Hatchanero: Hatch & Habanero Hot Sauce by Hot Lines Pepper Products
From my review yesterday of the Ghost Pepper Sauce by Hot Lines, I decided to dive right into the bottle of Hatchanero that I also picked up at Hubble & Hudson. There are a few minor differences between the bottles – the back label on this sauce didn’t contain any company information or a description of the sauce, just nutritional information and the product SKU. Not sure if this is a newer label or an older one – but that’s why I’ve rated this label a bit lower then the last one because it was missing a few key items.
Hatchanero Close Up
Like the Ghost Pepper sauce, you can really see the roasting that went into the sauce – just looking at it in the bottle, the black flecks, pieces of peppers and spices can all be seen – all excellent signs of a well balanced sauce. Being that this was a green based sauce, I wanted to try it on something more fitting for my taste buds – so I heated up some of the leftover pulled pork that I smoked on Sunday (11 hours at 225 low and slow) and made myself some pulled pork tacos.
Hatchanero on Pulled Pork Tacos
Hatchanero on Pulled Pork Tacos – Close Up
You can see from the pictures (click to zoom) just how great this sauce looks – so you can bet my mouth was watering. But on first bite, I noticed something that made me look more closely at the ingredients – jalapenos are the first pepper listed and most certainly the first pepper you taste. I could not discern any of the Hatch chiles or even the habaneros. And then I finished reading the ingredient list and saw that it was habanero mash – and it was dead last in the pepper order – even after the Bell peppers. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like this sauce. But with the name “Hatchanero” I would expect to taste Hatch chiles and Habaneros – not jalapenos. I enjoyed the sauce anyways – embracing it’s jalapeno flavor and pouring more on my tacos then you see in the photos (hands get too dirty for the camera).
And while I didn’t get any of the habanero flavor, I did get some of the heat. More of a creeper heat – you know what I’m talking about – that heat that hits when you are on the last bite of your plate. A pleasant after-burn of sorts. So not all is lost with this sauce – I’m just disappointed that it didn’t deliver on it name – but then again there are plenty of hot sauces out there that don’t.
I dig the company and think they have a lot of great sauces to offer – the Ghost Pepper Sauce was fantastic, this one just fell a little short on it’s promises for me. Would I buy it again? Probably not – not because it’s not good (I will definitely finish the bottle) – but I’ve tried this one and unless the recipe changes, I can find another jalapeno sauce to fill space in my fridge.
But if you are on the look out for a great Jalapeno sauce, you should try this one out – like I said, it’s darn tasty. And I can’t wait to try out their other offerings as well – I hear that the Garlic one is not a sauce to miss.
