i heart sauce cartel

sauce cartel is a fantastic local purveyor of hot sauce. i've gushed about them in the past and here's a review of two of their best sauces:

green wave
this is a great sauce. it is so enjoyable i’d suggest that sauce cartel start selling it in at least 10 oz jars. the peppery notes are the first thing you’ll notice upon smelling green wave, they hit the pepper just right in this sauce with both jalapeno and black pepper prominently featured. the second thing that I noticed about green wave was the slightly sweet taste of pineapple. the lighter citrus flavors of pineapple are the perfect foil to the darker, more complex pepper of the jalapeno. for those who don’t want to hurt themselves when eating hot sauce, this is great. you get a nice middle-of-the-tongue heat that just builds slightly the more you eat. as tempting as it is to eat directly from the bottle, i really wanted to use it in a way that highlighted the excellent flavors. using the green wave, i came up with this recipe for fresh pineapple salsa:

pineapple jalapeno salsa

2 cups diced fresh pineapple

1/3 cup diced red onion

¼ cup diced jalapeno

¼ cup chopped cilantro

juice of 1 lime

2 tbs green wave sauce

locura mayan
locura mayan really highlights sauce cartel’s flair for flavor. these guys aren’t afraid to make a really mild sauce, the complex flavors stand on their own, with no need to hide behind a million scoville units. this sauce has a savory, smoky aroma, but that’s just where locura mayan begins. the balance between the smoky and sweet is what really stands out about this sauce. in the background there’s the magical complexity of sun dried tomato and the slight bite of vinegar. my husband commented he’d love to pour it on a chipotle burrito. hey sauce cartel – want to wholesale to chipotle?