El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple

I was pretty amped when El Yucateco came out with some new flavors a while back. I’ve had my fair share, and then some, of their regular ones and anything they do will always be of strong interest. They are frequently the next step in hot sauces for many chileheads when they get tired of the lower heat mass market stuff that tends to popular the market in the Mexican-style. 

I was amped and then I couldn’t get my greedy little grubbins on them without some major ordeals...and I noticed the word “onion” in the ingredients, which always gives me pause. I also had a number of other sauces in that style ahead of it, so I backburnered these until that fabled “someday,” but always intended to get to at least some of them. I don’t recall this one specifically, but when I saw it on the grocery store shelf where I normally shop, I figured I’d pick it up right then before they changed their minds.

As it turned out, I had recently gone through another sauce, which will be coming AFTER this both on the blog and in the video series, because that’s how I’m rolling I guess, and it was a bit more on the savory side. I had a really neat video idea in mind, but it needed the sauce to be somewhat sweeter, which this one kind of is. It definitely calls to mind both churrascos, where they do the grilled pineapple on a trompo, but even more where it might go with an al pastor type setting, or possibly chicken done in that way rather than pork. So, it didn’t quite work as I had in mind with that dish and I’m still searching, but this is overall a quite nice sauce. 

Unusual for sauces with pineapple, the Habaneros come in front of the pineapple and there is a quite forward amount of that flavor as well as some of those al pastor leanings.  Pineapple is present, to be sure, but it is a very different take on the style and probably not meant at all to live in the space where those other more fruit-forward ones we’re more familiar with does. This one does at least have a nicely appreciable degree of heat, but it’s none too much. I don’t mind this, but with the lean away from those others, this also is something I’m not sure is going to work overly great on pizza, though I am willing to try...which I will also do at some point.

Bottom line: Very lovely and intriguing sauce from El Yucateco and a bit of a surprise as well. Definitely think of this one more in that al pastor vein rather than a fruit-based sweet hot, but where it works, it works extremely well. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 1
            Flavor: 6
            Flexibility: 4
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 8

Overall: 5