Product is Melinda’s Original Habanero Pepper Sauce. The first time I had habanero sauce my host would only mete it out a single drop at a time and, 45 minutes later after I had regained the use of my tongue I thanked him for it. This? It’s milder than Tabasco. It’s half carrots for filler. You can even taste the lime juice in it. Absolutely pathetic. No wonder it was being closed out.
What product have you tried that didn’t live up to its hotness claims?
Anything served by a chain or family restaurant.
Most “hot” items on a Thai menu. Even when you request things “Thai hot” you’ll usually get white-spiced. It took several trips before I got my favorite Thai place to stop dicking around and make it burn! When the waitress said “You make cook cry this is so hot.” I knew I would finally get the real deal. Hurt for hours. Was totally worth it.
how spicy is food in Thailand, really? I’ve got this suspicion that Thai food in the west is made spicier than it should be just due to customer expectations.
That said, I don’t always order spicy food, but when I do, I’m usually disappointed.
Stay sweaty, my friends.
Melinda’s isn’t bad, but it’s certainly not “hot.” I like the flavour.
An awesome sauce IMO, just not “hot.” I eat Melinda’s a couple of drops on a chip.
I’ve never been, but if it’s anything like the Thai home cooking I’ve had in the US, it’s pretty frickin’ fiery compared to what you get at a Thai restaurant. But that could have just been this particular family’s tastes.
The biggest disappointment was when my cousin and I went to Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap here in Chicago for their XXX Hot Wings. It was one of these things where you sign a waiver and get your picture on the wall if you can eat them. I actually was nervous, thinking these things were going to be doused in some sort of extract-based sauce that tastes like chemicals.
Instead, we got something that actually was tasty, made with Red Savina habaneros and stuff, pretty darned spicy, but nowhere near the heat levels either of us were expecting. I’ve had far spicier Thai and Indian food. This was an easy food challenge for the both of us. I finished all the wings without even needing a sip of beer.
I’ve tried that exact same product and feel the exact same way you do. What an utter disappointment.
I’ve had Thai food in Thailand. This one dish, which they assured my grandfather to be “not hot”, was still rather hot.
The Melinda’s XXXX Hot sauce is pretty frikin’ hot. Regular Melinda’s, not so much.
I’d kill for real Szechuan cuisine. I’ve never had it, but I know that I would love the flavors and burn.
If you go into a store and you see a big line of dressings with the store’s label on them and a lot of the are Vidalia onion this or that they all come from the same place. It’s a company out of Georgia called Braswells.
Anyways, we carry a hot sauce from them called Mean Jeans 3-pepper hot sauce. A few weeks ago I was bored and curious as to what the three peppers were. I was a bit surprised to find out the first one is Green Bell Pepper and it also has green food coloring in it.
Now, I’m not a hot sauce guy so I don’t really care. It’s probably one of those things where they want to give it a really hot name but still be able to appeal to the masses, but I was pretty surprised to see that.
A lot of people seem to have this weird notion that since habaneros are hot, anything made with them must necessarily be hot, too.
Maybe a year and a half ago, a co-worker made some chili for a potluck. He warned me that it was really, really hot, but I reassured him that I like things pretty hot. I knew that if I couldn’t eat it, then neither could 95% of the other folks at the potluck, so I wasn’t worried. Nor should I have been: I could barely detect the heat. “You said this was really hot?” “Yeah, I made it with habanero sauce!” “How much?” “Oh, about three or four drops.”
I love a good hot sauce, but the I had the opposite experience with Trader Joe’s Habenero Hot Sauce. It was in my grandpa’s fridge, unopened, and I got it out at Christmas to have with breakfast. Holy habenero- too hot! It was borderline inedible, that kind of hot that nullifies the taste of everything.
(For context, my favorite hot sauce for eggs is El Yucateco Green Chile Habanero Sauce. It is always possible that I’m not the hot sauce badass I think I am.)
The El Yucateco green is reasonably hot stuff. Not on the level of El Yucateco’s hottest product, the XXXX Kutbil-ik, but I am shocked that Trader Joe’s product is hotter. I’m going to have to seek it out.
If you do let me know what you think! I was shocked that it was so hot, especially when there are so many tame habenero sauces that brag about their heat. I was not expecting an unassuming bottle of hot sauce from Trader Joe’s to kill me.
Dave’s Insanity Sauce lives up to its name.
The special reserve, or whatever it’s called, is a gazzillion scoville units.
ETA: OK Wikipedia tells me this “Also offered is Dave’s Private Reserve which comes in a coffin-shaped package and has been reported variously as from 500,000 to 750,000 Scoville units.” I had a bottle of this and it was excruciatingly good.
That’s pretty much the only extract-enhanced hot sauce that I think has a pretty good flavor. All the other ones taste fairly chemically to me. I think the hottest one I’ve had is Wanza’s Wicked Temptation hot sauce, clocking in at 2 million Scoville. For the level of heat it delivers, it actually is pretty decent tasting, but it’s still a bit chemically for my tastes.
I don’t care for extract sauces, but Tiger Sauce has amazing flavor for a hot sauce. Of course it’s heat is nothing compared to what you’re talking about.
I have learned to be really careful after, at a Chinese restaurant, I ate a whole red chili, thinking I could handle it. Boy was I naive. After I used my asthma inhaler a couple of times I was able to eat again.
Later, I had a habanero sauce in a soup at a Mexican and the waiter said, quite casually, “be careful with that.” He was right. But it has been the only habanero sauce that’s actually been hot since then, at the lowest “dose”.
We have about 10 different hot sauces and to me, the hottest ones are the Habanero Harissa, Jaimacan Jerk (with habaneros as the first ingredient), Cayenne, and Sriracha (my favorite for Asian dishes, along with Thai chili paste). Sriracha is good because if you use a little you get a kick without adding flavor. Our go-to place is Original Juan. Nothing there is bad. They even sell things where they suggest very strongly that you ONLY use two or three drops in a whole vat of chili.
For when I want a simple and tasty heat for tacos or burritos, I go for Cholula or Tabasco, or Texas Pete for chicken. Jalapenos do nothing for me anymore.
I just realized I had Melinda’s Naga Jolokia hot sauce. It looks pretty similar in composition to the regular habanero Melinda’s, but I just tasted some, and it does pack a good punch. Definitely hotter than the regular.
What’s wrong with tasting the lime juice in a habanero sauce? 
I think you should be able to taste some fruity acidity. When I make my habanero salsa, all it is is finely chopped roasted habaneros (either on a grill or over a gas flame on the range), roasted garlic, lime juice (or bitter orange juice), and salt. It’s a Yucatecan condiment called “kut.” You bet your ass it’s hot, but you can certainly taste the lime or bitter orange in it.
