Omar Apollo – Disha Hot Hot Sauce
I first heard of this sauce, like nearly everyone else I’m sure, through the recent Taco Bell collaboration which included a boxed meal with several packets of this sauce. I enjoyed the Taco Bell sauce packets, so decided to order a few bottles of the sauce for myself.
Omar Apollo is a Mexican-American musician. His parents immigrated from Guadalajara Mexico and ran a Mexican restaurant before he was born. The story is that this sauce is an old family recipe that was handed down, and that he now wants to make available to the world.
One important detail is that the Taco Bell Disha Hot sauce packet recipe and the bottled Disha Hot sauce don’t share the same recipe and taste noticeably different. The sauce packets contain sugar, tomato concentrate instead of fresh tomatoes, food starch, xanthan gum, dried aromatics instead of fresh, and a bevy of preservatives not found in the bottled sauce. The sauce packets taste noticeably sweeter and more tomato-forward than the bottled sauce, which has a deeper pepper flavor and is more savory.
While this is a Mexican style sauce, it doesn’t taste like any bottled Mexican sauce I’ve had before, such as Valentina, El Yucateco, Tapatio, or Cholula. Instead it’s closer to deep red arbol salsa often served with tacos at taquerias, and Chile de Arbol do play a role in this sauce as they do in that salsa. In addition there are habanero and jalapeno peppers, and the blend does give this sauce a very nice pepper-forward taste, and the bitterness from the toasted arbols does give it considerably more depth. With lime juice, tomatoes, and tomatillos to balance our the peppers with some acid and some onions and garlic to round it out this a very savory and full-flavored sauce.
It goes beautifully with Mexican food as you would imagine, but it’s just at home as something to dip some french fries in or to kick up a cheesesteak or platter of cocktail shrimp. This sauce is less cumin-forward that many of the grocery store Mexican hot sauces, something which seems to increase its versatility in bouncing between cuisines.
The bottled sauce is all natural with no artificial flavors, colors, preservatives, or thickeners.
While it’s on the pricey side, and currently the only sauce sold by Disha Hot, so you need to buy multiple bottles to maximize the bottles-per-shipping-charge amount (the magic number is two two packs) it’s a sauce I would recommend as it’s a true artisanal all-natural Mexican hot sauce in a style that’s not common to see bottled for retail sale.
Ingredients: Tomato, Tomatillo, Distilled White Vinegar, Red Onion, Lime Juice, Habanero, Toasted Chile de Arbol, Jalapeno, Cilantro, Garlic, Salt, Chia Seed
Heat Level: 3/10. This has a nice slow burn that gives food a nice hit of flavor and heat.
