El Yucateco Black Label Reserve (or Black Label Reverse, as their website currently says) is what I think of as a gimmick sauce. The company describes it as a "dark, smoky habañero sauce" which is absolutely accurate. Upon opening it, you get blasted in the face with the burnt, smoky smell. And the flavor follows right along.
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| Industrial byproduct or hot sauce? |
It's really too much. There are just not many foods I not only want to make spicy, but also want to add "I accidentally burned this" flavoring to. The sole context I've found in which is doesn't immediately make my food seem inedible is dribbling a little bit onto some steak. The excessively smoky flavor at least evoked meat cooked over a fire. But even then, I felt like I was unfairly fucking with the flavor of some really nice tri-tip. The heat was perfectly respectable and the smokiness was almost convincing when paired with the beef, but I still couldn't bring myself to use more than a few drops on one little corner of my food before resuming enjoying the rest with some Kutbil-Ik instead.
So unless you really, really want to impress your friends with a weird jet-black sauce that smells like the company just figured out a sexy-sounding way to get rid of their burnt habañeros, I say give this one a pass.
The good: Same low price as other El Yucateco sauces locally, habañero heat is as promised.
The bad: Horrible flavor that comes after all other flavors with a blowtorch and burns off their heads in front of their families.
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