How to Make Your Own Sriracha
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Photography by David Munns
Homemade Sriracha
Makes one small jar
Sriracha is an incredibly popular chili sauce, originally from a province in Thailand. It’s one of the milder chili sauces, which might be why it has gained such popularity—it’s not going to flame your face off. Thanks to the garlic content, this sauce is best suited to meals post-10 a.m., but really it goes with anything. Make sure you use the large slender chiles, like jalapeño or serrano. Using bird’s-eye chiles, for example, would make it inedibly spicy. This makes a small pot’s worth, so you may want to double or triple the recipe if you’re a real fan of the sauce.
¾ lb large red chiles
1 garlic clove, peeled
2 tablespoons dark softbrown sugar
1 tablespoon salt
2 tablespoons water
¼ cup cider vinegar
Discard the stems of the chiles and chop the flesh coarsely. Add to a blender with the garlic, sugar, salt, and water and blend to a very fine paste. Place in a clean jar with a loose-fitting lid and let stand in a dark warm place for 3 days (a kitchen cupboard is perfect) so the chiles can start fermenting with the sugar and salt. After a couple of days you’ll see bubbles starting to form.
Add the vinegar, and then pour the mixture into a small saucepan and simmer on medium heat for about 15 minutes until it thickens a little. Let cool, then blend again with a hand-held stick blender. Strain through a fine sieve into a bowl to get rid of the pulp and seeds, then spoon into a sterilized glass jar and seal. This will keep in the fridge for up to 1 month, and will thicken on cooling.
Reprinted with permission from Chinatown Kitchen by Lizzie Mabbott (Mitchell Beazley).
Now that you know how to make our own Sriracha, here are recipes to try it on:
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