El Yucateco Habanero & Ghost Hot Sauce Review

El Yucateco Habanero & Ghost

I may have mentioned it before in these pages, but I’m a long-time fan of science fiction, particularly the “Golden Age.” One of the things that writers of that era loved to do was to come up with adages, phrases meant as rules, such as Asimov’s famous (and currently ignored) “Laws Of Robotics.” In that spirit, I am considering developing my own relative to this and for the first one, it would probably be something along the lines of “There is no hot sauce where the flavor is improved by the addition of extract,” followed by the corollary of “No sauce is ever improved by the addition of extract.” You may be able to see where this review is going...

This was part of a wave of new sauces that El Yucateco put out for their 55th Anniversary celebration, if memory serves. I’ve had my eye on it for a while, but like the other one from this batch that I reviewed this year (Hab & Grilled Pineapple, see TOC link at right >>), I put it on the backburner, both because I had other sauces in that style on deck first and because of the presence of the word onion in the ingredients. There does not appear to be actual onion in this sauce, just the flavoring of, and my intolerance will allow very limited uses, such as minor amounts of powder or salt of that type, so I figured this was probably safe in that respect. Ghost and Habanero go together well, so I was kind of excited about this combination here. Ghosties are my favorite superhot and I’ve personally used these two actual peppers together. I am honestly a bit miffed at the audacity of them using the word “Ghost” in the sauce name, when there are not actual Ghosties in the mix, but extract...I get ahead of myself a bit.

In any case, the onion does not read much in the flavor of this. Initially, the sauce reminded me of amateur cooking, in which someone may want to add some dried spice or other, and not give it sufficient time to meld and cook in and integrate with the dish and you get this flavor aspect heavily reminiscent of the scent of dried spice. That is what this tasted like, which usually means that a dried ingredient was added and given insufficient time under heat to rehydrate and become part of the club. After that, however, the flavor of the extract came much more to the fore and it’s why this review stared with the paragraph it did. There is just no masking that and the only one who has come close is the Buldak Black sauce from Samyang. 

Mexi-style sauces tend to be somewhat inherently limited in application, but here, you have a sauce that has extract fire, extract flavor, with a very slight citrus and Habanero aspect to it. It is quite rough overall and not something I find enjoyable by itself. It does mix out acceptably with other milder, better-flavored taco sauces, for instance, but if you’re in the position where you have to add other stuff in it to mask the flavor, the sauce itself is largely a failure and it disappoints me to no end to type those words. 

This is easily the hottest thing El Yucateco has ever made and this is quite a bit of heat for $3 shelf price, but I can’t imagine too many users finding this satisfying, particularly in flavor. Like all extract sauces, it races immediately to whatever heat level its going to hit and stays there, which I imagine will be too much for most normies. Chileheads may like that part, even if that heat reads largely as artificial, as most extract sauces do, but there is the flavor that one has to contend with, which is decidedly not great. The best thing I’ve found for it, other than trying to mix it out with something tastier, is to use it on meats. I can’t remember the last bottle of extract hot sauce I’ve finished, but even though this is the usual 4 fl. oz. instead of 5, I’m not sure I will be getting to the bottom of this one, either. 

Bottom line: Though easily the hottest, it is also one of the more disappointing sauces from this brand. I’m not sure who would find this enjoyable and their decisions on this I find baffling. 

Breakdown:

            Heat level: 2
            Flavor: 3
            Flexibility: 3
            Enjoyment to dollar factor: 4

Overall: 3