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Homemade Sriracha
- generalizations 3y agoDIY hot sauce reaching the top of hacker news. Are we really that predictable? http://catb.org/jargon/html/food.html http://catb.org/jargon/html/food.html
- morkalork 3y agoYes. It's also good timing since I've got way too many hot peppers from my garden ripening right now and no idea what to do with them!
- tptacek 3y agoIn that this is the peak season for putting up peppers (and late summer produce of all kinds), yes, it's pretty predictable. Fermented chili sauce is probably the highest ROI home fermentation projects and easy enough that anybody can do it, so if you've got access to interesting peppers, take a whack at it. It's a really good way to use peppers that are too hot to eat on their own, since it's much easier to control the dosing in a dish as a sauce.
- OJFord 3y agoI was going to disagree with that on the basis that almost anything is on par, but then I thought of sourdough starter/levain, which is surely the easiest, cheapest, most versatile, most useful (almost everyone eats at least one kind of at least slightly leavened bread) home fermentation project. Once you get going it's very easy to always make your own bread, and it be lot better & cheaper (a sliding scale between them depending what you bought, but almost certainly both to some extent regardless) than what you bought before. Beer is trickier than hot sauce for sure, but more differentiable, versatile, and satisfying (if you drink beer) perhaps to make up for it on an RoI basis? Certainly worth trying if you like this sort of thing anyway, I think. Yoghurt is even easier than hot sauce, more versatile, though not really as interesting or variable. Such low investment though (milk, few chickpeas or chilli crowns) that if you use it at all it would be hard for it not to do very well on RoI basis.
- bookofjoe 3y agoYes. Anything featuring vitamin D is guaranteed double figure karma. Others: quantified self/self-tracking; fermentation
- Telemakhos 3y agoDIY hot sauces are fine for kids and enthusiastic amateurs, but it's past time for major, open-source hot sauces to be produced with a memory-safe language like Rust.
- peteradio 3y agoFinally someone with some courage to say whats necessary.
- ethbr1 3y agoWouldn't the entire sauce have to be labeled unsafe, thus rendering the advantages of Rust moot?
- tux3 3y agoAs long as the hot sauce isn't strong enough to induce amnesia, it should be memory-safe. At worst you might panic.
- ReptileMan 3y agoJokes aside - but there is so much knowledge out there made by passionate geeks that it begs to be gathered together. On any topic. And eventually kill the "lifehacks" videos with real stuff. Fermentation of hot peppers, photography, homemade shawarma, woodworking, burn barrels, how to roll cords without tangling, bitters with soda when too full. All of those I looked up in the last month for one reason or another. And on some I improved but there is no organized way to give back the knowledge.
- cosmojg 3y ago> bitters with soda when too full Can you expand upon this? How does mixing bitters with soda help with being too full?
- ReptileMan 3y agoBitters were digestives before they become cocktail flavoring, by soda I mean club soda aka carbonated water. You just need a ordwr of magnitude more bitters than go in a cocktails - like a teaspoon to tablespoon. If you feel bloated after a meal - a glass of this really helps.
- demondemidi 3y agoWith the success of "Hot Ones", hot sauce is the new identity craze. I know, this is HN, so a dozen people are gonna say "Well, -I'VE- like hot sauce since insert year." I get it. You're badass. But this is just the latest trend. Which I enjoy. Sriracha is sugary syrup in my opinion, and lousiana style is just blah ... the Hot Sauce craze has led to some really tasty alternatives. See: Torchbearer. But when the trend finally fades, we'll all go back to enjoying Sambal Oelek, the OG hotsauce.
- mcphage 3y ago> I know, this is HN, so a dozen people are gonna say "Well, -I'VE- like hot sauce since insert year." I get it. You're badass. I know this is the internet, and it's traditional to invent people to be mad at, but in this case the person you're mad at is .... someone who has liked hot sauce since before Hot Ones?
- OJFord 3y agoI don't even know what Hot Ones is, bizarre thing to say, as if 'hot sauce' is in any way a new concept or even just newly commercialised. I loved Tabasco hot sauce and chilli peppers in general as a small child (and forever since). Of course that doesn't mean it can't be or isn't a current craze, but it's hardly been a niche interest since.. idk, some time not too long after Portuguese colonialism brought chillies out of South America ca. 16th-18th C.s?
- demondemidi 3y agoThanks for proving my point.
- OJFord 3y agoYour point is absurd nonsense, at least without making any attempt to explain why/back up the claim that any significant number of people were somehow unaware of hot sauce until whatever Hot Ones is happened.
- asveikau 3y agoThis is a good observation (and the username checks out), but I just want to point out there are issues with the Jargon File and its occasional projections of ESR's odd views on interpersonal issues. The "portrait of J Random Hacker", in addition to being outdated, has a lot of weird stuff. Look at the "Gender and Ethnicity" section for instance.
- 1-6 3y ago"hackers consider Cantonese vaguely déclassé" Eric Raymond obviously doesn't have great taste in everything.
- dharma1 3y agoWe like open sauce
- xnx 3y agoI recently learned that the whole Sriracha (brand) shortage was a self-inflected wound due to a contract violation with their supplier: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYdU1X2p2ro https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYdU1X2p2ro
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- philip1209 3y agoI'm a fan of lacto-fermentation, and have a batch of peppers fermenting right now. I recommend fermenting the hot peppers in a brine, instead of as a paste. In my experience, this reduces the likelihoods of both mold (because only saline is in contact with the air) and exploding containers (because you can leave the lid more loose, allowing air to escape). I recommend this video's technique for the fermentation step: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8UJPQ_zoU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8UJPQ_zoU Also, the salt level is incredibly important for both food safety and flavor - Noma's fermentation guide recommends using 2% of the weight of the ferment (both solids and any water). It's worth using a scale for this.
- tout 3y agoI've found mash fermentation works fantastically in a vacuum bag https://youtu.be/1IyrvH-Gexk?si=giwGdkPrLzxJc2AL https://youtu.be/1IyrvH-Gexk?si=giwGdkPrLzxJc2AL
- philip1209 3y agoThis technique works incredibly well with berries. I've had issues with fermenting mashes in bags in the past. My suspicion is that blending ahead of time may have killed natural lactic acid bacteria on the vegetables. So, you could counter this by adding some ferment brine at the end (e.g., from store-bought kimchi). But, I now blend for the final texture after the fermentation rather than before.
- tptacek 3y agoThe plastic Korean kimchi buckets (the ones that let you push all the air out) work especially well for this.
- jerrysievert 3y agoI usually have a bunch of peppers fermenting together (with garlic) for blending into hot sauce. I tend to make ~30x what I use, and give out a lot. it makes for a very fun hobby, with interesting rewards. I would highly recommend others to try it if they get a chance, but as you said, the salinity is extremely important.
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- hammock 3y agoA key ingredient that many miss in sriracha is sugar.
- tptacek 3y agoThat will not taste like sriracha.
- _ea1k 3y agoThe linked recipe has 4 tablespoons of light brown sugar.
- robocat 3y agoUnlikely it has ~0.5% sugar: https://www.nutritionix.com/i/huy-fong-foods/sriracha-hot-chili-sauce/51c36a8497c3e69de4b072b6 https://www.nutritionix.com/i/huy-fong-foods/sriracha-hot-ch...
- CodeWriter23 3y agoHuy Fong Rooster Sauce, yes, almost no sugar. But several Thai varieties do have sugar added. I think you're engaging in a potato / pahtahto dichotomy here.
- unwind 3y agoI think you tripped over the US way of presenting nutritional data per serving. It's 0.5 g per 5-g serving, i.e. 10% (roughly same as Coke which I guess is generally agreed to be sweet).
- ssl-3 3y agoYou raise an interesting point, but: That's the total sugars, not just added sugar. This particular siracha is based around red, ripe jalapenos. And [presumably green, unripened] jalapenos are already 4.1g of sugar per 100g of fruit all by themselves: https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168576/nutrients https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/168576/n...
- hammock 3y ago[flagged]
- robocat 3y ago> 1 part sugar Unlikely it has ~0.5% sugar: https://www.nutritionix.com/i/huy-fong-foods/sriracha-hot-chili-sauce/51c36a8497c3e69de4b072b6 https://www.nutritionix.com/i/huy-fong-foods/sriracha-hot-ch...
- tptacek 3y agoYou wrote a variant of this comment earlier (you changed the hot sauce from Tabasco to Tapatio), and when it was downvoted to the bottom of the page, you cleared it out and reposted it. That's a lame Reddit trick and it has never been OK here.
- Alupis 3y agoNot to mention their "recipe" couldn't be further from the truth anyway. Once wrong, double-down and try again?
- wayfinder 3y agoHuy Fong, the “rooster brand” and a family owned company in LA that was sort of an immigrant success story, made a deal with Underwood Farms (also around LA and of which Huy Fong worked with personally since the start of Huy Fong) to buy peppers to help them purchase/lease new land but then reneged on the deal and sent undercover executives to Underwood to steal their methods of production. Underwood sued and won and Huy Fong was forced to purchase peppers from other suppliers, most of which seem to be having problems supplying peppers. Sriracha is not a brand but rather a type of regional sauce, of which Huy Fong’s version was not completely true to recipe (but still tasted great IMO), and so that’s why you see other brands creating a “sriracha” sauce. Huy Fong’s version is sweeter than the OG but I’ve noticed some other brands are even sweeter (like Trader Joe’s if I recall). Incidentally, Underwood Farms started producing their own sriracha sauce.
- brink 3y agoIt's a shame to see such bad behavior coming from what I thought was a good brand.
- jeron 3y agoCorporate espionage is just part of business
- rfrey 3y agoIn the same way that infidelity is just part of marriage. It exists, but it's certainly not inevitable.
- cm2012 3y agoThat kind of betrayal is not standard business, it will absolutely destroy your long term rep.
- mistercheph 3y agoIt's not betrayal, it's just due diligence
- walthamstow 3y agoI know Huy Fong is the main brand in the US, being made there and all, but it really does not have anything on the Flying Goose brand, made in Thailand.
- VerminOctopus1 3y agoI found the flying goose brand to be quite awful and not at all a suitable replacement for the Huy Fong sriracha. To each their own I suppose.
- noer 3y agoI've found Flying Goose to be more readily available in the United States since Huy Fong has become harder to find. I'm not mad about it!
- acjacobson 3y agoI think Flying Goose is decent flavor-wise - but it lacks a lot of heat in comparison, and thus doesn't work so well (for me) as a substitute.
- linsomniac 3y agoHave you tried the Super Hot or Blackout variants?
- acjacobson 3y agoI haven't, but thanks for the tip!
- linsomniac 3y agoI get analysis paralysis with Flying Goose brand, it's like if I'm going to place an order, I want to get 15 variants. Has anyone tried one of their flavors that has really knocked their socks off? Galangal, Tikka, Black Pepper and Kimchi sound good.
- lightedman 3y ago
- MostlyStable 3y agoHave a batch of this going right now. I also use this same recipe, minus the blending and vinegar at the end, to make a home made fermented chili-garlic sauce. Although for both the sriracha and the chili-garlic I cut the sugar in half from what the recipe recommends. Chili peppers generally make up a pretty large chunk of what I grow every year, as they can often be preserved every which way you can imagine (fermented, dried, smoked, canned, or frozen). -edit- The next pepper based thing I am probably going to try and figure out is how to make Tapatio/Cholula style hot sauce. If anyone has a link to a decent recipe, it would be much appreciated.
- AlbertCory 3y agoAdd: basil. More than you can possibly use. I'm trading mine for a neighbor's tomatoes.
- acjacobson 3y agoTake a look at this Cholula copycat recipe. I've made it probably 5-6 times and have really liked the results (the key, as with all cooking, is to taste and season to your preference) https://thehotpepper.com/threads/cholula-copycat-recipe-recollection.70657/ https://thehotpepper.com/threads/cholula-copycat-recipe-reco...
- koromak 3y agoNo chance I'm finding red jalepenos around here, but I would love to try this
- 1-6 3y agoStart with green jalapeños.
- chaostheory 3y agoHuy Fong’s sriracha (rooster sauce) is sriracha in name only. If that’s what you’re looking to replicate, then this blog post isn’t going to help you. Its Chinese-Vietnamese immigrant founder didn’t really know how to make it. He just kept experimenting until he got the flavor that he wanted, but it’s not an authentic flavor. Instead, it’s an original American hot sauce where just a few years ago most people in Asia were very unfamiliar with since the company doesn’t really like to do advertising.
- pbj1968 3y agoYeah, well, the Vietnamese American population in my city can’t get enough of it. And, yes, we’ve all seen that documentary on Netflix, too.
- chaostheory 3y agoInventing an original, homegrown American sauce is a good thing and something we should be proud of. Everyone loves rooster sauce including me, not just the Vietnamese community. I’m not sure how my comment can be seen as a criticism for the Huy Fong company. it was meant to criticize the blog post instead
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- steve_adams_86 3y agoThis reminds me that I really need to learn to make gochujang. Sriracha is amazing, and I’ve learned to make various things in that style, but I still haven’t ventured into Korean hot pepper pastes. But they’re life changing. I’d love to find something like this for gochujang next time I have enough peppers. If anyone reading has any tips, I’m all ears.
- cphoover 3y agoIt's not sriracha... There is a reason why there is a Hoy Fong Sriracha shortage but not a shortage with off-brand variants. People want the particular recipe of the rooster sauce... It's a specific flavor. Same reason to me Heinz ketchup is the only ketchup I want for my fries.
- whalesalad 3y agoyou're not wrong. haven't been able to find a decent replacement anywhere. tempted to pony up on ebay for some contraband.
- ssl-3 3y agoI still have part of a bottle that I bought earlier this year. I was pretty excited to find it after the previous shortage. If I knew then what I know now, I'd have bought all of it and scalped it properly. Alas.
- cmiller1 3y agoI like this stuff even better than Huy Fong's https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U9WOBG8/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00U9WOBG8/
- Cagrosso 3y agoI’ve found the Tabasco Sriracha to be the best of the alternatives I have tried. I’ve lol have to try the Hoy Fung brand again when available again but we will see. I was very surprised because I think Tabasco tastes awful.
- silisili 3y agoSame. I even prefer the Tabasco to the original. Tastes every so slightly more 'peppery', every so slightly less sweet.
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- 1-6 3y agoLet me introduce you all to an alternative hot sauce that has taken a country by storm and built multiple industries for generations. Gochujang.
- rpmisms 3y agoThis post gave me such a strong craving for Sriracha that I went and bought some immediately. Thanks a lot!
- 1-6 3y agoHuy Fong Sriracha: The end of an era. If there's a lesson to be learned here, you don't backstab your sole supplier of 28 years overnight and just go somewhere else. It's unfortunate that David Tran didn't learn from the Italians who sell their 900-year-old Parmigiano-Reggiano recipe to this day. It's a shame, it seemed like the brand was only getting started and becoming recognized globally as a household name. A small battle with their favored supplier costed them much.
- demizer 3y agoThere are a few billion-dollar recipes in the world and the rooster sriracha was one of them. That family fucked up their golden goose... and now all these competing recipes are getting their shine. Greed will get you in the end!
- MisterBastahrd 3y agoThere's a cigar company that did the same thing (not naming names because I'm friends with everyone involved). Over 20 years ago, a famous Cuban cigar roller came to the US to start his own cigar business. He worked out of a small factory with other rollers in Miami, and sourced all of his tobacco from a specific farm out of Nicaragua. The deal was that the farm owner would be a part-owner of his tobacco business in exchange for the tobacco since he came from Cuba with nothing. Well, years later the cigar roller is now a cigar magnate, and he wanted his business to be owned by himself and his children, not his business partner. So he started another company on the side and started pushing all of his new brands through that company. The farm owner found out, sued him, and they settled out of court for millions with the caveat that the roller would no longer be able to use any of his farm's tobacco. Cigar roller shrugged his shoulders and kept going. Bought some farmland in Nicaragua and other places, built a fermentation barn, and started growing his own tobacco too, at least what he couldn't source from elsewhere. He also largely stopped making third party cigars aside from his son in law's by way of jacking up the prices on almost all long-run projects by over 100% (to get out of making them). In 20 years he went from being near penniless to being one of the most successful people in the business. Are the cigars as good as they used to be? Hell no. He used to create cigars for third party vendors that would put most of the best Cuban marcas to shame even when you found a quality box of them. But they're good enough for people who don't remember what they used to be, and that's what counts.
- manicennui 3y agoI don't get the obsession with sriracha. It is mediocre at best. Try some sambal oelek.
- MarkMarine 3y agoFinding the right peppers at local groceries in the US is a challenge. You can find some bland jalapeños and even bland habaneros, and often not much else. I’ve taken to growing my own peppers (Piri Piri) to go in the Portuguese food I like. I couldn’t find them fresh anywhere. It’s turned into a little hobby, and it is shocking how hot a well cared for jalapeño is.
- jmspring 3y agoIf you want peppers beyond the occasional habenero; jalapenos, fresnos, sorranos, some others may be available, and very local dependent - you will need to grow yourself. Growing enough to meet the volumes for a large jar of peper sauce, etc. may be challenging. My pepper endeavors this year (in Santa Cruz and high sierra) were mixed. Poblanos were nuts. Jalepenos ok. Hot peppers, not so much.
- RandomWorker 3y agomy recipe: 1 lbs jalapenos, 4 cloves garlic, 1 tbsp of salt, 2 tbsp of sugar, 1/4 cup water blend - wait 6-7 days on the counter - check every day for bubbles. simmer 15 min, 1/4 vinegar added at the end. Strain through a mess for less grains. put in a bottle. I like it less sweet, but still enjoy the fermented taste. Getting a solid bottle is important.
- hutattedonmyarm 3y ago> So what's up with the emblematic rooster? It's the astrological sign of the brand's creator, David Tran. Ugh.
- jmspring 3y agoI love rooster sauce and will follow this thread. I also like pickling, making vinegar and other based hot sauces. I eat carolina reapers when I feel stupid. `Hot Ones` is actually a brilliant show and their sauces are not bad. The Rooster Sauce shortage and the DIY or link to the issue at large is why I appreciate HN. I uusally have a fall hot pepper source, but noodle on the idea of a sustainable business around some of these niche culinary (etc) interests that come up.
- beeforpork 3y agoI highly recommend trying lacto-fermentation of everything. I like to keep it as simple as possible. So why sugar? Why vinegar? The sauce is perfect (and more versatile) without.
- lproven 3y agoNotably American-tinged comments here. I mean, HN usually is, but especially so. Sriracha sauce is a generic kind of sauce. This is not all about one particular brand. Whatever some Californian company calls it, it's not their own thing and never was. There are legions of brands of sriracha and apart from one country, in the other 200-odd countries of the world other brands outnumber Flying Goose or whatever it's called. A decade ago, before the spat with their suppliers, I heard praise for this one American brand, so I went looking for it. I found some, bought it, and it was a good sauce. It was expensive, though, so I did not stay loyal, when I could buy actual Asian-made sriracha from Asian shops for 10% of the price of the American stuff. I have found that other Asian brands of sriracha are just as good to my taste, notably the amusingly-named Cock Sauce. In fact the only thing that's notable to me is that since the successful viral promotion of Hoy Fong's stuff, lots of European supermarkets noticed that "sriracha" isn't a trademark and anyone can make and sell sriracha sauce. So now there is Tesco sriracha and Marks and Spencer sriracha and Albert Hein sriracha and so on... Those are all rubbish with no heat and no flavour. But if it comes in a clear plastic bottle with 3-4 non-European languages printed on it, it's probably good. :-) And frankly, it's inexpensive and widespread so I am not going to bother making my own. Sorry. It's like bread: home made bread can be wonderful, but if you shop around, there is good bread to buy almost everywhere... even in the UK, home of the awful Chorleywood Process and some of the worst bread in the world. If I can buy a loaf of good bread for £/$/€ 1.50-2 then I am not going to spend 4 hours making one.