Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce – Original
Bitter: 🟡🟡○○○
Salty: 🟡○○○○
Sour/Tangy:🟡🟡🟡🟡○
Sweet: 🟡○○○○
Umami: 🟡○○○○
Heat: 🟡🟡○○○○○○○○
Quick Flavor Notes: Astringent, Tart, Pepper-forward
Recommended: Conditional
Texture: Thin and mostly smooth
Ingredients: Pepper Blend (Red Jalapeno and Red Habanero), Vinegar, Lime Juice, Garlic, Salt
This is the second bottle from Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce that I’ve done a full review one, having reviewed their Family Reserve previously but also having tried their Scorpion Pepper sauce as part of a many-scorpion-sauce review several years ago. While their Scorpion Sauce was disappointing I was very impressed with their Family Reserve (though they’ve unfortunately since changed the recipe to make it cheaper, and in the process worse by replacing the aged real Carolina Reaper peppers with Carolina Reaper powder). In fact, this sauce seems to have been changed since as well, with their website indicating the shift from fresh lime juice to lime juice from concentrate, replacing the red habaneros with orange ones, and moving them to near the end of the ingredients list. This review will be based on the bottle I have in-hand however, so let’s see how it holds up.
Lola’s Original is a fairly straightforward hot sauce consisting of two of the most popular peppers used in any hot sauces – jalapenos and habaneros – and common additions such as garlic, vinegar, salt, and lime juice. As I mentioned above this sauce uses both red jalapenos and red habaneros, the best common version of each pepper, at least for a red hot sauce. Lola’s was started by Toi Shah, the son of a Filipino immigrant Carmelita “Lola” Shah and based on her old family recipes. That makes the changes I’ve seen in this sauce and their Family Reserve all the more disappointing. Other sauce companies have done similar things, notably Hot N Saucy with their Collards N Ghost changing the recipe to make it cheaper to produce (and in the process much worse) but when it’s old family recipes being changed to pad the profit margin or to fit the whims of an indifferent co-packer it feels like something more is lost. Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce Original is thin in consistency with an overall smooth texture with just a few specks of spice visible. The aroma is pepper-forward but also a little bit harsh.
The flavor of Lola’s Original has a certain harshness that echoes the aroma. Part of that may be the use of a cheaper distilled vinegar, though the lime juice adds a complementary tartness that takes off some of the vinegar’s edge. Red jalapenos are typically sweet and full-bodied, in fact my favorite hot-sauce of all time Butterfly Bakery of Vermont’s Rum Barrel Fermented Jalapeno Hot Sauce is a great example of that red jalapeno flavor profile, as is Boar’s Head’s Jalapeno Pepper Sauce. I don’t get much of that sweet rich red jalapeno flavor in this sauce, instead it being habanero-dominant. Unfortunately I don’t get a lot of the sweet fruity flavor that red habaneros should bring either, instead more of the astringent harshness that typically comes from orange habaneros. It’s possible the sauce may have started to use the orange peppers before the label changed. That’s not to say there’s no pepper-fruit flavor or that this is by any means close to the harshest flavor I’ve had in a hot sauce. There’s just more edge to it than I’d prefer which unfortunately stands out more because of how simple this sauce is. When you make a five-ingredient hot sauce every ingredient needs to be of the top quality, and this tastes of being made from lower-quality peppers. There’s also just a hint of garlic flavor which means the peppers really are the star of the show, something that could be great were the peppers of the highest quality. In terms of heat this does have a surprising kick for what is supposed to be Lola’s mildest sauce.
One benefit of a pepper-forward simpler flavor profile is that it is very flexible in terms of pairings. The more aggressive forward flavor of this worked well with creamy dishes in particular including cheesy scrambled eggs and a creamy mushroom soup. On pizza on the other hand the combination of the already high-acidity of the food combined with the aggressive flavor of this sauce was a bit too much. Where I did find it to shine was in use on chicken wings done buffalo-style with a close to 50:50 sauce to butter ration. The added butter really rounded off the flavors of the sauce and the added richness allowed the fruitier pepper flavors of this sauce to shine through more, showing it off in its best light.
The challenge with this sauce, just like the bottle of Lola’s Family Reserve that I reviewed before, is that the bottle which I have is apparently not the same bottle being sold now. That alone means that I can’t give this a recommendation but I also didn’t find that I really loved this sauce compared to similar ones that I’ve had. At the same time this sauce isn’t tragically broken like other sauces I’ve tried, so I won’t shoo anyone away from it. I believe there are better sauces to be had, even on grocery store shelves where this kind of sauce tends to live, but it is all-natural which is a plus, I just wish it used higher quality ingredients.
