They call it rooster sauce. David Tran was a Vietnamese citizen who immigrated to Los Angeles in the ’80s with no job prospects in sight. Desiring a concoction to remind him of Southeast Asian flavors, he mixed together a batch of spices found in sauces in Sri Racha, Thailand. Selling bottles out of his van, pretty soon his popularity grew, and Tran started the Huy Fong Foods company. Ten million bottles a year later…well, just check your refrigerator.
The hot sauce industry overall shovels in more than $1 billion in sales annually. Selling roughly 20 million bottles a year worldwide, Sriracha does not even have an advertising department! Yes, not a penny is spent on advertising.
Sun-ripened red jalapeño chilies are ground up and mixed with garlic, vinegar, sugar, and salt. The result is a creamy, red, pleasant-kind-of-hell-in-your-mouth taste.
Want a cookbook dedicated solely to the art of Sriracha culinary arts? Get “The Sriracha Cookbook” by Randy Clemens! T-shirts, iPhone covers, swag left and right! Sushi chefs all over the country are mixing it in their rolls. There’s a bottle or 20 at practically every restaurant, and there’s even baked Lays Sriracha flavor.
What’s that?! The Scoville Heat Scale measures the pungency and burn of any chilli pepper, or anything that’s chilli-pepper based. Established in 1912, it ranges from 0 (bell peppers) to 16,000,000,000 (pure capsaicin and dihydrocapsaicin). Sriracha clocks in at 2,200! Pretty spicy, but there’s worse hell to be endured!
The cap will always be green. If you buy one with a blue cap, it’s a knock-off brand, and it also will have a unicorn as the central logo. Sriracha has the rooster, because it’s the rooster sauce, duh! The bottle’s ingredients also are so very multicultural, written in five different languages: Chinese, French, Spanish, Vietnamese, and English.
A single-teaspoon serving of the red stuff has five calories. Yep, you’ll still be able to fit into those jeans! Also, chilies contain capsaicin, known for boosting metabolism. Garlic can lower cholesterol and blood pressure. The sauce is also said to improve circulation, fight colds, increase your mood, and generally make you better-looking!
Catastrophe! At the beginning of 2014, the apocalypse started in Southern California (yes, the trending hashtag was #srirachapocalypse). The California Department of Public Health put a 30-day halt on Sriracha production, saying its absence of cooked materials meant it was obliged to undergo a health inspection. Our red elixir passed with flying colors.
Diggity Doughnut in Charleston, South Carolina and Glam Doll Doughnuts in Minneapolis both have peanut butter and Sriracha donuts. Lollyphile carries the sucker flavor Sriracha bacon wrap (they also host the breast milk-flavored lollipop). Then came the Sriracha candy cane! Hey, it’s all an acquired taste.
Mix it into marinara sauce, put it on scrambled eggs, drizzle it on nachos, warm up your soups and stews, make watermelon Sriracha margaritas (they’re delicious, believe me), stir it into mac ‘n cheese, oh…um…dip your chicken wings in them (after mixing it with ranch dressing), Ramen Noodles, bloody marys, garlic bread, mashed potatoes…get creative!
