Sriracha Hot Sauce Catches Fire | Hacker News Reader

Sriracha Hot Sauce Catches Fire

businessweek.com

125 pointssharkweek98 comments

People who are not into hot sauces don't understand the idea that a hot sauce can actually have great flavor. In most cases they think it just burns. Huy Fong Sriracha is a great example of a great hot sauce with good flavor. At the extreme there's "Dave's Insanity", a sauce that is probably able to send you to the hospital yet, if used in moderation, has great flavor.

Tabasco? Really? Yuk. I can't understand why any self-respecting restaurant would even offer it.

Yeah, I asked for hot sauce at a restaurant just today, for my chili. They ask "Would you like Tabasco or Texas Pete"? sigh

If I could start a restaurant, I think I'd start a dedicated chili place, and make it a point to stock about a zillion different kinds of hot-sauce for people to experiment with. :-)

At the extreme there's "Dave's Insanity", a sauce that is probably able to send you to the hospital yet, if used in moderation, has great flavor.

Dave's Insanity? Really? Uuuugghh... IMO, that shit is completely disgusting. You couldn't pay me to put it on my food. Horrible, horrible, disgusting flavor. Yeah, it's damn hot, but it tastes like shit.

However, on the topic of "hot sauces that taste good" the ABC brand "Sweet Hot Chili Sauce"[1] is insanely good. It's got a bit of kick to it, but tastes amazing.

[1]: http://www.abcsauces.com/hot-sweet-chili/

Texas Pete has it's place. Mostly on greens. It's better than most thin vinegar sauces due to the increased heat.

As worthless as Tabasco is as a hot sauce (very), I think it works decently as a ketchup replacement. On french-fries, chicken nuggets, that sort of thing.

Yeah it's not great on it's own but it's a great ingredient. It also makes ketchup quite a bit better the twice a year I want it on something.

I prefer Frank's Red Hot as a ketchup replacement. Tapatio or Cholula for Mexican food, and Sriracha for everything else.

I actually don't like ketchup, but I'll use Huy Fong Sriracha as a ketchup substitute. It's got the sugar like ketchup, but it has additional flavor than just your standard ketchup bland sweetness.

What I think Tabasco excels at is dishes that traditionally are served with vinegar. The best example I've had is greens, like spinach or collard or turnip.

The small Tabasco bottle that comes in some MREs make all the difference

Tabasco is for cajun food and southern soul food, like collard greens. Other forms of hot sauce would not work in this context.

I love tabasco on the right dish - eggs, gumbo, jambalaya, etc. The oaky taste can get old though. Sriracha has too much garlic and sugar for my tastes.

Agreed, Tabasco does not work with everything but there are some things that that it is great with. In my opinion, there is no hot sauce to rule them all.

Sriracha is fine and all, but sambal oelek, now, that's the good stuff.

Sambals in general are ridiculously tasty. I especially like the ones made with shrimp (belacan/shrimp paste), which are a standard condiment for sauteed vegetables here in my part of Asia. The combination of extremely rich savory and sweet tastes with the burn of chili is addictive and enlivens even the dullest food.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sambal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Belacan

I haven't tried Sriracha but will look out for it if it's in local supermarkets. I hear from Americans that it's basically crack in bottle form and they slather it on basically anything.

I haven't found genuine 'rooster sauce' in The Netherlands where I live, but have partaken of it multiple times while in the states. In Dutch Tokos I have found something called Tuong Ot Sriracha imported from Thailand and I cannot tell them apart. It's also a clear bottle with a red or green top made by Foodex.

I like Sambal Oelek as well, but for the past couple years I have been in love with Surinamese pickled mango chutney. It's great on pizza.

This is the stuff: http://www.surinaamsetoko.nl/data/upload/Shop/images/1656.pn...

I think Huy Fong's works for American food because it's jalapeno, which is a familiar flavor. It's blended with garlic, so it's not an unfamiliar flavor - somewhere between Chinese, Mexican, and Italian.

I don't know why you would want to chose one sauce over another. They all have their uses. You wouldn't use sambal in a Bloody Mary.

>You wouldn't use sambal in a Bloody Mary.

I wouldn't knock it until I tried it.

Why not? Chili, garlic.

I don't see the issue here.

All you need is two spoons of sambal on a plate of fried eggs and you are good to go my friend.

Tabasco is great on cheap pizza. I learned this in Japan where it's provided with almost all cheap pizza and it's pretty yummy.

(Japan also has some of the best pizza in the world BTW) ;-)

Ah, that brings back fond memories of tabehoudai (all-you-can-eat) at Shakey's Pizza back in my student days in Osaka. Always with the Tabasco, and eating all the pizza until there was nothing left but the weird corn-and-mayo one.

What is up with the corn on pizza in Japan? They call it "the American" at Pizza Hut... I found their idea of "American" to be very strange when I worked in Tokyo... like the boy band who dressed in soccer uniforms with football helmets and their name was "fuckers"! (Timeframe was early 90's) And advertised to little girls, with giant billboards around Toyko. Very strange.

Tabasco is good in certain, particular applications. For example, in the cocktail sauce that is often served with shrimp in the U.S.

Using it as a general purpose, "broad spectrum" hot sauce is a mistake.

Actually, the Tabasco brand has a habanero sauce that is not just habanero pepper but a combination of flavors, that I much prefer for more general use (when choosing from amongst their products). In addition to the balance of flavors, the "pepper" flavor of the habanero is much more enjoyable in it than is the pepper flavor, of itself, in their traditional Tabasco Sauce.

Always preferred Frank's RedHot to Tabasco. Also I never considered Sriracha and Tabasco to be in the same category. I generally divide my hot sauces between south american and asian.

Yeah, I keep both Sriracha and Tapatío in stock myself, but consider them to have pretty different uses.

Tabasco is really good with simmered vegetables. The vinegar and aged flavors brighten up and fill out the flavors.

I prefer Louisiana hot sauce over Tabasco, but if your looking for flavor I would go for Gochujang or Harissa.

Yeah, Tabasco and Frank's both taste like grass. They're disgusting =-(

Sriracha and Sambal Oelek are the good ones!

hey I like Tabasco... de gustibus...

I read about halfway through the article before I realized they weren't talking about sriracha literally catching fire. Good read nonetheless.

Yes, and I'm disappointed that they didn't share the photo of the astronauts with Sriracha that they kept talking about, I assume this is it: http://meflyrocket.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/dinnerontheis...

Wow, I was under the impression that they had to use special packaging for all of their food to keep crumbs/droplets at bay. That almost looks like a normal food setup, besides all the velcro.

I read an article recently about "space cuisine", which dispelled this myth -- it used to be that way, but what they go for now is more sticky stuff -- crumbs are still bad, but something like meatloaf with gravy would be fine.

I found what's probably the actual picture (because of the mentioned Asian-American astronaut):

http://www.chow.com/photos/365772

Oh yeah, even better! And the Sriracha didn't take me 5 minutes of scanning snacks to find!

I honestly clicked through in a mild panic thinking the factory in LA had caught fire. Was relieved to see it was more an in-depth feature article on the history of the founder and company.

For those interested, here's the site last "Revised: May 10,2004"

http://www.huyfong.com/no_frames/index.htm

Looks like the YCombinator homepage markup! ==rimshot==

Most hot-sauce (especially the hotter kinds) don't taste good at all. I attribute that to the heavy use of Habanero pepper, which is pretty damn hot, but Habaneros don't actually taste very good.

I've discovered a nice combination, however, that can be both hotter and taste better. Scotch Bonnet peppers[1] are widely used in the Caribbean Islands, and are almost, but not quite, as hot as as Habaneros, but they taste MUCH better. OTOH, Naga Jolokia "Ghost Pepper" peppers[2] are much hotter than Habaneros, and taste, well... not any worse than Habaneros, at worst. So, if you want to jazz something up to nuclear hot levels and keep it tasting good, load it down with Scotch Bonnet and then add just a few drips of Naga Jolokia pepper sauce.

This has become my "go to" combination for making really hot tex-mex type dishes, curries, etc. Yumm....

FWIW, my favorite brand for both (at least partly because it's available retail locally) is the "Tropical Pepper Co. brand)[3][4].

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scotch_bonnet_%28pepper%29

[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naga_Bhut_Jolokia

[3]: http://tropicalpepper.com/product.asp?idProduct=94

[4]: http://tropicalpepper.com/product.asp?idProduct=135

I grew some wonderful Habaneros last summer. It was a variety from Seed Savers Exchanged called Mustard Habanero. Hotter than hell, but the split second before the heat kicked in, you were treated to the most wonderful, smokey pepper flavor. Needless to say, they made a great hot sauce. I fermented them in salt water innoculated with some leftover brine from homemade kimchi. It was a great condiment!

It's a very small minority of hot sauces that use habaneros.

The idea of ranking chiles on a scale of bad to good I find completely foreign. Like people, each one has its own character and something to appreciate. And that appreciation can scarcely be found in bottled hot sauces.

(I live in Mexico and I'm here for the food. Indeed I doubt I would be here were it not for the existence of chiles and the myriad ways in which they're exploited in Mexican cuisine.)

I think habanero peppers have a great flavor, but the heat usually overpowers them. Removing the seeds and gills, and adding vinegar and/or carrots can tame the heat.

You'd probably really enjoy Secret Aardvark, then: http://www.secretaardvark.com/

Reasonable heat level, really good flavor. They're not kidding when they say "dump on everything". Not the kind of hot sauce where you put a few drops for heat; this is the kind you can use several tablespoons of at a sitting.

Habaneros were a staple for me, up until I discovered Scotch Bonnets. And then Harris Teeter started carrying a good bottled Naga Jolokia sauce, so now I rarely have a use for habaneros. To be fair though, the flavor does vary quite a bit from batch to batch. But I've come to the conclusion that, relatively speaking, habanero peppers are pretty bad from a flavor standpoint.

Taste is, of course, pretty subjective, so I make no claim that my position is objectively correct!

> Scotch Bonnet peppers [...] are almost, but not quite, as hot as as Habaneros, but they taste MUCH better.

I'd been disappointed about the fact that habaneros are hard to find in London, whereas Scotch bonnets are everywhere. Perhaps I shouldn't be, then.

My local supermarket sometimes has Dorset naga peppers in stock. They're supposed to be a very hot cultivar of the jolokia, but none of the ones I've bought have actually been all that hot.

"Tran’s only supplier for the past 20 years has been Underwood Family Farms, an hour north of L.A" -- This is a pretty cool little factoid. I would have never guessed. A successful, locally made product, that does not need to sell itself as a "Whole Foods" type of ingredient.

Amazing that good products sell on their own, and don't need incessant moralizing about buying local.

or massive, multi-million dollar ad buys and "agency of records" to promote the product.

I've been there for a hayride/kids birthday party... bizarre.

I live in Minneapolis, which has a ridiculous large number of Vietnamese restaurants. Pretty much every one of them has Huy Fong sriracha on the table.

I don't know how long it's been common here, but it's been a long time. Honestly, it never occurred to me that there are places where people don't know about sriracha. It'd be like not knowing about soy sauce.

I live in Minneapolis, which has a ridiculous large number of Vietnamese restaurants. Pretty much every one of them has Huy Fong sriracha on the table.

Same here in Austin, though I do find I have to explain what it is on the rare occasion I meet someone that hasn't had Vietnamese food.

I'll admit to enjoying Vietnamese food much more if I have sriracha; it's not the same eating experience with out it.

Weird, I grew up in Minneapolis, but now am in NYC and live half the year in Vietnam. No Huy Fong brand sriracha in Vietnam though.

I've found some in import stores here but the Vietnamese I've shared it with here didn't like it. They prefer that sugary junk you get on the table everywhere.

It was created in the US by a Chinese Vietnamese American. It's jalapeno chiles. They don't have it in Vietnam.

It's actually a Thai sauce, so I'm not sure you'd expect to find it in Vietnam. It's just really common in Vietnamese restaurants in Minneapolis here.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sriracha_sauce

They have jalapeno's in Vietnam. There are quite a few plantations there.

Some people don't know because they do not pay attention to the multitudes of hot sauces available. Like me. I did not know about Sriracha. And I have eaten in asian restaurants hundreds of time over the last decade. I just do not pay attention or remember all the condiments I have ever tried.

I've never heard of it or seen it anywhere here in the UK, but a quick sidetrip to Amazon has just fixed that. As a hot sauce fan, I'm looking forward to trying it -- though I have slight reservations about the sugar content.

I've bought it in Tesco's ethnic food aisle in the past. And my local Asian food shop.

I moved to Seattle from Minneapolis in 2003, and had never seen Sriracha before coming out here. Maybe I just ate at the wrong Vietnamese restaurants, or maybe it's been introduced in the last decade.

First, I've never heard it referred to as "Rooster Sauce", it's always been "Cock Sauce". Maybe I need to hang out with some higher class folks.

Second, while it's great on lots of Asian foods (Korean BBQ comes to mind along with Pho), I tend to prefer stuff like Texas Pete or Tabasco. I live in the South, so maybe that's why. A little Texas Pete on some pulled pork (vinegar-based) and collards makes it just right.

"Cock Sauce" for me too.

Assonant and slightly inappropriate's the way I like my condiment nicknames.

Similarly, I first learned it as "Hot Cock Sauce".

I first heard of it as red hot cock.

Sriracha is for asian food. Tapatio is for mexican food.

Try mixing some Sriracha in Mayonaise and slather it on a sandwich or have it with fries. Great combo IMO

That's actually how a lot of sushi restaurants make their spicy mayo sauce. Learned it from a chef and I tried it at home to great success!

Sriracha is for anything, it's basically like ketchup. You could probably put it on brownies and it would taste good.

If you want sauce for your Mexican food then it ought to be made in house. If it NEEDS sauce, then you need to find a new Mexican place to eat at.

Tapatio is good. Spicy, and an almost smoky chile flavor, but it's not a roasted chile. It's just the regular chile flavor.

We refer to it as roostershire sauce.

Rooster sauce is somewhat common in my neck of the woods (Los Angeles). At the very least, everyone would know what you're talking about. That said, most people I know just call it by it's name, Sriracha.

I love this article from 2009, especially the description of the drunks dialing the phone number on the front of the bottle to leave slurred messages of love.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/20/dining/20united.html?pagew...

Does anyone else experience that Businessweek has a 'laggy' site? In chrome - every once in a while my page fails to completely load and scrolling is frozen.

I think they must have some broken Javascript or CSS on the page, I had to resize my window to get the scroll bar to show up, despite the article extending well below the bottom of the window.

Same problem in Firefox.

And it's vegan: http://www.isitvegan.com/2010/10/09/is-sriracha-sauce-vegan/

My wife makes some kind of super addicting baked chicken thighs using a sauce mixed partially of Sriracha and Korean Gochujang [1]

I don't know what it is in that mix, but you pretty much can't stop eating once you start it. I have relative, 3 or 4 years after trying a single piece of it, ask if they can have it when they come visit.

[1] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gochujang

I've been living in Vietnam for 3 months. At first when eating phở I noticed something was off. It took a few weeks to place the problem: no sriracha! Here they serve tương ớt that tastes more sweet than spicy and has the consistency similar to jello.

So a few weeks ago I found an import store that supplies a sriracha sauce from Thailand. Quite similar to Huy Fong's version... And enough to my "international" phở taste the way i like it.

Also, suits are making a comeback! See also http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html. On the other hand, we like sriracha more than suits, for the most part.

Single page version here:

http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/98238-sriracha-...

I'm surprised they didn't mention the best tribute to sriracha of all: http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sriracha

Uh, they did. There were a couple paragraphs on it.

I love how this article mentions that sriracha is shelf stable without the fact that it's due to the addition of Potassium Sorbate and Sodium Bisulfite. If you're willing to add that you can probably make anything last on a countertop, but alas they've removed it from my diet as a result.

Anyone know of a respectable all-natural version?

The concern should not be with "naturalness" but rather with toxicology. There are plenty of substances found in nature that will have you on the floor, and many substances which are not that are perfectly safe. "Is it found in nature" is a really bad heuristic for assessing toxicology, I'm actually having trouble thinking of a worse way to do it.

This comment is silly and representative of why HN sucks these days. The natural ingredients of sriracha are peppers, sugar, garlic, vinegar, and salt. I'm fairly confident of their non-toxicity. Any heurestics other than not eating the two ingredients I mentioned were entirely of your own imagining.

I am reasonably certain that Potassium Sorbate is bad for me, and 100% certain it isn't beneficial.

If your concern is with those particular substances, for reasons other than the fact that they are not natural, that is fine, but that was not my take-away from "Anyone know of a respectable all-natural version?". Apologies if I misunderstood your concern, but I don't think my misunderstanding was particularly unreasonable.

I am concerned generally with all non-natural substances, such as preservatives, artificial flavors and colors, etc. You didn't misread that part, and I don't think that's a bad heuristic. It's a very different thing to say that all non-natural substances are possibly unhealthy (and that it's practically impossible to determine which are and which aren't) than to say that all natural substances are healthy.

Sadly one could simply remove the preservatives from sriracha as long as refrigeration isn't a concern.

> Sodium Bisulfite

Do you actually experience a medical reaction to this? How common is that?

My understanding is that it's relatively common. You commonly find sulphites as preservatives in wines (more of it in whites: reds get some protection from the tannins). A family member is slightly allergic, and drinking wine with sulphites will set him off sneezing.

I recall reading on Felix Salmon's blog that organic, no-sulfite wines are a comparative bargain because there's an inaccurate perception among wine people that they cannot be as good. Some wineries will actually get the relevant eco-friendly certifications without noting it on the bottle, the perception of lesser quality is so prevalent.

In the wine instance the buyer who needs to avoid sulfites is in a good position. I've noticed with other foodstuffs that this isn't true, and I'm sure that is because those perishable products can't survive on the shelves quite as long as their sulfited (?) brethren.

If you live in New York or wish to get it over the web, there's always Jojo's: http://laughingsquid.com/jojos-sriracha-handcrafted-small-ba...

Stupid me thought this was a Vietnamese sauce since I always saw in it Vietnamese restaurants in the OC. It wasn't until I was outside the USA that I found it Vietnamese have never heard of the stuff and that it comes from Thailand. doh!

Good stuff though.

Even more confusingly, the Thai original is only vaguely related to Huy Fong's version. The ingredients are roughly the same, but the Thai version is runnier and more vinegary/sweet.

Having practically grown up with this stuff, it's definitely been interesting to see its popularity skyrocket in recent years.

There's certainly a valid lesson in market adoption & product incubation to be had here.

Could we just get a petition going or something to get this sauce in condiment packets? Last time I asked they didn't do this. No idea what the impediments would be (supply constraints? Fermentation?)

My wife and I ran out of sriracha sauce a few months ago; panic ensued :-)

Seriously we use it all the time (and several recipes on my cookingspace.com site use it). Highly recommended!

JoJo's is the only Sriracha...

https://www.facebook.com/loveofjojo

I love spicy food, but I find Sriracha almost sickly-sweet. Anyone else prefer El Yucateco or Salsa Valentina?

91770 in the house

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