Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Goya Hot Sauces are a fairly broad group of specialty hot sauces that have become popular recently. These are, in my humble opinion, the finest hot sauces sold today. Before these, there was a trend toward one of two things: amping up flavorless sauces with extract oils (ala Dave's Insanity Sauce) or taking generic vinegar sauces and slapping absurd labels on them, usually involving the words "ass", "nuclear", "hell", or a combination of the three. In contrast, each of the new Goya sauces focuses on a specific chile (smoked or plain), ranging from ancho (pictured) to habanero to jalapeño and so on. Each of these sauces captures the spirit of these wonderful fruits (yes, chiles are fruits), without adding overpowering vinegar or other competing flavors. Now, don't get me wrong. I love complex sauces that have ginger, cumin, carrot, honey, mustard, or any number of other ingredients. For sandwiches a complex sauce is quite nice, but when I'm cooking I want a pure, simple sauce that I can combine with whatever ingredients are appropriate or even none at all. Goya delivers with just enough secondary ingredients to bring out the flavor of the chile in question, and no more.
The best part about these sauces, though, is their availability. Most major supermarket chains are carrying them, even here in the northeast. Go find them. Try them. If you don't like things that are too spicy, start with the smoky and alluring ancho sauce. Add small dabs of it to your mayonnaise or mustard when making sandwiches or just a bit to your scrambled eggs. Before you know it, you'll be slathering the super-hot habanero sauce on your hot dogs like it was ketchup!
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