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By ALBERT STUMM
Christopher Kimball's
Milk Street
Desperate times may call for desperate measures. But shelling out $150 for a bottle of hot sauce goes a bit far. The price of the popular Huy Fong Foods' Sriracha brand has skyrocketed during a supply shortage. So the cooks at Christopher Kimball's Milk Street looked at some alternatives. First, there are other Sriracha brands. And if you want to try a different kind of hot sauce, there are varieties all over the world. For instance, a fiery habanero pepper sauce from Barbados includes tangy mustard and earthy turmeric. In Mexico City, they found dark and rich salsa macha with dried chilies, nuts and seeds.
Bottles of a leading brand of Sriracha hot sauce are suddenly hard to find, driving up prices for them as high as $150 -- but there are alternatives to opening your wallet that wide.
It's the second time in two years that Huy Fong Foods -- the best-known producer of Sriracha in the U.S. -- has had low inventory of their tangy sauce with the green cap and rooster label, a problem they attribute to insufficient chile pepper supplies. That and a bit of pandemic hoarding combined to send prices soaring, with some third-party sellers cashing in.
Rather than fall for the hype, remember there's a world of hot sauce alternatives.
Though the brand has near iconic status, Huy Fong's is not the only Sriracha on the market, nor is it even made in the Thai town that gave it its name.
The bright-red sauce was created by Thanom Chakkapak, a home cook in Thailand who mixed a combination of fresh chiles, vinegar, garlic, salt and sugar for her own use. Around the 1930s, she began marketing the sauce as Sriraja Panich, named after her coastal hometown, Si Racha. It became Thailand's best-selling hot sauce.
Years later, a fan of the sauce, David Tran, moved from Vietnam to California and founded Huy Fong, which made a thicker, spicier hot sauce, inspired by Sriraja Panich, that ultimately conquered U.S. kitchens. Huy Fong sources its chiles from Mexico and the U.S. Southwest, where a historic drought has now disrupted the supply chain.
That means a lot fewer bottles on store shelves.
Luckily, hot sauces and similar condiments are not difficult to make, and cooks around the world have alternatives that deliver both heat and complex layers of flavor.
Here are just one alternative, from Barbados. It won't taste identical to Huy Fong Sriracha, but they don't have to. All are easy to make, and you can relax about the missing rooster.
Bajan Hot
Pepper Sauce
Start to finish: 15 minutes
Makes ½ cup
This hot sauce from Barbados gets its heat from spicy Scotch bonnet chiles. If you can't find those, habaneros are a good substitute. To keep your fingers from being coated in spicy capsaicin, use the chiles' stems as a handle while slicing the sides from the center seed pod. A quick blanch in boiling water tames the chiles' heat but won't affect their subtle fruity flavor. Refrigerated in an airtight container, the hot sauce will keep for up to two weeks. Don't use Dijon mustard in place of the yellow mustard. Along with ground turmeric, plain yellow mustard gives the sauce its vibrant yellow color.
2 Scotch bonnet or habanero chiles
3 medium garlic cloves, peeled
3 scallions, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1½ teaspoons ground turmeric
1 teaspoon packed light or dark brown sugar
Kosher salt
2 tablespoons yellow mustard
2 teaspoons lime juice
Bring a small saucepan of water to a boil. Holding each chile by its stem, slice the sides away from the seed pod; discard the stems and seed pods. Add the chiles and garlic to the boiling water and blanch for 1 minute. Using a slotted spoon, transfer to a food processor.
Add the scallions, vinegar, turmeric, sugar and ¼ teaspoon salt to the processor. Pulse until chopped, about 10 pulses. Scrape the bowl. Add the mustard and lime juice, then process until not quite completely smooth, about another 10 seconds. Transfer to a small bowl or jar, cover and refrigerate.