing Thing rotation, which their other sauces were generally good enough to hold down the fort there.

I tell you, dear reader, I was not prepared at all for when I opened this bottle and fell instantly in love. One of my most very favorite things is fire-roasted pods in a sauce, but a very close second is smoked pods in a sauce, particularly when done well. Here, it is done to perfection, balanced by the notes of the apple cider vinegar, which have finally met their flavor match and then some. Smoked Ghosties and Chipotle (they call it smoked Jalapeno, but that is literally what Chipotle is) hold court and work together to tremendous effect. There is plenty of yeast in there to add some umami punch and then Scorpion powder, to bring the heat of the proceedings up a bit.

In many ways, I find this to be the perfect gateway sauce to bridge over the chile-curious to full tilt chileheads as this sauce, while it may have some solid punch, also tastes good enough to keep one wanting more. I’ve long said that if you make a sauce with a great flavor, it will be good on nearly everything and that is certainly the case here. They call it a taco sauce (but it is so much more) and it’s indeed good there, but no less good on burgers and pizza and on creamy dishes and burgers and chicken and everything else I threw at it. I, in fact, had to purposely stop eating it or I would have had to buy a second bottle for filming and the Q2 Wing Thing and indeed, will be adding this back to the Heatonist list for whenever the next sale is.

Bottom line: Not only the best sauce Adoboloco has done, by a wide margin, this is one of probably the top 2 or 3 best sauces on The Hot Ones show and, as might be expected, another contender for Sauce Of The Year.

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 8