Turn Up the Heat - It’s Chili
Posted by Ron Pulicari on Cook Smarter.
If you’re one of those people that has 23 different bottles of hot sauce in your refrigerator and/or cabinets and Sriracha from Huy Fong Foods is not one of them, you’re missing out. I discovered this sauce after ordering the Sri Ra Cha Pasta dish from Tip Top Thai located on Broadway in Somerville, Massachusetts. I loved the flavor of the sauce and wondered what was in it. The dish description said it was made with the chef’s own Sri Ra Cha chili sauce. Well, what is Sri Ra Cha? It turns out it is a sauce named after a seaside town in Thailand (Si Racha) and is a sauce made from sun-ripened chili peppers, garlic, vinegar, sugar and salt. Unlike sauces like Tabasco, Sriracha does not have a vinegary taste. The sauce is slightly sweet due to the use of sun-ripened chilies and, well, sugar and it has a good amount of garlic flavor.
Of all the hot sauces I’ve tried, this one is my favorite because of its flavor rather than its heat. Actually, as far as heat goes, it only has a Scoville rating of 2,000, so it’s pretty mild for a hot sauce. If you seek out hot sauces for their intense heat, this isn’t for you. Instead I recommend using this sauce in combination with a hot sauce. Some of the really hot sauces are lacking in flavor and are just out for the shock effect.
The Huy Fong brand is hard to find in supermarkets, though it is the most well-known brand. I searched for a long time before I found it in, of all places, Target. You’ll know the bottle from the green cap and the rooster on the front. There are some copy-cat brands out there and they lack the great flavor balance offered in Huy Fong’s brand. I threw my bottle of the copy-cat stuff out once I found the Huy Fong brand.
I’d post some recipes that use Sriracha but I haven’t really used it in recipes, nor have I sought out recipes that use it. I’ve only used it as I would a hot sauce in any dish. I’d like to hear from anyone who has a recipe, especially a Thai recipe, that highlights Sriracha.
This really isn’t a “recipe” and it’s certainly not Thai, but it’s how we fix sauteed cabbage. Sautee as much green cabbage as you want with a little oil (in our house, it’s olive), right at the end, put in a dose of sriracha (to taste) and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Any leftovers WILL be hotter the next day and even hotter the next. But still really good….