We'll be the first to admit that heat tolerance varies wildly around our Test Kitchen.
Some of us have the tolerance of a toddler–can't eat Flamin' Hot Cheetos, a wide berth around anything too saucy, and a firm "make it mild" at restaurants. Others reach for the spiciest hot sauces and ghost pepper seasonings without blinking.
Either way, we've been on a mission to build up our collective heat tolerance, which mostly means starting small, like drizzling the tiniest amount of Sriracha onto whatever's for lunch and easing into the heat one bite at a time. It's often considered the most approachable and iconic of hot sauces.
So you can imagine our frustration when several of our customers reached out to us during the summer of the worldwide Sriracha shortage. What were we supposed to do? Tell them to switch to a sauce that might be way hotter and burn our tastebuds clean off? No thanks.
Fortunately, we're food problem-solvers by trade, and some research led us to a solution: just make our own dang homemade sriracha sauce.
Neither! Sriracha is a beloved Thai hot sauce made from red chile peppers, garlic, and vinegar.
The world-renowned condiment was popularized in the states by David Tran and his company Huy Fong Foods, based out of LA. The cult-favorite Huy Fong Sriracha sauce is always made with red jalapeños sourced from Mexico and southern California.
And what's with the sriracha shortages that have occurred in the past?
Red jalapeños have had rough growing seasons (thanks, climate change), and sriracha makers have struggled to gather enough crop to secure the sauce. Huy Fong Foods makes batches of their sauce once a year: when red jalapeños are picked ripe, the company processes those jalapeños down with vinegar and leaves them to sit and ferment in steel barrels until more sauce is needed. The fermented chile paste is then combined with sugar and spices and squeezed into the green-topped plastic bottle found in nearly every kitchen in America.
What is sriracha hot sauce made of?
Our DIY Sriracha journey began with Serious Eat's Homemade Sriracha article and recipe. The author calls for red jalapeños and insists that no other peppers will do, but given the circumstances, we had to take some creative liberties. We decided to give this fermentation method a shot with 4 different types of peppers: Fresnos for the color, green jalapeños for an attempt at similar flavor, and serranos and red bell peppers for accessibility and heat level variety.
We blitzed up the peppers, portioned them into little mason jars, and set them on the Test Kitchen counter to ferment, checking for bubbles and burping the pressure daily. After about a week and a half (a few jars even came home with some of us over the weekend), we had 8 funky jars of fermented peppers.
After further pureeing and simmering down these peppers, we had a resounding half cup of each hot sauce (disappointing output for the time put in? You bet!) Since spice tolerance varies so much on our team, we called in a wider array of taste testers for a gourmet hot sauce flight. The results:
Serrano hot sauce was delicious, but far too hot for a Sriracha dupe.
Red bell pepper hot sauce swung in the opposite direction, too delicate and sweet, not enough Sriracha kick.
Green jalapeños hit a similar tangy note as Sriracha, but the green color was a deterrent. (We eat with our eyes, after all).
Fresnos produced a sauce that was just a touch hotter than Sriracha, but the color and texture were spot-on, and the added heat was actually preferred by our taste testers.
So, fresnos it was!
But if our own food scientists found the fermentation process too long and not quite worth the output, what would the standard home cook think of this process? We needed to find a way to bring the fermentation funk onto a much shorter timeline. So we called in a spice we've admired from afar but hadn't cooked with enough: Asafetida.
The smell out of the jar can admittedly take some getting used to, but mellows when cooked. It adds a complex, unique, funky flavor that mimics the savory, sulfuric qualities of garlic and onion. It's not a spice we see referenced much in American recipes, but it deserves to be known.
Our final "Sriracha-ish" method was simple: purée peppers with vinegar and seasonings, strain, and simmer to a hot sauce consistency (what else could we possibly compare it to?). We relied on salt, acid, sugar, and Asafetida to create depth of flavor without fermentation, and threw in some Smoked Spanish Sweet Paprika for a hint of smokiness to bring it all home.
The result was a hot sauce that testers kept coming back to the kitchen for: bright, funky, and just the right amount of heat.
Did we perfectly replicate the iconic taste of classic Sriracha that we're all familiar with? No, definitely not.
But we did create a sauce that hits all the right notes, and then some. It's also quick from blender to table, so there's no long wait for a fiery fix. And we also found a good stepping stone for milder palates: swapping in red bell peppers with a little Guajillo Chile Powder thrown in. It's a gentler heat level, and it's already become a go-to stir-fry garnish in the test kitchen (until we're ready for something hotter!).
If you'd rather skip fresh peppers altogether, yes. It's one of the fastest routes to that Sriracha flavor.
Cayenne Chile Powder is a closer heat match to the red jalapeños and serranos in true sriracha than the milder guajillo mentioned above, which makes it a solid all-powder base.
Whisk cayenne pepper into vinegar with a little garlic, sugar, and salt, then simmer for a few minutes to let everything meld together. No fermenting, no blending a pound of fresh chiles, no straining seeds and skins. Just a shelf-stable spice doing the work that a whole grocery bag of peppers usually does.
What else is asafoetida good for?
So we made Homemade Sriracha and now have a mostly full jar of Asafetida (or asafoetida) sitting around the kitchen. How else can you use it?
First of all, congratulations on expanding your culinary toolkit! You don't actually need a recipe, as we've tested plenty of ways to use it. Here are some other easy ways to play with asafetida:
Throw a bit in with garlic and onions any time a recipe calls for them: Much like garlic and onions, asafetida's flavor is best highlighted when it's cooked off in some butter or oil first thing in the cooking process. To start testing the flavor of asafetida, add a teaspoon into the "sweat your garlic and onions" (aka sauté) stage of your favorite recipes and see how the flavor expands!
Better yet, just replace your onions with asafetida: Plenty of people would rather skip biting into a piece of diced onion in a finished dish (looking at you, any kind of soup or chili). Try replacing diced, sweated onions in a recipe with a teaspoon of asafetida. Just make sure you're still cooking it out in that fat before continuing to build the recipe! Similar to onions and garlic, you'll know by smell when you're ready to add your next ingredients.
Incorporate tadka into your grains, beans, and soups: Next time you make rice, soup, or chili, try a quick tadka* with 2 Tbsp. of butter or oil and some whole or ground versions of spices you'd already use in the dish, like Coriander Seeds, Fenugreek Seeds, Fennel Seeds, Turmeric, dried chiles, any red chile powder, and, of course, Asafetida.
*Tadka has many names–chhonk, phanna, baghar, and tarka, to name a few. The concept is the same no matter what you call it: heat some butter or oil, flash fry whole & ground spices for a few seconds, pour the whole mixture into your final dish. It's like a final seasoning or condiment to bring it all together.
How can I use my homemade sriracha?
Use our Homemade Sriracha recipe to make your DIY batch. Then, drizzle your new favorite homemade hot sauce over our recipe for authentic Korean BBQ Bibimbap for a delicious spicy dinner.
Our Honey Sriracha Lime Fish Tacos Spice & Easy seasoning packet bottles that same sweet-tangy-spicy sriracha flavor into a 15-minute dinner. No fermenting, straining, or simmering required.
