TRUFF Smoky Pineapple Hot Sauce Review

TRUFF Smoky Pineapple

It always strikes me as odd when there is a sauce with the word pineapple in the name that does not also reflect the accompanying flavor in the sauce profile. Pineapple is a fairly distinct, and sometimes polarizing, if certain parties are to be believed, flavor and it's not really something that one can use accidentally. It's not like spooning sugar into tea, "whoops I spilled some pineapple into my lemon tart." You generally have to go out of your way to include it, so it always puzzles me that if you're going to go to that trouble, why the flavor is not featured prominently. I've had other sauces where it is muted, but fairly few where it is absent entirely, but this is yet another in that ignoble list. 

I often find various trendy ingredients to be overrated. Truffle is absolutely one of them and it's another of those "rich cuisine" flavors and things I'm just as happy to be without. I find a little of it goes a long, long way and building a sauce line around the concentrated form of that, while featuring very slick and attractive packaging, is a curious proposition. Obviously, they are well national at this point, so they've managed to attract some backing capital, but the only person I've ever seen either buying or having it at all is me. I will say that the red sauces work better with Italian tomato-saucy foods and I think they floated a pasta sauce line at one point that was smarter, but I struggled to get through the only other flavor I've had from them (reviewed elsewhere here). I will also struggle to get through this one.

This is a much thinner sauce than the others seem to be and I'm not quite sure where they intended to position it. It's not quite as watery as a Louisiana-style, but is a bit closer to that, with the consistency somewhere between that looseness and maybe a medium thick. The flavor profile is heavily vinegar as well, with a sort of vague pepper flavor, maybe the Habanada puree, maybe the TRUFF chile blend, maybe both combined, and, of course, the actual truffle powder as well. Even with Habanada being a much milder variant of the Habanero, there should be a touch of punch, but this has next to no heat in it. What is absent from the flavors I mentioned, of course, is both the smokiness and the pineapple, which is especially curious for the latter of those two ingredients, given that it's the first ingredient in the list. 

This is definitely one that is helped immensely by agitation. When I first opened the bottle, I found it borderline ghastly and there it sat in the refrigerator door shelf while I pondered what could possibly be done with such a concoction. There are suggestions on the label, but I was a tad fearful of ruining those foods should I try to apply this to them. I will probably wind up using this as something to stir into other things, but that's just me trying to invent ways to use it up. Perhaps in that process I will discover somewhere that I like the combination of pungent vinegar with truffle, but this is not something I would ever want as a forward flavor profile nor is it a sauce I will ever get again. It was years between the first TRUFF sauce and this one and I don't know that there will ever be a third. 

Bottom line: If you like the idea of a vinegar-forward sauce, with truffle and a vague pepper flavor base, along with no heat to speak of, this might be up your alley. 

Breakdown:

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

Overall: 1