More about Sriracha!

(photo by Robert Yager, New York Times, 2009)

I had an orientation at a new job this weekend, teaching math at an art school. Two other folks at the orientation will be teaching in the culinary department. I brought up Sriracha and both of them nodded their approval. "Do you use it on everything?" I was asked.

I admitted I hadn't tried it on raisin bran yet.

Searching online, the New York Times did a 2009 story about my favorite brand, manufactured by Huy Fong foods in Rosemead. Here are some fun facts from the story

• The name Sriracha is a town in Thailand.
  
• The folks at Huy Fong foods are ethnic Chinese Vietnamese immigrants, and they readily admit Thais might not even recognize the stuff.
  
• They are currently selling 10 million bottles a year of the stuff, mostly to the Asian American market, but that is changing.
  
• Wal-Mart carries it, so it is all over the place.
  
• The rooster is on the bottle because the originator of the sauce was born in the Year of the Rooster.
• Several chefs in fancy restaurants around the country use it in recipes. My favorite quote from a chef recognizes that it is not a particularly spicy hot sauce. "It burns your body, not your tongue." says chef Bryan Caswell.
  
• It is also being used at chains like P.F. Chang's and Applebee's.
  
• The Tran family is both pleased and amazed at the loyalty of the fans of their most popular product. The story documents two Facebook pages devoted to Rooster Sauce (known on this blog as "prison sauce", thank you very much), a guy who had a picture of the bottle tattooed on his leg, and some girls who went to a Halloween party dressed as bottles.

And I close this brief listicle of facts with the aphorism I first heard from my father:

You learn something new every day, if you are not careful.

Just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true.

I live frugally. Being a broke-ass mofo will do that to you sometimes, though some people's mileage may vary. I remember reading Calvin Trillin's tribute book to his lovely wife Alice, and she had a phrase about people that was not meant as a compliment.

"He lives like a grad student."

That still applies to me.

So I sometimes have mac and cheese as a meal. Usually, I chop up some celery, put in some frozen peas and add in some form of animal protein, quite often tuna. But this time at the grocery, I thought I'd splurge and try something else as the meaty goodness and bought some Canadian bacon. I looked at the package and though it was more expensive than the cheapest tuna, the amount of calories and fat weren't that different if I cut up just a few slices.

The package said the back bacon needed to be cooked, so I chopped it up and fried it in the pan, poured out some of the fat and put in some milk, butter and prison sauce to mix in the cheese packet, then mixed in the peas and celery.

It was really delicious. I'm sure the deliciousness is not caused by healthy ingredients. My best guess is it's the sugar they use in the curing process, but there's no denying it was tastier than usual.

And to repeat the title of this post, just because it's a cliché doesn't mean it isn't true.

Another great hot sauce choice

I loves me some hot sauce! Still first among equals in the Matty Boy kitchen are the Habanero sauces from El Yucateco. I haven't tried the Caribbean version pictured at the far left, but I have bought the "natural" version with no artificial colors and the green and the red. Yummy, great texture and HOT!!!

For the uninitiated, habanero is one heck of a hot chili. When I was a lad, Tabasco was considered somewhere between a condiment and a instrument of torture. Herb Caen used to joke about the couple married so long, they bought their second bottle of Tabasco. Nowadays, Tabasco is meh, barely a step above ketchup.

If you really need hot sauce, my first choice is El Yucateco.




If you've ever been to a Vietnamese noodle shop, you've seen the Sriracha bottle. Great packaging! Just the rooster, and one phrase in English "Sriracha HOT Chili Sauce", then a whole lot of Asian characters. If you can't read the characters, it makes the sauce look more dangerous. Hot sauce should be dangerous. I never have a bowl of pho without squeezing in some lime, tearing up some of the fragant herbs they bring to the table and pouring in some of that Red Rooster juice.

There is an Asian supermarket in my neighborhood where I shop for condiments where I bought my first bottle of Sriracha. The big bottle is very reasonably priced and I started using it in recipes where I like things spicy. I tried some taste tests of El Yucateco vs. Sriracha on fries, and El Yucateco is much hotter. Sriracha is more like zesty or tangy than actually hot, but it's still very flavorful and thick. For me, this is a big advantage over a runny sauce like Tabasco. I like to know in advance when I'm getting a forkful of hot sauce goodness.

A somewhat surprising development is that for all its exotic packaging and name, Sriracha is made in California by Huy Fong Foods. If you live in my neck of the woods, you can be all exotic and inscrutable and still be a locavore! Who knew?

And of course, while there are many good choices for hot sauces in local supermarkets, are any of the others anywhere near as fun to say as "YUCATECO!" or "SRIRACHA!"?

No, hypothetical question asker. Nothing else is nearly that much fun. Thanks for asking.