Now, if you like salsa or hot sauce, do you really need taco sauce in your life? Taco sauce was created as a gateway to salsa, and as Gustavo Arellano puts it in Taco USA, it’s “salsa shorn of its heat.” The first companies to bring it to market in the late 1940s and early 1950s are familiar names: Old El Paso and La Victoria. So in 2019, with hot sauce and salsa now common place, is there still a need for Trader Joe’s Spicy Taco Sauce? ($1.99 for a 13 oz. bottle).
I don’t remember this product from it’s first go round in 2017, but my big question was, how different is it from Trader Joe’s Enchilada Sauce? I’ve long relied on the Enchilada sauce for my copycat Taco Bell bean and cheese burrito, so it seemed like the perfect compare/contrast for Trader Joe’s Spicy Taco Sauce.
They are indeed different. Side-by-side the taco sauce has a redder color. It also has a nice vinegary tang, inching it closer to traditional hot sauce. But is it spicy? YMMV. I consider my ideal heat level in the medium spicy range, and for me, this wasn’t spicy at all. I’d call it straight up mild.
That said, it gives a plain old bean and cheese burrito some personality. And it gets points for being more than glorified tomato sauce. At our house, we’ll stick with freshly made salsa (shout out Niño Blanco); or Cholula, Tapatio or Valentina, if it’s what you’ve got. With Trader Joe’s salsa and hot sauce selection as big as it is already, I’m not sure how the taco sauce distinguishes itself. It’s totally fine, but it won’t be going into regular rotation on my TJ’s shopping list.