16 March 2012

Mexican Chocolate And Chilli Cooking Sauce (Asda) [By @Cinabar]



I was looking for a pot of chilli cooking sauce in Asda, the magic word ‘New’ caught my eye and I was drawn to this intriguing jar. It is part of the Asda Chosen By You range, and is quite adventurous for a supermarket sauce as it contains chocolate. Although these two ingredients do go together historically, I can well understand how the average shopper might be put off, naively expecting a sickly sweet mixture. In fact cocoa in itself isn’t sweet at all, and has quite a bitter edge. The hot spices from chilli do enhance it, and it is a combination that can work like magic.
I added the appropriate tin of red kidney beans and some minced beef and made the chocolate chilli. First thing I noticed was the colour of the sauce, it is a much richer and deeper brown than I was expecting. It has the unmistakable colour of dark chocolate, and did look very rich and appetising on the plate.
The chilli had a good heat to it, there was a nice spice, but it wasn’t so hot that it might put people off. I eat a lot of ‘medium’ heat sauces and this sat comfortably at that level. The sauce didn’t have much chocolate taste at all sadly. There was just the slightest hint of cocoa if you let it savour in your mouth and really looked for it. The sauce also seemed to be lacking a bit of depth, it had a harsh finish that left you feeling that there ought to be something a little more mixed in.
It’s not a bad sauce; it just wasn’t the clever concoction I had hoped for. I’ll be honest I ended up adding a tablespoon of secret ingredient (ok you got me, its tomato ketchup) before serving it, just to help finish it off. This improvement worked no end, and even enhanced the cocoa taste quite nicely.
Asda get full points for adding an adventurous flavour to the chilli sauce, and it has been done quite nicely too. I just felt that it needed a bit of titivating before I was totally happy with it.
By Cinabar

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I believe they were trying to resemble Mexican Mole... which is a super traditional sauce using a mix of chocolate, chili, and other ingredients such as banana, sesame seed and even almonds, raisins, cinammon and many others, depending on the recipe.

bob said...

Anonymous seems to be straight on the mark about that.
Where I live, you can find Mole in the Supermarket.
Wish to trade for some Bisto Favourite and Jam & Custard Jammie Dodgers? ;-)