Hank Sauce – Skedatil
I was excited to see this sauce and anxious to try it because of the Datil peppers used. Datils are a pepper popular especially in the St. Augustine, FL area (where the Hank Sauce crew went to school and originally met) that, depending on who you ask, either came to the area via Minorcan settlers, Cuban visitors, or travelers from Chile. Regardless of the original it’s a pepper that has a strong association with the Minorcan community in St. Augustine and is similar in heat to a habanero but with a fruitier more fragrant flavor and a shape more similar to many Capsicum Annuum peppers.
That excitement was tempered considerably when I took a closer look at the ingredients and saw that Datil peppers were the second-to-last ingredient, only in quantity by weight greater than the garlic used. Sauces marketing with a certain type of pepper and containing none (or very little) of that pepper isn’t a new phenomenon, but it does seem quite prevalent in Datil pepper sauces. Perhaps it’s due to the limited area Datil peppers are grown in that makes them more expensive to procure so that companies are compelled to use fillers, but I’d happily pay a premium for a hot sauce that used just pure Datil peppers and no others.
Hank Sauce does use the same base in most of their sauces – a standard Louisiana style mix of aged cayenne peppers, vinegar, and salt – and this sauce is no different. I enjoy a good Louisiana style sauce and the base that Hank Sauce uses is high quality with great flavor. To my palate it’s a step up from what you get with your basic Louisiana style sauces like Crystal, Frank’s, or Texas Pete. This sauce adds wine, Datil peppers, and garlic to that base but omits the butter that’s featured in many of the Hank Sauce offerings.
That Louisiana style base is at the forefront of the flavor of this sauce. It’s tangy, pleasantly salty, and has some complexity from the aged peppers. Garlic and wine provide additional levels of flavor and both play well with that Louisiana sauce base. While I initially doubted how much impact the Datil peppers would have given their relative scarcity in the mix, there is a a fruitiness and extra level of heat in this sauce that’s not present in the basic “core four” Hank Sauces (Herb Infused, Cilanktro, Camouflage, and Hank’s Heat). I would love to try this sauce with Datils at the forefront instead of playing a support role, but I will admit that Skedatil is still a delicious sauce. I do have a strong preference for tangy sauces and this delivers that in spades along with a unique flavor that sets it apart both from other Hank Sauce sauces as well as from other Louisiana style sauces.
Skedatil is a very flexible sauce when it comes to food pairings. You can use it anywhere you’d use a Louisiana style sauce such as creamy pastas or soups, cajun and creole dishes, on wings, the sky is the limit. I did find it especially nice with fried foods, the tang, heat, and hint of fruity flavor from the Datils was excellent with fried fish and chicken.
Even given my annoyance with Hank Sauce choosing to market this sauce with the name of a pepper that’s relatively scant in the mix, I will still recommend Skedatil because it’s delicious in its own right. If you love tangy sauces and would like to try something different and a big upgrade from your traditional grocery store Louisiana style finds this one is a great choice.
Ingredients: Hank Base (aged peppers, distilled vinegar, salt, xanthan gum), wine, datil peppers, garlic
Heat Level: 3/10. This has a decent little kick and is noticeably hotter than other Louisiana style sauces but still easily accessible
