Turn Up the Heat - It's Chili

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 it's 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.