Well, our offer to review our readers’ homemade sauces and salsa continues to plod along…but now we have our first repeat victim submitter. Two whopping years ago we reviewed a Hot 4 Pepper Salsa by Ed and Patti Wajer. Needless to say, Ed & Patti are back on the scene here with a pair of pineapple salsas for my tasting pleasure. I just hope that they age fairly well, as I have unfortunately tested their shelf stability by my procrastination.

Pineapple: tomato, pineapple, poblano chiles, onions, garlic, cilantro, sugar, citric acid, assorted spices

3 Pepper Pineapple: tomato, pineapple, poblano chiles, Hungarian yellow hot chiles, onions, garlic, hot red cherry chiles, cilantro, sugar, citric acid, assorted spices

We didn’t do anything fancy-shmancy with these salsas, like bizarre food combinations or try to cook with them in any creative way. For the most part, our comments are based upon simple chip-and-dip snacking.

Pineapple Salsa

What we liked about it: This can be said about both varieties, but these salsa have 100% all-natural ingredients. Pleasant aroma with mostly tomato and just a hint of pineapple. This salsa totally nails what we like about a salsa’s desired consistency…clingy enough to stick to your tortilla chips or food but not too thick that makes it difficult to pour from the bottle. The seasonings are mostly appropriate and it is salted about right without being overly so. Decent balance between its sweetness and the seasonings/salt.

What we didn’t like: While we really dig the all-natural ingredients, we wonder how long these could sit on the shelf before opening them. For a pineapple salsa, it seems to be lacking quite a bit of actual pineapple flavor. We can taste sweetness to it, but we can’t attribute that to any particular ingredient in the salsa. Joe commented that “he likes his pineapple salsa to actually taste like pineapple.” There is also not much in the way of garlic or cilantro taste either, which is unfortunate because we LOVE those flavors in salsa.

3 Pepper Pineapple Salsa

What we liked about it: The extra peppers add a nice flavor to the salsa, and definitely made it a preferred choice with us over the mild. Our comments in regards to the consistency, flavor balance, and seasonings are comparable to that of the Mild salsa.

What we didn’t like: The addition of the extra peppers may enhance the flavor, but it doesn’t do much for the heat level. In fact, we dare say that this “medium” salsa is essentially the same heat level as the “mild.” Again, the pineapple flavor is lacking in this salsa and it also lacks the garlic and cilantro flavor we desired.

Overall recommendation: We reached the end of our reviewing discussion about these salsas and couldn’t help but ask, “Where’s the pineapple?” Not sure if it is because not enough pineapple was used, it wasn’t fresh, or the salsa spent too much time in the Cuisinart getting it blended to its wonderful consistency. These salsas are above average in quality, and a few tweaks could make them much better. Fix the issues with the pineapple, cilantro, and garlic, and these are products we would readily buy if we wanted a fruit-based salsa. That, plus the ongoing paper label issue that is unresolved from our last review needs some work as well. A decent product from Ed & Patti, but these leave some room for improvement.