Chilli Sauce Reviews - Page 004

Reviews of Chilli Sauce Products by a
Former Industry-Insider

---

Traffic Light Scoring System

0-3/10 = crap, 4-6/10 = average, 7-10/10 = great!

Name: El Yucateco Kutbil-ik Sauce

Manufacturer: El Yucateco Salsa Y Condimentos (Mexico)

Style Classification: Mexican (Yucatan)

Appearance: 7/10

The packaging is only a small component of the overall First Impression score. I do like the Mayan motifs incorporated into the design, but, basically - it’s all about the sauce – it’s why we’re here.

With no artificial colouring this is a dull brown sauce with flecks of ingredients visible. The black flecks that you can see are, I believe, from the char-grilling of the tomatoes before being pureed as part of the sauce making.

The sauce has a good consistency and is quite thick – you know that it is going to stick to whatever you pour it on.

Over all this looks like a sauce with good potential at this point. The presence of chargrilled tomato skins tell me that this is likely to be authentic and doesn’t appear to have been over-processed just to get an acceptable/inviting colour to it.

Ingredients: 8/10

Habanero chillies, Vinegar, Tomato, Salt, Spices, 0.1% Sodium Benzoate.

The small number of ingredients is a reflection of the age of the recipe, supporting the fact that it is a true regional sauce that has changed very little over the centuries. It doesn’t have a huge range of stuff in it, trying to imitate half a dozen styles and sound impressive.

Aroma: 9/10

Very nice. Looking here for a fresh habanero aroma and that’s what you get, along with the spices and the vinegar. If you are able to get a habanero at the moment, cut one in half, smell that, and then smell the sauce – you’ll see what I’m talking about.

Flavour: 8/10

The taste here is beautifully authentic and you would pretty much find sauces that are very similar if you were travelling around the Yucatan Peninsula. The ingredients say it all – habaneros, vinegar, spices and that’s exactly what you taste, in that order, when you first put this sauce on your tongue.

Habaneros are such a popular chilli because they do have a great flavour and there are chilli breeders in the US specifically working towards developing a mild habanero to enable you to experience that flavour, without the heat.

Overall: 8/10

This is a good quality sauce that is authentic to it’s region of origin, the Yucatan Peninsula.

Overall, a damn good sauce.

Improvements:

Flavour wise I wouldn’t touch it, but I would get rid of the Sodium Benzoate and replace it with something else. Natural substitutes would be lime juice or sour orange juice which could lower the pH down to the level .

Matching it with food;

• this is a strong flavoured sauce and a little goes a long way. Match it up with strong flavoured food . Mexican food of course and anything red meat.
• It gives a wicked kick to an otherwise ordinary salsa.
• • The flavour does also work with white meats and vegetables however, I believe the best way to do this is to dilute it out in some mayonnaise first. (good quality egg mayonnaise of course, not most of the over-vinegared crap on the supermarket shelves – Thomy is a good example of what you want to buy).

Heat: 7/10 (doesn't affect Overall Score.

Broad heat, that starts at the front of your palate and then paints itself across everything. Good level of heat that gets your attention but won’t send you screaming around the house. Heat lasts 5-10 minutes depending on your tolerance and what you ate it with.

Ingredient Alert: Sodium benzoate (see ingredient review above)