Sriracha Recipe – Homemade Chili Hot Sauce
We hear there’s been a shortage of a particular brand of hot sauce. But no worries, we have a homemade version for you that’s been tried and true since we first published it in 2009. This Sriracha Recipe is customizable to your taste buds, whether it be more tangy, spicy, salty and savory, this homemade sriracha hot sauce recipe is super easy to make.
Sriracha Cult
Twitter got me into some trouble. Last week, I innocently twittered a photograph of some Vietnamese condiments for a Viet Nhậu (tapas) party we were having for one of our Supper Club Dinners. In that picture, there were some yummy, traditional Vietnamese toppings of scallion oil confit, fried crispy shallots and many more goodies I prepared for the evenings feast. But I never thought a simple Twitter mention of “homemade sriracha hot sauce” would cause such a commotion, create incessant demands for the recipe, and getting all the love and attention over the other toppings. I knew Sriracha style hot sauce was popular, but a cult following? Never. So yes, that’s what I’ll call it from now on, Cult Sriracha.
What is Sriracha?
When I first made this sauce a while back in 2009, I asked myself: What makes Huy Fong’s Sriracha, aka rooster sauce, this ubiquitous Asian, cock-labeled chili sauce so popular? Well, to start the term Sriracha originated in Thailand and is named after a town that become popular after a local woman made a bright and popular hot sauce. It was an adaptation from a classic Chinese hot sauce with garlic and red jalapeno peppers. Now, it’s become a world wide popular chili condiment in a squirt bottle. There’s a gazillion different brands out there on the market. But I myself, can confess to squeezing the dickens out of this bottle of orange/reddish gold goodness. It’s like a prized commodity when it hits the palate and gives incredible sensations of heat, sweet and tang. Sriracha has the perfect balance of all flavors: delicate spice combined with sweet and garlicky tangy undertones that make it perfect in almost any dish.
Video: Homemade Sriracha Hot Sauce Recipe:
Make Homemade Sriracha to Your Personal taste
Huy Fong’s Sriracha isn’t too spicy to where it will cause beads of sweat to roll down one’s face, nor is it claiming to be “hotter than a motha” and attempt to cause a brain concussion. Neither is it trying to break records with the million scoville scale mark, nor is it trying to keep you on the toilet for the entire morning after.
Being the fresh sauce addict that I am and loving to create outside the bottle, I wanted to re-create my own Sriracha recipe in my own kitchen and customize the spice/sweet/tang layers to my own preferences. I can take a little more heat in my sriracha recipe than most and I wanted to raise the spicy bar in the sauce to accommodate not just my own taste buds, but also for my chili loving friends. Give me more spice in my hot sauce and I’ll be a very, very good girl.
YOU MUST MAKE THIS SRIRACHA RECIPE. This is not only so easy, it’s so fresh tasting from all the fresh chilies! I was able to find the right balance of the sugar, vinegar and spice, all blended together to get the smooth, hot sauce consistency. Unlike some other chili sauces with the seeds and peels still coarsely evident, I used tomato sauce as the base to help blend the sauce together and keep it more like the Sriracha consistency. It’s smooth, pretty and delicious. This homemade chili sauce sings sweet and spicy songs in your mouth, while being kind to your body with the perfect amount of heat.
And we don’t find it necessary to push the sauce through a mesh strainer after blending (you can use a blender or food processor for blending). You can strain it after cooking if you want a super smooth sauce, but personally we prefer the slightly more textured sauce that comes straight out of the blender.
Easy Sriracha Recipe
As with any recipe, you can tailor this to your own palate to create your own version of the sauce. I know some folks like their hot sauce to counterbalance the heat with a little more sugar and some like more of the vinegary tang. Go for it and customize all those balancing elements to your body’s tolerance. Personally, I’ve added a touch (just a slight “Diane spicy style” touch) to my version for that extra little kick of heat.
Last but not least, please don’t skimp out on any of the ingredients, especially the fish sauce. The fish sauce adds the savory, salty and umami depth to this recipe. Without the fish sauce, this chili hot sauce doesn’t have the exciting umami layer of flavor that I can taste in the original Sriracha. For vegetarians, you can replace the fish sauce with a soy sauce. All of the listed ingredients come together beautifully to harmonize the flavor and texture of this hot sauce and without them, I wouldn’t dare call it “Sriracha style”.
And when you are cutting all the chilies by hand with your knife, we highly recommend using latex or nitrile gloves. It is too easy to spice up your hand and then forget and accidentally touch your eyes or some other sensitive area.
Hope this rocks your spicy hot sauce world and no more worries about the Sriracha shortage.
-Diane
Sriracha Recipe – Homemade Chili Sriracha Hot Sauce
Ingredients
- 1 cup (100 g) Thai red chili peppers *Start with less (about half) if you want a more mild, gentle hot sauce
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) Vegetable Oil
- 4-5 cloves Garlic , crushed or minced
- 3-4 medium Shallots , minced (@ 1/2 cup minced)
- 15 ounces (425 g) Tomato Sauce (@ 1 3/4 cups)
- 1 Tablespoon (15 ml) Fish Sauce (don’t skimp out on this!) or use Soy Sauce, if you can, try to use the Fish Sauce.
- 3 Tablespoons (45 ml) Rice Vinegar
- 3 Tablespoons (45 ml) Sugar
Equipment
- Canning Jars optional
- Canning Funnel optional
Instructions
- Using gloves over your hands, remove stems of chili peppers, rinse clean. Blot dry with paper towel. Wearing rubber gloves, mince the chili peppers. The smaller the cut, the smoother your final sauce will be.
- In sauce pan, heat oil then add minced garlic and shallots. Over medium heat, saute for about 2-3 minutes or until light brown and fragrant (don't burn your garlic!)
- Add tomato sauce and minced chili peppers. Add fish sauce, vinegar, and sugar. Mix well. Let sauce come to a simmer then lower heat to keep at a low simmer.
- Continue simmering sauce for about 5 minutes. This will break down the skin of the chili peppers and soften them to create the smooth consistency.
- Remove from heat and allow to cool completely.
- Transfer sauce to blender and blend until smooth or until most of the chili pepper skin and seeds break down – preferably on the “liquefy” mode.
- Taste the hot sauce. Further customize the hot sauce to your liking: adding more sugar, vinegar or water if you desire. Blend one last time until smooth. Pour into clean, air tight jar and refrigerate. Use within about 4 weeks.
Video
Nutrition Information per Serving
How to Store Homemade Hot Sauce?
I like to keep all my homemade hot sauces in airtight containers like mason jars or weck jars. I eat it frequently and don’t often store it for more than 4 weeks in the fridge. It must be stored in the fridge! If you don’t eat it quick enough after about a month, I would suggest sharing it or gifting it. Making a big batch means you can give away these jars of hot sauce as gifts. Think Christmas!
More Vietnamese Recipes that are Family Inspired
Here’s my personal recipe for Vietnamese Fish Sauce Dip and click here for all our popular Vietnamese Recipes that are sometimes traditional and definitely sometimes not.
Sriracha Cookbooks and More!
Awesome and beyond, here’s some goods for the Sriracha lover!
More Easy Sriracha Recipes:
- Sriracha shrimp cocktail
- Sticky sriracha chicken wings
- Spicy sriracha roast chicken with sriracha gravy
- White bean dip that’s sriracha spicy
- Honey sriracha glazed chicken wings
- This recipe was originally published in 2009
I know this is an old post but I just came across it and I have to say…. YOWZA! I’m never buying rooster sauce again. Now I know what everyone in my life is receiving for Christmas! I too added more fish sauce, rice vinegar, and brown sugar. It really took it over the top. This is delicious!!!
Looks amazing! Do you recommend tomato paste or tomato sauce? Can’t wait to try this!!
Hi Kevin, tomato sauce is better because of the consistency. Tomato Paste might be too thick unless you water it down a bit.
Excited to try this recipe!! Should I get a can of tomato paste or tomato sauce? Does it matter? Thanks!
Thanks so much for posting this recipe. We had a large number of Thai chili peppers to use from the garden and this was the perfect fit for us. We did use just a bit more sugar and Fish Sauce than suggested based on our tastes. We blended half of it with mayo and lime juice so that we’d have a nice sriracha aioli to use with crab cakes and then we stored the other half for tomorrow night’s grilled shrimp. Doubling the recipe made enough for two full mason jars and so now we’ve got lots of eating to do!
Does canning Sriracha weaken the hotness of it . It shouldn’t I would prefer doing that when
It’s summer and the tomatoes and peppers are at there best. . In winter there is no fresh home grown produce in Canada , so canning a years supply should be easy . I can dilly beans and pickled hot peppers with all the hotness I want .
Just finished cooking a batch up. Wow. I’ve grown American and Caribbean chiles for years, but this was my first year growing Thai chiles and wanted the first picking to go into something special. This recipe was perfect. I looked at dozens of Sriracha recipes and somehow settled on this one. I was originally skeptical about the inclusion of tomato sauce, when most pepper sauces do not include tomato product. I decided to give it a shot. It isn’t exactly like the green topped rooster sauce…in fact in my estimation it is much, much better.
I usually follow a recipe to the letter the first time I make it, but I made a couple changes. I used palm sugar instead of regular sugar, a teaspoon of cane sorghum and about double the amount of garlic. I also cooked it longer than mentioned. I ran it through the strainer attachment of my KitchenAid instead of blending in the skins and seeds. I’ve found in other sauces this leads to a cleaner flavor.
Thanks for sharing the recipe!! I cannot wait to make it. However, looking at your pictures, I haven’t seen those chilies here. All i have seen are the red Fresno chills and the thai bird’s eye chillies which are about an inch long. You don’t mean those tiny ones do you? June
Hi,
I just learn about your blog today via David Lebovitz. I live in Thailand, and I have a clip of how they make Sri Raja sauce at the local town of Sri Raja, a small fishing town about an hour away from Bangkok. The vdo is in Thai but you can easily get the idea of what gets into the original hot sauce.
http://youtu.be/7lBEvKz39Kg
Btw, your version looks beautiful.
Pat
So I made this tonight and put it on a leftover larb salad I made yesterday. My bald head is sweating but it burns so good! Thanks for posting this!
I am a hot sauce maker (doing it for years with peppers, onions, tomatoes, etc., I cultivate in my garden) and very good at it. But I also fell in love with Sriracha sauce and use tons (1 ton = 5 spoons) of it at each seating. It must be the fish (I used many exotic ingredients before, but never fish) sauce that gives its character and I will surely try this recipe.
All the best!
So Im a little late to the sriracha thread but I have to gush for a second.. this recipe is pretty dang amazing! Seriously.. I was panicked when I saw that Huy Fong Foods was court ordered shut down but now I am sighing with relief. While Ive been stock piling the great rooster sauce I have to say that there’s no need any longer. I love your recipe, its ‘s smooth, spicy, tangy, umami and well, amazing! Thank you so much for sharing this! I’m going to now stand on my patio deck and yell to the world, “this is the best sriracha ever!!”
This sounds amazing! I’m going to make this as a present for my boyfriend, but wondering what you mean by tomato sauce? Do you mean blended tomatoes like passata? Or more like a ketchup? thank you!
Tomato sauce in the recipe refers to simply a pureed tomato sauce. We’ll see it sold in cans fairly frequently in the markets here in the US and it is packaged as tomato sauce, although it can easily be made at home by cooking some Roma or other paste type tomatoes until they are tender then pureeing them up. Hope you and your boyfriend love the sauce!
I”ll be making this for sure. I was wondering if you or anyone you know has canned this. I was thinking that it could be blended while its on the stove, as someone also mentioned then put into the canning jars so they could seal. I was also wondering if you’ve used habanero peppers mixed with the red chili peppers, and if so…did you use very many for with the 1c. of chilis? Could you successfully double or triple this recipie? I ask, because not everything turns out as good if you make the plan bigger.
thank you again,
Debbie
Atikokan. ontario
What kind of jars are those/where can I get them?
Those are Weck jars. A lot of good kitchen stores carry them plus you should be able to find them on amazon. Weck makes some of the cutest jars.
just made the recipe last night, but with habaneros only. i must say it is even much better than the commercial brand! thanks so much for the recipe. happy christmas and new year!
Just made it with double the chilies! Yum! Still not spicy enough for me though!
This recipe was set more to have the spiciness of the sriracha we will often find bottled, but for home we often kick it up quite a bit more. We’ll change out a portion of the chilies with ones higher on the scoval scale. We grow one called Goat’s Weed (the Vietnamese call it Devil Pepper or Evil Pepper) or we’ll throw in some chocolate habaneros. Glad you like the recipe! Go to town with other chilies in it!