Thursday 22 April 2010

PC Mexican Hot Sauce

Picture it: Ottawa. March 2010. The grocery store is open in the early evening and at the front is a displaying a sale of little hot sauce bottles. 3 for, well I can’t remember. Two sauces are available from President’s Choice: Habanero and Mexican. We pick up two Mexican and one Habanero. They proceed to sit on the shelf with a few other bottles of hot sauce that are still unopened.




Flash forward to April, and it is decided to open one of the little 142 ml bottles. The cap is open, the seal is broken and we have a new sauce that has since been used in pasta dishes, burritos, sloppy joes and wings.



The sauce is made by President’s Choice, which really has an excellent and expansive collection of sauces. This one surprised me because it is a so called ‘Mexican Hot Sauce’ is a product of the US of A.



They say its 3 chili’s in heat, which means its supposed to be hot. Only sampling will tell.



I don’t know what really makes this a taste of Mexico. I mean aged red cayenne peppers is there and that is good, but the sauce ingredients isn’t that different from a Louisiana style hot sauce? Remember to shake well or bien agiter.


Don't you just want to lick the plate below? I do. In fact, I did.



The sauce is a red/orange hue, with fleck of spicy chilli or other spices. The sauce is a little runny. It had a smokey, peppery smell. So this sauce was hitting some good spots of the senses. The taste? Good. It had a decent kick in the heat department, but I don’t think it was particularly hot. How were they on wings?



I had some wings that had already been baked in spice. They were crispy, but I was reheating them for this meal. I took the PC Mexican Hot Sauce and added it to some melted margarine as a Buffalo-influenced style.


This was a mistake on many levels: I used margarine over butterThe margarine was PC ultra low fat, (bought on the real cheap) but is more than 50% waterI’m cheap with the tiny bottle of hot sauce and did not make the hot sauce-to-margarine ratio equal. Way too much watery margarine.



So right from the start this Mexican Hot Wing sauce was flawed. But it made for a decent coating for the wings. If I had upped the volume of MHS than I think this would have been great instead of just ok. But until they have larger bottles or I stop being cheap, I’m using this sauce sparingly. Yes I have another, but still, I really like it.



FINAL SCORE: This is a good hot sauce. It’s more mild than hot, but there is a depth of flavour. It doesn’t taste ‘Mexican’ to me, but as I already mentioned, I’ve been putting this sauce on everything (conservatively). A nice change of pace from regular cayenne based hot sauces. 3.5/6


PC Mexican Hot Sauce
(Their website doens’t even have info yet – maybe they are just testing the sauce in this market?)

6 comments:

Teena in Toronto said...

Sounds like I'd like it!

Lord of the Wings said...

Teena - hopefully I don't steer you wrong!

Anonymous said...

I picked up that sauce a while back too and it became my main hot sauce. Now that I ran out, I went to buy more, and they don't have it anymore. I checked multiple Loblaws and Superstores. Please post if you found a store in Ottawa that has it. Thanks

Lord of the Wings said...

@Anonymous - That is a frustrating story! I am sorry but I'm not in Ottawa anymore so I haven't seen it in stores, but I would recommend going to RCSS or Loblaws and speaking to a manager. They might be able to order in some just for you . . .

David Kendall said...

I had a bottle, which recently ran out. I went hunting for it in Toronto yesterday, only to find it's discontinued. Ay caramba!

Lord of the Wings said...

@David Kendall - oh man, that is not good news. Aye caramba indeed!