What’s Going on with Sriracha? | Hacker News Reader

What’s Going on with Sriracha?

grid.news

58 pointsthm64 comments

This article is an interview with somebody who has no idea what the problem is. He just waffles on about the fact he made a documentary about the factory nine years ago.

Agreed, this is very low effort hearsay and speculation.

Info directly from the company: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2022/06/09/sriracha-shor...

The only information provided by the company was that there is a chili shortage and that production will resume at some point, with new orders being fulfilled after September. This post attempts to explain a little about the company's supply chain and consumer demand, by interviewing someone who has somewhat intimate knowledge of it. So, it is actually high effort speculation, which is all they could do given the available information.

> by interviewing someone who has somewhat intimate knowledge of it

Dude is literally a documentary maker. There is no special knowledge, and their response phrasing is highly speculative.

It’s not as if they found some random documentary maker. This person spent a ton of time with Huy Foods to make a documentary specifically about Sriracha. There isn’t a burgeoning field of Sriracha experts to talk with. I legitimately doubt there are other readily accessible people who have as much as knowledge as this documentary dude.

Sure, this might be the best they could do on short notice.

Doesn’t change the fact that I find it low effort - I had the same conclusions about Sriracha from just cursory google research.

Let’s agree to disagree.

It's a tiny ass article from a small (? don't know this website) news platform / blog. They bothered to do some research on that topic + find & interview someone who might provide some insights - or at least has proven knowledge about that topic.

How is that considered *low* effort? I understand criticism of authors where they literally copy paste some random tweet, but critizising this as *low* effort sounds a little unjustified to me.

Agreed that it’s better than a copy paste tweet.

It’s just that I didn’t learn much from the documentary guy /because/ none of what he said was insider-equivalent.

It was just common sense, and maybe that’s all this niche blog was going for. Fair enough.

Were you expecting insider information? I saw the title ("What's going on at Sriracha?") as leading to a general overview -- not everyone even knows there's any kind of shortage or problem at the company. And not everyone realizes some of the supply process that could lead to a shortage.

I’m not sure if we read the same interview. The documentary guy also just hand waves towards chili pepper shortages, which is what the original company email also clearly says. There is no real additional information, just filler.

I’m not convinced that the average person would find it hard to understand that a shortage of the input ingredient would cause an output crisis.

Low effort to find perhaps the most knowledgeable third party and interview them.

As opposed to the WaPo article where they just talked to some dude who owns a sushi restaurant and uses sriracha.

Which one is supposed to be low effect, exactly? The documentary guy took the time to explain why crop failures from months ago could impact sriracha production today.

The WaPo article directly quoted the company’s email. The sushi restaurant was just filler.

My point in linking it was to avoid speculative reasoning.

And of course, this hearsay and speculation is going to encourage panic-buying, thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophesy.

be it hearsay and speculation or not, I'm already planning my morning trip to the store to buy several bottles. I just can't risk it!! there is no substitute for what I believe is the sauce of the gods

A bottle of kroger brand sri will get you by in a pinch, but you have to add a little baking soda, cook it up a bit to bring it back. Cost you about 2 dollars.

The article from Axios explains the issue a lot better: https://www.axios.com/2022/06/08/sriracha-shortage-2022-chil...

Basically, there's been a consistent drought in Mexico that has affected the yield of chili peppers.

Both articles contain the same details. The OP mentions Mexico's drought in the first paragraph.

As the Atlantic overturning meridional circulation slows down, we can expect more la niña weather cycles and droughts in Mexico and California.

And now I wish Thai producers step in and market the true Sriracha sauce. For context, Sriracha is a name of a district in Thailand. As it is classified as geographical name, it cannot be registered as a trademark on its own in both Thailand and USA (it can be used with other elements, such as logo, like what Huy Fong did, combining it with Chicken logo)

Here in the UK the Thai-manufactuered Flying Goose brand is widely available and incredibly delicious. Much better tasting than the Californian brand IMO.

I find most of the Thai brands to be too sweet. I prefer the Huy Fong as it has less sugar (I tried to compare the nutrition facts but the Huy Fong one is a bit BS).

However I find most Asian products in the UK always seem to have crazy amounts of sugar in them which I'm not a huge fan of.

> the Huy Fong one is a bit BS

If you look at nutrition facts for larger containers it's about 9% sugar by weight.

(It starts out higher in sugar, but some of that is consumed during fermentation.)

Nice find! Yep I read about fermentation as well. I'm neither a huge fan of sweet or vinegary hot sauces so I usually find Sriracha or Mexican hot sauces (eg. El Yucateco) as my go to's.

El Yucateco kutbil-ik xxx hot sauce is my number one. it's so damn hot, and the flavor is unmatched. the black special reserve one is next level too. at this point my cellular makeup is roughly 20% habanero because of them.

Huy Fong makes a garlic chili sauce, which appears to be Sriracha, but without any sugar at all. I think the garlic chili sauce comes off the same line, but gets bottled before the sugar is added.

Their chili garlic sauce is not pureed. Otherwise, yes, it's their sriracha without the sugar.

I have a foodservice jar of the stuff. I'll run out by 2030 or so.

The Flying Goose brand is the most common here in Germany. The Huy Fong brand hasn't been available for a few years after the EU implemented some restriction on one of the ingredients.

It's also the only acceptable. I've tried every available other 'knock-off', too. They were bad. No matter if green, or red capped. I guess they were too old, and have gone bad on the shelf. Realized that much later, when I had a small, almost empty bottle of the Flying Goose stuff, and the last of it tasted bad the same way the others did. Also smell, nothing strong, but noticable, once you know it. I don't know how to put this exactly. An 'empty' sting? Feeling hot and sharp, without being spicy? More like tear-gas? Just numbing without taste?

> The Huy Fong brand hasn't been available for a few years after the EU implemented some restriction on one of the ingredients.

My fride, my pantry and my local Asian shops would respectfully disagree with that statement.

Hui Fong Sriracha is less sweet, less garlicky, brighter and the chillies come out way more. It's not the same product as the Flying Goose brand and they certainly can't be substituted for each other. I love 'em both.

...it's just plain hot sauce unless it's from the Sriracha district in Thailand. Maybe the jokes were onto something after all.

But this might be good PR too - maybe the famous foods are famous for a reason. Good way to discover things to try tasting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geographical_indications_and_t...

IIRC there is no true Sriracha. It was first marketed by a thai guy using an old family recipe with Californian ingredients but it was never trademarked so there are plenty of similar hot sauces with the same name

This is correct to my understanding too. It would be like trademarking 'Carolina BBQ Sauce'

is this trademarked carolina bbq sauce vinegar based, or mustard based?

It's not a chicken . It's a rooster

Roosters are chickens. A chicken is a domestic fowl.

Are you confusing with hens? Both roosters and hens are chickens, but hens aren't roosters.

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-differences-between-a-chi...

The parent was correct, a rooster is a chicken. An adult male chicken.

As a kid we had a neighborhood guy named Henry Schuster. We used to say "It takes a Schuster to be a rooster, but it takes a Henry to be a chicken." I don't know what side this puts me on.

*Rooster logo

> For context, Sriracha is a name of a district in Thailand. As it is classified as geographical name, it cannot be registered as a trademark on its own in both Thailand and USA

Weird. Literally hundreds of food items across the EU are trademarked by their origin. Brie de Meaux can only come from Meaux with cow milk from Meaux-inhabiting calls. Same goes for Coulommiers ( a type of cheese that has to come from the village of Coulommiers), Parmigianino Regiano, Gouda, Edam, Gruyère, Gorgonzola, etc. etc. etc.

I would not expect that any of them are trademarked either, which is what the parent post is referring to. IGP and DOP are not copyright/trademarks, as far as I understand anyway; they are EU food origin laws which don't apply elsewhere.

Those are not trademarked. Anyone can make them as long as they follow the rules (including origin).

At least that's what Thailand's IP Authority explained to the public. Many Thai people are outraged of what they saw as a "ripoff" of sauce (purportedly) made in Sriracha, but marketed by foreign companies. The authority did suggest a geographical indicator (GI) as a way to market it as genuinely coming from Sriracha, but AFAIK, there hasn't been a proof about the distinctive property of sauce from Sriracha, so it hasn't yet been recognized as a GI.

The Huy Fong brand though is so widely available in the US. I have even seen it in multiple sections of the grocery store.

Even if not the true Sriracha sauce, there is no way to displace the rooster in the US. I love the Huy Fong brand, at this point the true sauces will just taste different to me. It is basically impossible for them to taste "better" than Huy Fong to me. Maybe this would be different if starting from zero and no expectations but that is not the case.

The shortage will just make the Huy Fong fans want it more in the US.

It should be noted that there are sriracha sauces available from companies besides Huy Fong Foods (rooster logo). America's Test Kitchen did a taste testing recently:

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBLvKe9vors

The majority of testers preferred Kikkoman (which is a little spicier than the 'original' Huy Fong, which came second).

Sriracha hasn’t tasted the same since they stopped using the jalapeños from Underwood ranch. I no longer use it as frequently as I use to. The complexity is missing. Tastes like I’m now eating the Kroger version.

I had no idea. I've just finished my last bottle last evening. :(

there's still enough inventory, this news has no value because nobody is actually affected

at least not until aome morons read about this on reddit and go buy truckloads for no reason.

Perhaps negative, because it will invite scalpers which will corner the market until next year.

But it's a replaceable commodity. There are a million hot sauces made all over the world.

Not too much like it on grocery store shelves, at least in my area of the US, though. Most hot sauces I can find are vinegar-based concoctions (Tabasco, Cholula, Texas Pete, etc) that I find quite unpalatable.

About the only other hot sauce I can find at Kroger that I can stand is Tapatio.

I've read a few days ago that chili shortage is the reason.

What I look for in a hot sauces is, (1) pepper is first ingredient, and (2) only other ingredients are vinegar and salt. Sriracha does not qualify.

It’s actually interesting how little I’ve experienced this sort of aggressively close minded purism in cuisines that tend to use heat and/or hot sauce, to the point this comment feels genuinely “off”.

At least IME “al gusto” type takes on food are the overwhelming vibe, quite far from the ancient buffalo milk dairies producing PGI cheese or whatever.

It might honestly be difficult to stick to pure chile x vinegar x salt hot sauces in eg the Caribbean as well, everyone and their mother tends to add something special!

You can add anything you like, after. Getting it out is impossible.

Fermentation and the texture of laurel leaves sadly prevents that, but it does create the exciting opportunity to simply buy/make different sauces for different flavors and moods!

So you only like generic hot sauce like Tobasco and Buffalo sauce, very interesting.

Tabasco lists vinegar first. When I buy pepper sauce, I am buying it for the pepper. So, I want it to be the first ingredient. That is actually remarkably rare. Apparently vinegar is cheaper.

Never seen Buffalo.

It’s just silly to insist on vinegar- fermented sauces are delicious, sriracha is mostly pepper paste, etc

For my purposes it has garlic in it, making it unusable. But for fermentation, miso does the job.

How can a guy who made a documentary about this sauce call the chillies they're made from jalapeños?

The chilis used to make Sriracha are red jalapenos, which are regular jalapenos left on the vine to mature.

I bet he's getting paid by the company.

I saw this sauce for years in questionable restaurants, but only in the last few years I seem to read about it all the time.

It’s peak of popularity was several years ago, I’m not sure how you missed it.

What peppers do you think they are made of?

> Huy Fong Foods' chili sauces are made from fresh, red, jalapeño chili peppers and contain no added water or artificial colors.[9] Garlic powder is used rather than fresh garlic.[10] The company formerly used serrano chilis, but found them difficult to harvest. To keep the sauce hot, the company produces only up to a monthly pre-sold quota in order to use only peppers from known sources.[4]

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce_(Huy_Fong_Foods...

> It was due to a fateful phone call Underwood made to a mutual vendor of Trans that linked these two together at the beginning of Sriracha’s growth. That first year, they grew 50 acres of chiles for Huy Fong Foods (average yield: 30 tons per acre). Four years ago they were up to 17,000 tons, and today, after 26 years in business with Tran, Underwood Ranch grows 58,000 tons of the unique jalapeño chiles used exclusively by Huy Fong Foods. That’s 2,000 acres of farmland devoted to Sriracha alone, with plans to keep expanding. This is done two years in advance, so there’s time to find the right fields and to prep the soil for optimal growing conditions.

* https://web.archive.org/web/20171022081321/http://farmtotabl...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com