Gindo's Strawberry Basil Hot Sauce Review

Gindo's Strawberry Basil

This is one I was admittedly a touch iffy on. Strawberry hot sauces can be one of those a bit difficult to place. I do find them often enjoyable on strawberry green salads, where this one would also be great, I suspect, especially if paired with a strawberry vinaigrette dressing, but if they are very sweet, the tendency is for them to gravitate more to the realm of desserts and I’m not the hugest sweets fan. Usually, if I get a bottle, it will be hanging out in there for a while and it’s kind of like cranberry sauces, in a way, I suppose. Not so much in flavor profile, but more in that I tend to view them in fairly narrow applications.

Still, this was Gindo’s we’re talking about here, one of my favorite sauce makers and one who, even if I don’t love the sauce, never really misses. And indeed, this is a very flavorful sauce. I’m a big fan of red Bells and that is the lead-off ingredient here, which bolsters the Habanero nicely, making this a very astute pairing. The strawberry here is back a bit, more of a delayed almost grace note, but a bit more prominent. It is happily that of fresh strawberries, my definite favorite way to have those. Strawberries can be a fairly delicate flavor and heavy processing tends to kill the best parts of the fruit flavor, I find. There is none of that here, which is a testament to the skill of the chef(s) involved. There are a lot of subtleties and the balance allows the various salts and vinegar to come forward a bit in the flavor. This is definitely not a hot sauce closer in line to the strawberry syrups, not even remotely.

This allows it to work especially well with chicken, which the sweeter ones do not particularly. I did try it as a dessert sauce a few times, which led to the near complete cancellation of the strawberry and left me with the flavor of the peppers, the vinegar, and the salts...interesting, but not something I would want to regularly have. Interestingly, the basil doesn’t really show up at all in the flavor here...or at least in the various ways I tried it. Heat-wise, this is only Habanero, so it is quite moderate. 

Bottom line: This is a sauce I view favorably and find a quite flavorful sauce, but not one I can say I love. If you like real strawberry flavor in a hot sauce, but don’t want it on the sweet side, this is definitely worth a go.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 5
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5