El Yucateco – Habanero and Grilled Pineapple Hot Sauce

Bitter: 🟡🟡🟡🟡○

Salty: 🟡🟡🟡○○

Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡🟡🟡○

Sweet: 🟡🟡🟡🟡○

Umami: 🟡○○○○

Heat: 🟡🟡○○○○○○○○

Quick Flavor Notes: Astringent, artificial, sweet

Recommended: No

Texture: Syrupy and mostly smooth

Ingredients: Water, Sugar Cane, Habanero Peppers, Pineapple, Lemon Juice, Salt, Spice And Colouring (Turmeric), Xanthan Gum (Stabilizer), Gellan Gum (Stabilizer), Acetic Acid (Ph Control Agent), Citric Acid (Acidulant), Natural Flavouring (Onion), And Sodium Benzoate As Preservative.

I’ve long been a fan of El Yucateco hot sauces. Not only are they a great value and easily available at almost every Mexican grocery store as well as many regular grocery stores they have a wide variety of flavors most featuring the habanero, one of my favorite peppers. In fact their XXX Hot probably holds the record for the hot sauce I’ve bought the most bottles of in my life, typically going through at least one a week before I got into the hot sauce reviewing game and saw the variety of my collection explode. Their Caribbean Style and their Habanero and Chiltepin from their newer expanded lineup have also been favorites of mine. Since I’ve opened up more to the idea of fruit based hot sauces I decided to give their Pineapple Habanero a try.

The first two ingredients in this sauce are water and sugar which is evident in the consistency which is very syrupy. Next come the namesake of the sauce, habanero and pineapple. This sauce uses both vinegar and lemon juice for acidity as well as citric acid for both tartness and additional acidity. Some unnamed spices and turmeric for color are present, and I’m glad to see them go with a natural coloring agent instead of the artificial colors used in many of their sauces. Of course this sauce is not close to an all natural one. It uses two industrially produced thickening agents with gellan gum and xanthan gum as well as an artificial preservative in sodium benzoate. Something that struck me a bit odd on the label is ‘natural flavoring (onion)’. That both suggests that onion is the only natural flavoring added but also that they’re not using real onions, but rather some industrially flavoring derived from real onions. This sauce smells more savory than I’d expect for a pineapple hot sauce and has a mostly smooth texture though there are some little bits floating inside.

Have you ever been to a churrascaria such as Rodizio Grill or Fogo de Chao where they bring out the pineapple they’ve grilled on the same spits as the meat, all caramelized and tasting simultaneously sweet, roasty, and little smoky? That’s what I was hoping for with El Yucateco Habanero & Grilled Pineapple. Instead I was greeted by one of the most artificial tasting hot sauces I’ve had the misfortune to consume in quite a while. This is easily the worst El Yucateco flavor that I’ve ever had. It starts off harsh with an unpleasant habanero flavor that’s all astringency instead of the sweet fruitiness you get from high quality habaneros. The cheap vinegar and lemon juice combine for an unpleasant harsh aggressive acidity. The pineapple flavor tastes like the cheap pineapple filling from a no-name brand confectionary you buy at a gas station for one dollar. The sweetness is cloying compounded by the unpleasant syrupy gelatinous texture. The worst part is the onion. I love onions. I don’t particularly want onions in my sweet pineapple hot sauce and I definitely don’t want “natural flavor (onion)” as opposed to real onions because whatever they’re using in this sauce just leaves an unpleasant vaguely-oniony-but-worse aftertaste in your mouth. There’s also no flavor of the pineapple being grilled – no smoke, no caramelized flavors, no hints of char. This sauce isn’t very hot, a step above the basic Louisana style sauces, but I wasn’t expecting blazing heat here.

Perhaps, I thought, this would be better with food. I tried it first with some egg rolls from my favorite Chinese takeout spot. This sauce reminded me vaguely of duck sauce so I thought perhaps that might work, though I believe it was more the color and consistency than the flavor. It doesn’t work well, the flavor fights the egg-rolls, but the unpleasant faux-onion aftertaste was at least not as present there. Chinese restaurant packet duck sauce is also awful, tasting mostly of starch and corn syrup, but this was awful in equally bad but different ways with that harshness from the peppers and lemon plus vinegar still coming through. I also discovered this is one of the few sauces that just doesn’t work on wings – again it’s just cloying and harsh at the same time, and sweet plus astringent with no complexity or depth to back it up just doesn’t work. I decided to risk ruining one more dish with this and tried it on some pepperoni pizza – after all, pineapple and pizza can be a classic combination. The sweetness and syrupy texture just don’t work, it became pizza slime, and the artificial nature of the pineapple flavor here didn’t do it any favors.

It pains me to say it, but El Yucateco completely whiffed with this one. I believe this is the first sauce of theirs that I’ve found completely unpalatable. It reminds me of some of the cheaper La Anita hot sauces I’ve tried which shared that highly astringent chemically flavor. If you’re looking for a tasty fruity hot sauce it appears this is a case where spending more for something craft made with high quality ingredients is absolutely worth it.