Los Calientes Barbacoa – Getting Back to Original BBQ

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Los Calientes is one of our very favorite hot sauces of all time. We have included it on lists of our top picks, and with good reason. It just goes well on everything (the ultimate test of a truly great sauce).

Now, Hot Ones has released another iteration of Los Calientes hot sauce, this one deemed ‘Barbacoa.’ The claim is that this sauce harkens back to the very roots of BBQ, focusing on Earthy tones, smoked peppers and fresh herbs & spices.

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• Heat: 2.5/5 – Right up the middle, perfect for a reasonable heat seeker
• Flavor: 5/5 – Familiar flavors, but oh soooo good
• Value: 4/5 – Unique, rich flavors like this are worth every penny
• Overall rating: 4.5/5 – Nothing much new other than a name, but still amazing!

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Los Calientes Barbacoa Review and Flavor

We haven’t been counting, but by now we have devoured at least a dozen bottles of the Los Calientes sauce. The original blew us away, then the Rojo edition made it even better with more heat and an improved flavor.

What’s Barbacoa? Barbacoa is a style of cooking meats that originates in the Caribbean. Try our delicious slow-cooker barbacoa beef recipe to try it at home.

So you could probably guess that we were super excited to hear that yet another iteration was approaching. A bottle was ordered on day 1, and we sampled it as soon as it arrived.

The first taste was right off a tasting spoon, and it was not immediately obvious that anything had changed… This isn’t necessarily bad, but we were admittedly hoping for a bit more variation.

However, after a few more spoonfuls, the subtle differences could be distinguished. There is a bit more of a zing from the lime, and a slightly deeper smokiness from the chipotles and the applewood smoked jalapeño.

I believe the addition of chipotle is to blame for the darker color. However, smoked jalapeños are pretty much just chipotles, so we’re not sure what is different (and we’d be curious to learn more).

The brilliant balance of complex spices seems unchanged, with a few ingredients being swapped in order. The earthy undertones paired with the sweet apricot still hits just right.

Consistency & Texture

Once again, texture and consistency don’t seem to have changed much. Los Calientes Barbacoa has a thick, slightly syrupy texture with small chunks of peppers and apricots mixed in.

The sauce is not runny, but is very easy to pour from the standard woozy bottle spout. The sugar content helps keep the sauce from splashing around, while the lime juice and vinegar thin it out for an all around smooth finish.

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Los Calientes Barbacoa Scoville Scale

Heat is slightly reduced when compared to Rojo, but only a bit. We feel that this sauce falls somewhere just below the original Los Calientes, which is a nice spot to be in.

Los Calientes Barbacoa has an official Scoville rating of 33,000 SHUs, making it slightly less spicy than the original Los Calientes hot sauce. In our opinion, all of the Los Cal sauces fall right in the sweet spot of usable heat.

Historically, Los Calientes always filled the #5 spot on the Hot Ones YouTube show. However, when the Barbacoa sauce was released, it was bumped down to #4. This is likely just due to hotter and hotter sauces filling the back half of the lineup.

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Where To Buy Los Calientes Barbacoa

The barbacoa edition of Los Calientes is available on Heatonist, but shipping makes it cheaper to get it on Amazon.

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While Los Calientes Barbacoa is not much of a departure from the original, it is still an excellent sauce. And frankly, it probably would have been more disappointing than anything else if Karma Sauce had made too many changes.