Bottom Line: Eli’s Special Habanero Hot Sauce tastes like a Louisiana-style hot sauce with habaneros added and a hint of Mexican spice and it brings some good heat.
When visiting restaurants, it is always nice to see bottles of hot sauce sitting on the table because that means they understand that there are customers that want to add some kick to their food. And when I see a bottle of hot sauce that is not available in the stores, I am always intrigued. While at Daddy’s Seafood Market and Cajun Kitchen in South Padre, Texas a few weeks ago (you can read more about my visit here), I noticed a couple of bottles of Dirty Al’s hot sauce and knew that I had to give them a try. One was a habanero hot sauce and the other was a red jalapeno sauce, and both were quite good. I ended up purchasing a bottle of the habanero sauce to take with me.
Called Eli’s Special Habanero Hot Sauce, it does not have a strong habanero taste on the front end as the carrots and onions listed in the ingredients are pretty far forward in the flavor. But you definitely get that habanero coming through afterward to deliver a good finish. Vinegar is the first ingredient, so it definitely hits you with some pucker. But it doesn’t knock you out as some vinegar-based sauces do. It has an earthiness that you might expect from a Mexican sauce, probably from some cumin included in the “spices”. It is not a thick sauce, but neither is it so thin that it is too runny. I would call this a cross between a Louisiana-style sauce and a habanero sauce with maybe a bit of Cholula thrown in for good measure.
Heat-wise, it starts out above Medium level and the heat builds the more you eat. If you add more than a few drops to anything you are eating, it will definitely deliver a burn. It won’t send chiliheads running for a fire extinguisher, but the average mortal will struggle if they try more than a small amount. This goes particularly well on tacos and/or burritos. It would also be a good topper for mac ‘n cheese or a rice dish. And I found that it paired up perfectly with the Crawfish Etouffee I got at Daddy’s Cajun Kitchen. This would actually go well with a lot of Cajun dishes as a hotter alternative to Louisiana-style hot sauce.
The red jalapeno sauce that I tried was much closer to the typical Louisiana-style hot sauce and did not have quite the burn of the habanero sauce. But that worked perfectly in that cup of gumbo that I got and now I’m regretting not buying a bottle of that as well. Unfortunately, if you want to buy either you are going to have to visit one of the Dirty Al’s restaurants in the South Texas area or try to contact them on their website to see if they will sell it online (I did not see a link where you can buy the sauce, though). I paid eight bucks for a twelve-ounce bottle of the habanero sauce which is a pretty good deal for a non-major brand. And maybe at some point, these will start showing up in Texas markets.
Tale of the Tape:
Ingredients: Distilled vinegar, aged habanero peppers, salt, fresh carrots, onion, garlic, spices, xanthan gum, 0.1% sodium benzoate as preservative
Serving Size: 1 tsp (5ml)
Calories: 3
Fat: 0g (0g Sat/0 Trans)
Protein: 0g
Carbs: 0.75g
Sodium: 64mg