Stanky The Clasico Hot Sauce Review

Stanky The Clasico

I suppose I might be accused of being elitist, perhaps even a bit narrow, in my tastes, to which I would agree to the first characterization and dissent fairly firmly on the second...but there are some areas in which I want something specific and things that fall outside of that, I might find in question. If they fall far outside of it, the odds tend to decrease that I will look on it favorably. Case in point, Mexi-style sauces and astringency. One of the very last things I look for in that style of sauce is pungency. I more want a richness and warmth and a depth of flavor, along with some solid heat, and maybe a tinge of astringency, but not a lot more than that. In this case, there is unfortunately quite a bit more.

I’ve seen this company around for a while and might have gotten them confused with Funky’s and that whole fermented scene, but I vaguely remembered the sauces I looked at from them having onions, so I put them on the backburner for a while...a long while. Eventually, as it turned out, I had some space and figured now might be a good time, despite me finding their name a touch odd - it is a sort of nickname for the last name of the owners, not a reference to something Ike Turner famously told Tina Turner to put on her vocals while in the studio - now being the moment to give them a shot and figured I’d start with the sauce that sounded like sort of a “house” sauce. If companies have one of these, it is often times the most accessible and since this was the introductory sauce from them, I figured it would be a good starting point, despite not really having anything resembling heat in the ingredients.

There are a lot of “from concentrates” and powders here, which gives me a touch of pause whenever I see that, as often that will wind up being reflected in the overall flavor. In this case, there is quite a lot of vinegar and citrus competing for palate space, but I was able to tamp those down here and there, depending on pairing, and then got hit with a fairly abrasive garlic hit. The ingredient list definitely leans pretty strongly into the idea this is meant to be a Mexi-style sauce and given that they’re a Florida company, I assume the inclusion of key lime is meant to be a reference to that, but altogether, it’s just too much and comes across as a bit sour. It is definitely well, well outside of what I want in a Mexi-style sauce, a facet of which is that the sauce needs to be delicious on its own. For me, this one is decidedly not. 

Bottom line: It’s possible I may consider something else from them down the line, but I found this sauce to be quite underwhelming and not something I am going to continue with.

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 0
            Flavor: 2
            Flexibility: 2
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 0

Overall: 1