2 Homemade Srirachas -- One Fresh, and One Fermented

Three 10 oz bottles of Sriracha

I know I promised these recipes a few months ago, but I have an excuse -- I wanted to post pictures of the fermented Sriracha, actually, well, fermenting, and it refused. Now that is weird, because, normally you put out organic liquid or wet material with sugars in it (covered) at room temperature, and within a week or so, it starts to bubble. PDQ. Sigh. Not this time. Makes you wonder how they get that coleslaw at the deli to go off so quick ... Anyway, I've got some photos now.

So, here are pictures of the Sriracha mash in a mixing bowl, with its plastic wrap cover removed, bubbling away. You can see the little bubble craters on the surface of the mash.

Fermenting Sriracha Mash

Cool, huh?

The only thing left to do is bottle it and adjust the flavor. What's that?? What do I mean, adjust the flavor?? Well, after the fermentation process, the relative sweet/salty/sour/hot balance may have changed, and it is perfectly legitimate to add rice wine vinegar, salt or sugar in small amounts until the flavor pleases you. Go ahead. Or ... if the Sriracha doesn't need it, don't.

So what is the basic recipe, you ask? I will give you the following list and amounts which are by no means written in stone, and you can begin your own fermentation experiment.

Fresh and Fermented Farang Sriracha

• 2 to 3 lbs ripe, red Fresno peppers, or other full flavored ripe, hot pepper, stems removed
• 1 to 2 pints peeled garlic cloves
• 4 to 8 TBS fine sea salt
• 10 to 16 oz, or to taste, rice wine vinegar
• 1 to 2 cups, to taste white or light brown sugar, about 1/2 to 1 cup for the fresh recipe; I like the brown
• 1 or 2 large peeled and rough-chopped sweet onions, optional -- not traditional, but good

Note that I am not using ripe jalapeno peppers as Huy Fong does, since the essential bitterness of the jalapeno, though diminished by ripening, remains even when nice and red. The Fresno pepper is a nice compromise. Other possibilities are the cherry pepper, a mixture of red peppers, including some jalapeno.

Chop it all up in a food processor or a powerful blender or a food mill, until the consistency is that of the Huy Fong Sriracha you may be familiar with or for that matter, Heinz Ketchup. If it's a little looser and wetter than that, it's OK.

Once it's all chopped up, you are nearly done for the fresh version of the Sriracha, but just beginning a 3 month or so journey for the fermented version.

For the fresh version, just bottle it in mason jars or in a carafe and let it sit in the refrigerator for 2 or 3 days so the flavors can meld, and use it as you like.

For the fermented version, keep it in a container of some kind that you can cover and observe for 5 to 6 days in a cool dry place, under 60 degrees F. Even if it still hasn't begun to ferment by that time, remove it to the refrigerator for 3 or 4 weeks or even longer until the telltale bubble of fermentation begin to pock the surface of the Sriracha, and let the bubbling run its course, which may take a several weeks or a month or more. At that point you can taste and adjust the flavor. I leave mine in the fridge after that point until I am sure fermentation is absolutely done, up to 3 or 4 months.

You may also find that after a couple of months of sitting in the fridge, the sauce has separated into 2 layers, a clear liquid on top, and an opaque layer underneath. I keep the clear layer on hand as a fermentation starter for new batches of Sriracha, but I pour it off the actual Sriracha I intend to bottle.

As much as I like the HF Sriracha, and I do, I prefer the fresher, less sweet, less bitter, less salty and more complex flavor of this Sriracha, and I like it on everything from scrambled eggs to chicken sandwiches. And there are times I prefer the fresh, non-fermented Sriracha, too.

By the way, for those of you interested in the fermentation process, which radically enhances and intensifies the flavor of the Sriracha, and other fresh hot sauces for that matter, check out Wild Fermentation: The Flavor, Nutrition, and Craft of Live-Culture Foods, by Sandor Ellix Katz, which will hook you up with everything from kimchi to kombucha.

Bon appetit!

Yours in Heat and Flavor,

~Ted


Photo credits: me

Sriracha Roundup and Surprise Winner -- For Now! Including UIF Uncle Chen's Sriracha ...

Union International Food Co. Sriracha Chili Sauce

Just after I had published Sriracha Redux, I finally received another cult favorite Sriracha that I had been waiting for, and for a while, too. The Union International Food Co Sriracha that goes under the name Uncle Chen's, and this product, which has exactly the same bottle style and label, including the little Pepper Face (of Uncle Chen, I guess, with mustache and stem), but without the actual Uncle Chen name on the bottle, I believe to be the same. So I call it UIF Sriracha, or Uncle Chen's. Any of you out there who know better, let me know.

I like this stuff. It has good balance, a big flavor and it's not too sweet, although it does have some sweetness. It has a lot of the great bright fresh pepper flavor of the Huy Fong Sriracha, but without the flaw of bitterness I had noted in my first review. I have tried it on burgers, eggs, in mayonnaise, made an Aioli with it, eaten it straight out of the bottle. It's really good. A little less sweet, a little saltier at first, maybe a little less hot. The finish is garlicky, sweet, and has some heat.

It's got a little thermometer right on the side showing medium heat, and I have to confess I wouldn't mind it being a little hotter, but maybe such a hotter UIF Sriracha is available, some place, somewhere. Meantime I can like this one.

OK, I got mine from Amazon! Had to buy a 6-pack of 6 oz squeeze bottles -- I'm not sorry to have them now -- and when I went back to the Amazon page for the UIF Sriracha, I got the dreaded message.

Sign up to be notified when this item becomes available.

See?

So the good news is that I do have 6 bottles; the bad news is -- where am I going to get my next 6? Still, I have time ... and, yes, I did do some pretty thorough web searches for the stuff.

I do apologize for recommending this stuff just as it seems to disappear from the market. Still, think of it as my way of soliciting help locating it.

I also have a confession to make regarding Huy Fong Sriracha -- I picked up a new bottle to compare it head-to-head with these other brands, and I like it much more than the older stuff I had reviewed back in March of last year. I dug the older bottle out from the back of my fridge and discovered, lo and behold, that the old HF Sriracha is indeed considerably more bitter than the stuff in the new bottle I just bought. In fact, with the still remaining Jalapeno bitterness much more in the background, the wonderful bright ripe red pepper fruit flavor is fantastic and makes it my favorite Sriracha, at least for the squeeze bottle I just bought!

I feel badly about possibly having rated the HF Sriracha on the basis of an extreme and unusual sample of the sauce, but, hey, I did it on the basis of 2 bottles I had purchased at different times (a week apart from the same store), and I can only rate what I taste!

What this means long term, I have no idea -- do I have to worry about consistency, and will the HF Sriracha I buy be bitter again next time around? Don't know. Never ran into this issue before. Still, I am going to do a Sriracha ranking based on my current sample.

So, my ranking of Srirachas I have tried places them in this order:

1.   Huy Fong -- Highly Recommended 

2.  UIF (Uncle Chen's) -- Highly Recommended

3.  Shark Brand -- Recommended

4.  Bells and Flower Brand -- Not recommended

Note that both of my favorites are domestically produced -- the UIF Uncle Chen's Sriracha at their Hayward, CA plant, and the HF Sriracha at the Rosemead, CA plant, and the flavor is much more pronounced, much bigger and fresher than that of the Thai "originals".

Next time, I'm going to post my recipes for 2 Srirachas, 2 US Farang Brand Srirachas, one PDQ recipe, and one let's-take-our-time fermented pepper recipe.

Yours in Heat and Flavor, 

~Ted

Photo Credits: UIF Sriracha c/o www.amazon.com and my screen capture

Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce -- or Why Hot Sauces Don't Necessarily Do to Food What You Think They Will!

Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce from Huy Fong Foods, Inc. is a relative newcomer to widely available (a lot of mainstream grocery stores carry it), commercial hot sauces and has quite a number of fans, who think it wonderful on everything from eggs, to asian food, and from American Food to old boots, I guess.

There isn't much neutral ground either: people like it or hate it. Why?

It is a fairly simple sauce with only 5 major ingredients, quite thick, and with some real heat and a nice salty/sweet/sour garlicky flavor ... at first, but by itself, it has ... drum roll, please ... a rather bitter finish.

Those ingredients are: red ripe jalapenos, sugar, salt, garlic, and distilled vinegar, along with some preservatives and xanthan gum thickener.

I do not know where the bitterness comes from for sure, but I suspect it is from the jalapenos, which, even when full ripe and red, have a a grassy bitterness.

If you taste HF Sriracha out of the squeeze bottle, that's the impression you are left with after the heat and other flavors fade -- mild bitterness. Not so nice.

How many of us are looking for that in our hot sauces?

Not too many, I think.

So why do (s0me/many) people like it? I guess some like the bitterness, but ...

Well, most people don't consume plain hot sauce; they add it to food. And that's where Sriracha shines, or, umm, should I say, tastes good.

The mild bitterness which is really a fairly prominent, grassy herbiness adds complexity and depth to strong, simple flavors, and when Sriracha is mixed with other foods, that bitterness is diluted and muted and recedes into the background as a complementary and pleasant aspect to the overall flavor.

But the first taste of Sriracha is really very nice indeed, with the bright, ripe pepper flavor and the lemony garlicky salty sweetness ... MMMMMmmmmm. Then of course, the bitterness. However, when diluted with food, the initial bright pepper flavor remains, and the bitterness fades quite a bit.

Some more delicate foods do not benefit from Sriracha: I do not like it with the delicate flavors of eggs or fish, for instance.

I also do not like HF Sriracha directly on many foods, such as over meats or on fries, but I do like it when mixed with other foods.

But, Sriracha is great in making a Spicy Garlic Aioli, for instance. Just mix your favorite prepared mayonaise, I like Hellman's (Best Foods in the West) myself, with 1/4 to 1/2 the quantity by volume of Sriracha. Voila! Excellent Spicy Aioli! Great with fried foods, steak, sandwiches, you name it.

Let me say this though about Sriracha sauces: Huy Fong in the squeeze bottle is not the only brand around. There is also the much less widely available Shark Brand Sriracha which is a Thai product, note that Huy Fong is American, and, frankly, Shark Brand tastes better. Not as bitter and better balanced, but still with that nice salty/garlicky/acid bright flavor and not too much on the vinegar, and a little less heat.

There is also an ABC Indonesian brand that I have not tried, and there are Ka-Me and Roland knock-offs of the Huy Fong product. Ka-Me I have not tried. The Roland product is even more bitter than the Huy Fong.

Get the Shark Brand if you can.

And the lesson here is that hot sauces don't necessarily taste the same right out of the bottle as they do in the food you eat.

I can recommend the Shark Brand Sriracha without reservation, but the HF Sriracha I can only recommend with the fairly serious reservation that its real bitterness restricts its use to complex and robust foods.

Yours in Heat and Flavor,

~Ted