Mikey V's Pineapple Habanero Hot Sauce Review

Mikey V’s Pineapple Habanero

I like pineapple a great deal, and hot sauce, of course, and pairing pineapple with Habanero was a very big deal in the hot sauce world for quite a while. It seems less so now, especially once mango and Habanero sort of came into the fold, but I’ve had a lot of both styles. For a while, before things started to drift more towards mango Habanero, I had the idle thought that I might just wind up covering every single pineapple Habanero sauce that was around, sans onions, naturally. Sweet hots and fruit-based sweet hots, where these sauces usually reside, are among my favorite styles, so I consider myself well-versed enough in these to sort of have internal sub-categories of the style. This particular one fits more into the “pineapple juice” area. 

While it is clearly fruit-based, I can’t say it’s a sweet hot, though. This one reads a lot more as salty pineapple, which reminds me a bit of the churrascarias that put a rock salt water spray on the pineapple and roast them on a spit, twirling on a trompo. I don’t think that’s exactly what the intent was here, though...I’m not sure quite what the intent was, but there are quite a few ingredients that don’t really show up in the flavor, which is vinegar, pineapple, salt, with the vinegar making things more tangy than a blast, and a slightly bitter note here and there from the Habs. I quite like this flavor, but I have a bit of a problem with this sauce.

One of my favorite places to put the tropical fruit-based sweet hots is on pizza and I’m always happy when I’m able to do that. With the more watery and loose sauces, such as this one, that is right off the table, as the sauce will just run and sog out the crust, if you’re not exceedingly careful. Another issue with the sort of “pineapple juice”sub-category I think this falls into is that you tend to lose concentration of flavor. Sure, this can mean saucing more, but what happens when a sponge is saturated and you try to pour more water on it? I think this sauce would be dramatically improved by being a good two to three times thicker, go for a nice medium body to it. As it is now, it probably should have come with a restrictor cap. 

The best places I found this are generally with meats where you’d want pineapple, so things like chicken and pork, grilled pineapple slabs, or mixed drinks. For the foods where you’re not so worried about the sauce pooling and puddling, this can make a welcome addition, though I found the flavor frequently got lost in things like breading of tendies, for instance. It is a touch on the hotter side than these kinds of sauces, specifically the ones more like juice, tend to be, but I’d say more like 1 - 1.5, rather than racing towards a two. It is a quite nice, pleasant heat.

Bottom line: While I think this is overall a solid sauce, particularly in the flavor direction, the consistency definitely works against it. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 7
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 6

Overall: 4