Taco Bell Sauces

When I go to Taco Bell, I leave with about 100 packets of taco sauce for each taco. I do this every time that I go; I have no shame. The sauces are quite good - and useful for more than just tacos (like for Hot Pockets). Recently, Taco Bell has added two new sauces to their traditional Mild-Hot-Fire line-up, which means they all needed to be evaluated. The taste test results...

Mild - There is no space in my bag for Taco Bell's "Mild" sauce. Although it has a really balanced and tasty flavor, I find something oxymoronic (and ultimately wrong) about a mild hot sauce.

Hot - 90% of my bag is filled with these tiny packets, and that includes the space taken up by the actual tacos. This is the best sauce and has the perfect balance between flavor and heat.

Fire - I once worked for a magazine where I taste tested more than 100 hot sauces; most of them had no flavor, just burning pain - a week that my mouth and stomach will never forget. This "Fire" sauce gives me unpleasant flashbacks.

Verde - In my opinion, a good salsa verde can beat any red salsa. This one doesn't, but this verde does hit all the traditional bright and slightly acidic notes to make it a respectable alternate to the standard "Hot" sauce.

Fire-Roasted - A deep, smokey and almost sweet combination of tomato and garlic, but definitely not of chilies. Good taste, but as stated before, hot sauce should be, well, hot.

Stick with the "Hot" sauce (makes sense), but an authentic Mexican authority would argue that the combination of the "Hot" with the "Fire-Roasted" is unbeatable.