Sriracha

• 1. Introduction

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  Sriracha is a Thai hot sauce built from a paste of chili peppers, distilled vinegar, pickled garlic, sugar and salt. The bottle best known in the United States carries a rooster on its front. That bottle was first filled in the early 1980s, and its original customers were American phở restaurants. So how did a sauce named for a Thai town come to wear a rooster? Who made the very first batch, and was the recipe even Thai to begin with? And why did bottles later become scarce enough to command steep prices? The answers lead from a district in Thailand to a city in China, and then to a dispute over peppers.

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• 2. A Gold Medal Year

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  In 1932, the Siamese Revolution turned Thailand into a constitutional monarchy. That same year, La-Orr Suwanprasop began making and selling her own chili sauce. She came from Sriracha but had settled in Bangkok. Her sauce won a gold medal in a competition held during the Constitution Celebration. She tried to register it as Sriracha Chili Sauce, after her hometown. The authorities refused, because that was the name of a district. She had to sell it as Gold Medals instead. That brand is still on the market, and its label design has not changed since 1932. Three years later, a second sauce from the same district went on sale, and it became the first to win international renown.

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• 3. The Panich Claim

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  Sriracha Panich began selling in 1935. Thanom Chakkapak, another native of Sriracha, created the recipe and opened a chili sauce factory in Si Racha, in Chonburi Province. Her sauce became a well-known local product. In 1984, the Thai Theparos Company bought the business and its recipe. It then pushed distribution further, both at home and abroad, and the brand is widely recognized around the world. Not everyone agrees on who deserves the title of first. In a Bon Appétit magazine interview, the US Asian-foods distributor Eastland Food Corporation said that Sriraja Panich, which it distributes, is the original sriracha sauce. Eastland told the story of a housewife named Thanom Chakkapak working in the 1930s. Yet the recipe itself may be older than either brand, and may not have started in Thailand at all.

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• 4. Cantonese Roots

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  Shunde, in China, is the home of a Cantonese garlic and chili sauce that may be the true ancestor of sriracha. Cantonese immigrants settled in Si Racha in the early 1900s. Their sauce was sold in Thailand for decades before the first bottles of Gold Medals and Sriraja Panich were produced. On this reading, the Thai sauces are adaptations rather than inventions from scratch. Once the recipe settled in Thailand, it picked up Thai names and Thai habits.

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• 5. On the Thai Table

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  Thai speakers most often call the sauce sot Siracha, written ซอสศรีราชา. They sometimes call it nam phrik Siracha, written น้ำพริกศรีราชา. The traditional Thai version tends to taste tangier than non-Thai versions, and it pours runnier. Cooks there frequently use it as a dipping sauce, especially for seafood and omelets. Elsewhere, the sauce took on a different look, and one version in particular came to stand for the whole category.

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• 6. The Rooster Bottle

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  Huy Fong Foods makes a jalapeño-based sriracha that Americans often nickname rooster sauce or cock sauce. The nicknames come from the rooster pictured on each bottle. Other American makers have since released their own takes, including a sriracha aged in whiskey barrels. In North America in particular, the sauce turns up beside phở and fried noodles. It also tops spring rolls, known as chả giò, and goes into other sauces. The picture looks different in Vietnam itself. There, sriracha is not found in many restaurants or private homes. A distinct chili sauce called tương ớt is far more common.

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• 7. Sriracha Everywhere

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  Wendy's, Applebee's, P. F. Chang's, Jack in the Box and McDonald's all stirred sriracha into their menus. So did Subway, Taco Bell, White Castle, Gordon Biersch and Chick-fil-A. Firehouse Subs, Noodles & Company, Starbucks and Burger King joined them. Often the sauce was mixed with mayonnaise or turned into a dipping sauce. Home cooks and food makers went further. People eat it in soup, on eggs and on burgers. Jams, lollipops and cocktails have all been made with it, and sriracha-flavored potato chips have been sold. In 2013, the American filmmaker Griffin Hammond released a documentary titled Sriracha about the sauce's origin and production. The sauce's popularity would soon be tested by a shortage.

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• 8. The Pepper Shortage

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  In 2022, Huy Fong Foods temporarily halted production of its sriracha because it could not get enough chili peppers. The trouble traced back to a 2016 business dispute with Underwood Ranches. Underwood Ranches claims that Huy Fong misled it into investing in an expansion. It also claims Huy Fong then broke an oral contract to buy peppers at the price originally agreed. With supply cut, the price of a bottle climbed to $30 or higher. The halt lasted for over a year. Since the dispute began, Huy Fong has not managed to secure a consistent supply of peppers at the quality it wants.

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