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sriracha sauce surprised rooster

Sriracha Sauce Isn’t the Only Rooster in Town

by Looney Foodie Posted on

What is Sriracha Sauce?

Well, that depends on where you are from.  The original sriracha sauce  was produced in, you got it, Sri Racha, Thailand, and created as a dipping sauce for seafood.  It is made with very simple ingredients of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, garlic, sugar, and salt.  That’s it.

In the United States, sriracha sauce is produced by Huy Fong Foods and is packed in a large clear container with a rooster on the label and a green cap.  The maker of the US version of sriracha sauce never trademarked anything, so it’s pretty much a generic item.

Anyone can make it and sell sriracha sauce, and imitators are on the rise.

Kikkoman also makes a pretty good and very spicy version.  There are now many others too.

For seasoned chili heads, this is no big deal.

We always love another hot sauce to try, and so should you.

The general public thinks it’s hot enough, and it’s tasty.

Huy Fong Foods has been making money off this rooster, in a near monopoly environment, since the 1980’s.

So why do people spend money on this sriracha sauce stuff when it’s so easy to make something similar or better?

Sriracha Sauce is Nothing to Be Afraid Of

Well, if you’re afraid of hot spicy sauces and getting your mouth all warm, then yeah, it can be scary.

What I really mean is that MAKING your own sriracha sauce is nothing to be afraid of.

It’s just sauce.  Pepper sauce… SRIRACHA sauce…

Listen up, the whole Sriracha thing… it’s just a gimmick.

The ingredients of this are so generic that it’s just a hot sauce, and the original one was only named for where it was made, but the same stuff was probably being made in thousands of places all over the world before someone gave it a location specific name and it caught on.

I mean, we have to get that settled.

You can actually do better, especially since so many of the commercial sauces contain extra ingredients like gum thickeners and chemical preservatives.

sriracha sauce scream

You don’t need any of that.

I know, because I have been making all kinds of homemade hot sauces for awhile now.

 

What Do I Need to Make a Killer Sriracha Sauce?

You just need some basic ingredients and some time.

Cooking is love.  You put the love into the cooking, just like Marie Barone (Everybody Loves Raymond) used to, and you will have a winner.

As stated up above, the ingredient list is pretty small.

You’ll need peppers, garlic, vinegar, salt, sugar. You can also add some citric acid as another natural preservative, but the vinegar should also act like this as well, so that’s optional. (but it can’t hurt)  I’m talkin just a tablespoon if you want to use it.

Now, the kind of peppers matter.  If you want a really hot sauce, then you use all hot peppers like jalapenos and serranos.  If you want a super hot sauce, then you can throw in some habaneros or something epic, like a ghost pepper or a Trinidad scorpion or 7 Pot.

If you want to keep it sane, then you can use the jalapenos and then sweet peppers like orange or red bell peppers.

So, with that in mind, here is a great recipe and you just adjust the peppers according to your heat preference.

 

Basic Sriracha Sauce Recipe

INGREDIENTS:
1/2 pound red jalapeno peppers (red because the green ones have a diff’t flavor and they will mess up the color)
1/2 pound fresh (Milder: red or orange bell peppers; Hotter: Serrano peppers; Hottest: Serrano peppers and one or more habaneros, ghost, etc for a heat boost)
6 large garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1/3 cup white or apple cider vinegar
4 tablespoons tomato paste
4 tablespoons honey (if you don’t like honey, use 4 tablespoons of dark brown sugar)
1 tablespoon of kosher salt OR 2 tablespoons real fermented soy sauce
Blend all of that up in a food processor or high speed blender.  Blend the you know what out of it.
Cook it on simmer for about 20 minutes, then let it cool a bit and put it back into the blending appliance and blend the you know what out of it again.
Make sure it’s the consistency that you want. You don’t want it too thick that it doesn’t pour, but you also don’t want it so thin that it’s runny like water.  If it’s too thin you can always simmer it with the lid off until enough excess water evaporates and it gets to a thicker consistency.  Just make sure you keep tabs on it and it doesn’t burn.
If it’s too thick, you can add some more vinegar and a little water to it, but be careful how much you add or you have to then boil the excess out.
Now, you can either jar it for the refrigerator or you can simmer it to a light boil again and jar it like preserves and then cook the tight jarred sauce in a large pot the way you would jams and jellies.  This is called hot packing and it preserves it for room temperature storage with the lids vacuum sealed.
Now you have a nice little homemade Sriracha Sauce without any nasty chemicals that you can whip up any time since you now know how to do it.  All you need is a few grocery items and believe me homemade lets you adjust the taste to your liking when you make it so you end up with a sauce that is perfectly matched to YOUR specific taste.
You can’t beat that.
Share this post out to others and comment below on your sriracha sauce and other hot sauce recipes and fun times.

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