Review: Scorpion Bay De Arbol Hot Sauce

De Arbol Hot Sauce””close your eyes and picture the quintessential hole-in-the-wall Baja taco shop. See that bowl of fresh homemade hot sauce on the table? Yep, that’s what we’ve made. We took those De Arbol chili peppers people love, added creamy tomatillos and soon had a thick, fiery, authentic taco shop style hot sauce literally brimming from the bottle. Go ahead””introduce it to chili, pizza, chips, fish tacos””the list is as infinite as the flavor!

Ingredients: Tomatillos, Diced Tomatoes, Chile de Arbol, Apple Cider Vinegar, Onions, Garlic, Canola Oil, Orange Juice, Kosher Salt, Mexican Oregano, Cilantro, Cumin, Lime Juice, Xanthan Gum, Spices.

After recieving a few sauces from Rob (the man behind Scorpion Bay), the first one I cracked into was the De Arbol one – for the simple reason that it’s also called a “taco shop style hot sauce”. Now that’s a moniker that I couldn’t resist. So of course I used the sauce as a reason to trek down to the local taco shop and pick up some delicious carintas tacos.

When I first opened the wide mouth bottle, the first thing I smell is oregano – a good sign given that oregano is a key ingredient in most Mexican food dishes. However, the straight on the tongue test was more about the heat of the de Arbol chiles. The flavor is smokey and smooth – with a heat that doesn’t build much past the initial flash flame burn.

So how did this sauce fare on a taco? Let’s just say that the clean up was a bit messy as I had sauce all over the place. This sauce is incredibly thick and sticks to food well – the open mouth jar allows for easy pouring and that means more sauce on your food. I’ve been carrying the remainder of the bottle around with me just to make sure I can use it at every available opportunity and not just on tacos. It’s an incredibly smooth sauce with a mellow balance of heat and flavor. If you’re looking for “good eating” sauce then pick up a bottle of Scorpion Bay’s De Arbol Taco Shop Style Hot Sauce – in fact, you may want to pick up a few bottles, I find this sauce mildly addicting to the point of eating it with a spoon.

Scorpion Bay Hot Sauce
www.ScorpionBayHotSauce.com
760.917.2805 (Phone)
815.642.8501 (fax)