5 Things You Should Know About Cooking With Sriracha (2024)

FAQs

What is sriracha used for in cooking? ›

Sriracha is a versatile hot sauce with a bright red colouring that is most commonly associated with Vietnamese and Thai cuisine. It is made from red chilli peppers, garlic, vinegar, salt, and sugar, and can be used to add spice and flavour to anything from noodle soup to chicken wings.

The sauce was first produced in the 1940s by a Thai woman named Thanom Chakkapak in the town of Si Racha (or Sriracha), Thailand. The Sriracha sauce itself may be an adaptation of a Cantonese garlic and chili sauce originally from Shunde, China.

Basic Sriracha is made of chilli peppers, vinegar, garlic, salt, and sugar. The quality of the chillis and garlic and the ratios of the added ingredients are the other defining factors of the classic Sriracha flavour. Thai chefs are masters at combining simple ingredients in exact amounts to create a definitive taste.

One of the best sriracha benefits comes from its main ingredient, chili peppers - capsaicin. The spice from capsaicin helps boost the metabolism, promoting a healthy body weight. These peppers can also boost endorphins in the body to help regulate the feel-good chemicals in your body, like serotonin.

Apart from being a lot less chilli, the flavour profile is almost the same, but keep in mind that sriracha sauce is different from tabasco or any other hot sauce. It is much thicker with a strong hint of garlic. What is the difference between hot sauce and sriracha? Sriracha is the same as hot sauce.

This is an excellent, spicy, quick-and-easy breakfast.

Sriracha powder is as easy to use on your favorite dishes as salt and pepper. Above all, it adds lots more flavor. Use it to shake a little spice on all your favorite dishes from stews and soups to meats and salads. Just a little sprinkle can upgrade any of your main courses or sides.

Though sriracha won't spoil, the flavor will change and since chili peppers change color over time as they are exposed to air, older sriracha sometimes looks brown. Every bottle comes with a best-before date, "lasered on towards the neck of the bottle. You can feel it with your fingers," says a rep from Huy Fong Foods.

In the 1930s a Thai cook and entrepreneur named Thanom Chakkapak developed a hot sauce for her home kitchen, serving it on fish and other dishes. Encouraged to market the sauce commercially, she named it Sriraja Panich after her coastal hometown of Si Racha (also called Sri Racha and Sri Raja).

If you're not prone to heartburn or acid reflux, eating hot sauce every day still may not be the best idea because of the sodium content. "The big thing to be mindful of is not so much the heat, but the salt," Sauceda explains. "If you eat a lot daily, it can be very easy to go over the daily sodium recommendation.

Is sriracha vegan? ›

Yes, you hot sauce fanatics will be thrilled to hear that sriracha is indeed vegan-friendly.

The basic ingredients of red chilies, garlic, and vinegar have not changed since the early days of the product. Today, the bottle lists the ingredients as: "chili, sugar, salt, garlic, distilled vinegar, potassium sorbate, sodium bisulfite and xanthan gum".

Sriracha is great on eggs and avocado toast, but there are so many other ways you can put it to use at breakfast and brunch. Add it to waffle batter for a sweet-and-savory treat. Mix it into cream cheese to up your bagel game. Add a little into Hollandaise sauce for killer eggs benedict.

“The main culprit here is a shortage of their primary ingredient, the red jalapeño chile pepper,” said David Ortega, a food economist and associate professor at Michigan State University. “And that's due to climate change and the mega drought.”

The tangy, spicy essence of sriracha sauce goes amazingly well with anything that's creamy. We love mixing it with cream cheese and then slathering it on top of a toasted bagel, or whipping up with some cream as a dip for potato wedges.

Louisiana-style hot sauces, like Frank's Red Hot or Tabasco, are much thinner (runnier) than sriracha. They also tend to be quite vinegary and spicy, without any sweetness. These differences make it not the best substitute for sriracha.

Some people keep their sriracha in the cabinet or even on the table, and that's fine if you plan to eat it quickly, around three months or less. However, it's best to refrigerate it if you're a more occasional user. Most hot sauces, sriracha included, get their multi-dimensional hotness from a bit of fermentation.

It has a SHU score of 2,200. For reference, both Louisiana Hot Sauce and Frank's Red Hot, which sit at the bottom of the list, clocking in at around 450 SHU, while another common sauce, Tabasco, more than doubles sriracha's score with a rating of 5,000 SHU.