De La Viuda – Green Pepper Hot Sauce
Bitter: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Salty: ⭐⭐⭐✰✰
Sour/Tangy: ⭐⭐⭐⭐✰
Sweet: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Umami: ⭐✰✰✰✰
Heat: ⭐⭐✰✰✰✰✰✰✰✰
Quick Flavor Notes: Tangy, fresh, vegetal, fruity, earthy
Recommended: Yes
Texture: Medium-thin with xanthan texture
Ingredients: Water, Peppers (Poblano and Habanero), Salt, White Vinegar, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative), Garlic, Onion, Sodium Metabisulfite (Preservative).
De La Viuda, a company started by former executives from Chulula and Jose Cuervo, has only been in the USA for several years but the recipes for the sauces themselves go back over 50 years to Jalisco Mexico where a widow would sell her hot sauces from a street cart to support herself and her children. I’ve previously tried De La Viuda’s Original Red Hot Sauce and enjoyed it, finding it similar to Cholula but superior. Based on that I was excited to try their green sauce.
One thing that immediately stuck out to me on the ingredients for this sauce is that there was a sticky label covering up the old ingredients list with a new one. I tried to peel it off to see what the differences were but alas the glue destroyed what had laid beneath. Looking up the ingredients posted from retailers online it looks like the original label read: “Water, Peppers, (Poblano and Habanero), Salt, White Vinegar, Natural Spices, Xanthan Gum, Sodium Benzoate (Preservative)”. So the differences now are listing garlic and onion instead of “spices” and the addition of an additional new preservative, sodium metabisulfite. While I do appreciate listing the garlic and onion discretely as opposed to a mysterious “spices” adding even more artificial preservatives is never a good thing. I can guarantee the widow selling this sauce from her street card 50 years ago wasn’t throwing in sodium benzoate or sodium metabisulfite. On the positive end the pepper blend of poblano and green habanero looks good and should compliment each other. The sauce itself is medium-thin in texture and has a bit of that pseudo-gel xanthan gum high surface tension effect. The aroma if of peppers and vinegar.
I’ve mentioned before that I’m very picky about green hot sauces. For a green hot sauce to impress me it had to have a fresh vibrant flavor. De La Viuda Green Pepper absolutely blew away my expectations. The flavor is intensely fresh and tangy, with puckering vinegar mixed with fruity green and grassy habanero flavor and earthy vegetal poblano. A quick sting of habanero heat that disappears almost immediately combines with a general wave of “green” flavor. It’s not all top end however, the onion and garlic, while not super-forward in the flavor, give this sauce depth and dimension. Most importantly despite this having two artificial preservatives there’s no artificial or chemically flavor to this sauce. I’ve had others, such as La Anita Xtra Picante where the chemical flavors overwhelmed the sauce, but somehow De La Viuda has avoided that here. In fact if you blindfolded me and gave me a spoon of this I could believe it as a craft sauce selling for $10 per bottle instead of a $3 per bottle sauce you can buy at Walmart. The one caveat with this sauce is that it is extremely vinegary and tangy, close to Tabasco levels. I love vinegar, I have over a dozen varieties of vinegar in my pantry, so this is a positive for me but if you’re sensitive to vinegary sauces it may not be your thing.
Since this is a pepper-forward sauce with a ton of tang it’s very flexible in its uses. It’s one of the best hot sauces for pizza I’ve tried, especially for a very heavy meat lover’s pizza I ordered that needed some brightness to cut through all of the meat. It’s also stellar on breakfast burritos, as well as breakfast in general with the perfect amount of heat and that puckering tang to wake you up in the morning. Of course being a Mexican hot sauce it’s also perfect with tacos and burritos. I especially liked this with some shrimp tacos from my favorite local Mexican take-out spot. Verde sauces can feel made for seafood.
I’m happy to recommend De La Viuda Green Pepper Hot Sauce. While I don’t love the presence of artificial preservatives they at least don’t have a negative effect on the flavor here. This is not only delicious it’s extremely affordable, flexible, and probably on the shelf of your local grocery store. If you like vinegary fresh green hot sauces it’s one to pick up.
