Review: Ole Hot’N Fruity Hot Sauce
From www.especiesexoticas.com:
Hot pepper sauce manufactured from a mix of tamarillo (a native fruit from the Andes), hot peppers and vinegar.
Tamarillo, also called Tree Tomato, is a very unique tropical fruit used in the andes region both for beverages and mostly to combine with hot peppers (aji) to create a mild, full flavored sauce!! A typical recipe from the andes region.
Suitable for adding spice to any kind of cooked meal such as; pastas, soups, rice, meats etc. Due to the coriander and the very typical Andes fruits, it is recommended for cooking, adding flavor and marinating Latin foods, such as ceviches and beans. It is based on a typical Ecuadorian Indian recipe.
Ingredients: tamarillo, tena pepper, vinegar, sugar, onions, cilantro, salt, xantham gum
OK, I have to say this sauce scared me from the very beginning. Just the look and the smell made me very nervous about trying it. Well, I finally got up the nerve to give it a try. I am either going to like it or not, it won’t kill me. I hope!
The packaging is very festive looking. I just want to play some salsa music and get moving. OK, so that is not the purpose of a label, I am supposed to want to eat it, but I am still afraid. But again, it tells me all the necessary information that the government wants displayed, so all in all it does it job.
The look of this sauce is very gel like with bits of green floating, not really floating more like being held in place by the gel like sauce. It has an orange red color. So, I finally work up the nerve to smell it. It smells like cold tomato sauce. Nothing else. OK, so now I am a little less scared. I try to pour it into a bowl to have a really good look at it. Key word, TRY. It has a shaker thing on top and this gel like sauce does not move easily out if it. I got more on the counter then in the bowl. But, it looks exactly the same as it does in the bottle.
Now, for the true test, taste. It tastes like cold tomato jelly with a little heat. It is basically your run of the mill hot sauce, except it is in gel form. It is not complex at all. Nothing to write home about. Now to be fair, I really should try it on food. So, I make my favorite breakfast, leftover homemade potato pancake, an over easy egg, and of course a slice of bacon (yes this bacon is from the famous Bacon Fairy). Now I am annoyed at trying to get this sauce out of this bottle and onto my food. After all my effort to get it onto my food it did nothing for it, no heat, no flavor, nada.
All in all I feel this is a great looking bottle to add to your collection on the shelf, not to the ones you have awaiting you in the fridge.
Packaging: 7/10 festive
Aroma: 6/10 cold tomatoes mixed with vinegar
Appearance: 3/10 scary orange/red jelly with green specks
Taste: 3/10 cold tomato jelly
Heat: 4/10 nothing to write home about
Especies Exóticas Cia. Ltda.
Quito, Ecuador. Southamerica
Phone/Fax: (593 2) 2040962
[email protected]
