You have to educate them about the basics of the taste first
January 17, 2019 5:12 AM   Subscribe

Saowanit says a proper Sriracha sauce needs to be what Thais call klom klom — the hotness, the sour, the sweet and the garlic all blending together seamlessly, none overpowering the other. The American version, she says, just brings heat.
Saowanit Trikityanukul grew up making Sriracha. She's not impressed with your devotion to the Rooster sauce.
posted by Vesihiisi (67 comments total) 17 users marked this as a favorite
 
I have no Southeast Asian cultural background, but this has been my perception. Rooster sauce is fine – but the house-made stuff I get at the better Thai and Vietnamese restaurants is a fundamentally different animal.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 5:44 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


As a southeast asian, when I finally had rooster sauce, I was like... Ok.... But! OTOH at least I got some kind of hot sauce. I really don't see why it got so hipster famous tho... Related to that, I genuinely don't understand this very specific subset of western masculinity that postures around the Scofield index like dorks.
posted by cendawanita at 5:52 AM on January 17, 2019 [11 favorites]


I think mainly people just like saying "cock sauce."
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:56 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


I do enjoy making straight guys ask me to pass them the hot cock sauce, yes.

With the article, I was really hoping there would be a recipe. There's so much buildup about how to make sriracha properly and then... they don't tell us.
posted by bile and syntax at 6:04 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


Mostly I taste garlic in rooster sauce. There's just something about it, I can always identify it when it's in a dish, even mixed into other things. Having the one mass produced sauce in everything makes things taste very same-y.

I'm lucky to live in Austin where there are tons of small hot sauce companies peddling their wares and supplying local businesses. So far those have mostly been ones that pair well with TexMex though and rooster sauce still reigns supreme at other local businesses.

This is my current favorite hot sauce.

It's probably for the best that there's no recipe in the article because I would want to make it and my partner has made a firm rule against me attempting to make any chili-based sauce again, after what happened to our kitchen the last time.
posted by tofu_crouton at 6:16 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


Not sure what this says about me but I find that the more authentic Srirachas, like sriraja panich, which I keep a bottle of in the pantry, are just way way too sweet. All I taste is sugary garlic. It's strange to think the Americanized version is less sweet than the "real" thing although I bet the huy Fong guy would defend the realness of his sauce against (checks notes....) A direct market competitor
posted by dis_integration at 6:17 AM on January 17, 2019 [14 favorites]


I would like to purchase imported sriracha sauce, actually. I don't really want to make it. A good pre-made sauce is god's gift to dinner. (Obviously if you have dietary restrictions, being able to make your own is important, too.)

I remember the very first time I had US sriracha - I was having lunch at the house of someone I was dating (who was a pretty good cook from a technique standpoint, so none of this had to do with overcooking or poor preparation). They made a big stir fry and put lots of sriracha on it and it was so hot I could hardly eat it, never mind taste the ingredients. At the time I was young and felt my provincialness keenly, so I assumed that there was something wrong with me.

I have a bottle at the house somewhere and I have some sriracha mayo at home - IMO there's nothing really wrong with them if you want a hot, sour note in something. It's more of a "and a little bit of sriracha as a background flavor" ingredient than anything else, though. It's not a bad or useless sauce, just not something that I'd use straight up.

I think it's so popular in the US because of masculinity narratives around very hot-spicy food and because of orientalism. Definitely in the nineties the narrative around sriracha was "you're some kind of rube and/or weakling if you don't like very hot-spicy food" and then there was that whole nineties sort of "this is vaguely from Asia, maybe it has a dragon on it" rather awful style thing.

Spicy food in general seems to be used horribly as a stand in for culture, and it's usually deployed in really screwed up and ignorant ways both on the left and on the right. (On the right, obviously, a lot of either hatred of "foreign"/un-American spicy food or nonsense macho posturing; on the left, a lot of "people from virtuous cultures eat spicy food" weird reductionist stuff that inevitably ends up with someone insulting the non-spicy traditional foods of parts of the global south or else people getting obsessed with using hot sauce when they personally don't especially like it.)
posted by Frowner at 6:25 AM on January 17, 2019 [15 favorites]


And I mean, I like hot-spicy food!
posted by Frowner at 6:26 AM on January 17, 2019


authentic Srirachas, like sriraja panich, which I keep a bottle of in the pantry, are just way way too sweet. All I taste is sugary garlic.

J. Kenji seems to agree with you.

It might not be "authentic" but I actually like MIKEE brand best. It enhances food without making everything taste like just sriracha.
posted by HumanComplex at 6:33 AM on January 17, 2019


Spicy food in general seems to be used horribly as a stand in for culture

Also bitterness. (I'm a supertaster so I can't tolerate beer, coffee, really dark chocolate--basically everything that is a marker for hipness and refinement.)
posted by soren_lorensen at 6:39 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


I wish so much of food culture didn't start with "that thing you like? It's garbage!"

If I owned six varieties of every seasoning I keep in the house I wouldn't be able to move around in the kitchen.
posted by selfnoise at 6:41 AM on January 17, 2019 [19 favorites]


Next thing you're going to tell me is that when immigrants came over from $place that they didn't make authentic $placeFood, but made a variant influenced by $otherCulturesCuisines and their own personal preferences.
posted by tclark at 6:42 AM on January 17, 2019 [22 favorites]


It's neat to see the reactions of Thai sauce makers and diners to something that's evolved through at least two hops of immigration. That being said, it's a little much to try to play up their negative reactions, like saying a Neapolitan pizza maker doesn't like Chicago pizza all that much. Ok, sure. It's neat to see what is valued in each context.

And yes, the weird trendiness of rooster sauce (not the sauce itself) grates at me sometimes, since it seems rooted in a kind of competitive performance of some sort of Urban-Outfitters-flavored worldliness (exotic!) and machismo (moar because moar heat = so touch!), but I have a hard time begrudging the company its success.

I will note the many times I got a burrito off an unnamed Mexican food cart in pre-hipster Oakland where the default hot sauce was sriracha.
posted by pykrete jungle at 6:45 AM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


And often if that's my only choice I'll add a little dollop of plum sauce to an especially good bite of something (usually involving a wonton).

That is a great idea! Except now I want wontons and while it may be wonton o'clock somewhere it's not wonton o'clock at the office.
posted by Frowner at 6:47 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


I definitely will only have one kind of ketchup in the house at any given time. But usually a couple of different mustards. And the range and uses of hot sauces is so wide, I have clear subcategories that I worry about when I run low on one. Not that I won't sub one for another in a pinch, but the Louisiana (vinegar-based plain cayenne) is distinct from the Mexican (which is also cayenne-based, but has cumin and onion in it). Both are different from the sriracha, which is different from the sweet chili, and salsa occupies a separate category altogether.
posted by pykrete jungle at 6:52 AM on January 17, 2019 [7 favorites]


I wish so much of food culture didn't start with "that thing you like? It's garbage!"

I don't really see that in this article, or in general.

If you're happy with what you already have, that's perfectly legitimate. But some folks – myself and food writers included – are into food. Not just as a source of calories, or even gustatory pleasure – but as a window into culture. It's interesting to learn how cuisine evolves, and gets adapted to different cultural contexts, and ties into notions of identity, tradition, etc.

Much like studying language, looking for the fault lines in the global culinary melting pot illuminates history, religion, colonialism and multiculturalism, language and ethnicity, class and economic systems, agriculture, and a hundred other things. The Americanization of sriracha is interesting to food nerds for many of the same reasons that creoles and pidgins are interesting to language nerds.

"Some Thai people think that rooster sauce is different than the sriracha sauce that they're familiar with" doesn't equal "Americans who eat rooster sauce are bad".
posted by escape from the potato planet at 7:00 AM on January 17, 2019 [7 favorites]


If you come from a culinary "tradition" like my family's - where food that involves colors and flavors is... historically something a novelty, let's put it that way - it's worth thinking of standard sriracha as a gateway drug rather than an end in and of itself. If you're going from "no spicy food whatsoever" to sriracha, it is one step on a long, rewarding path, but only one step.
posted by mhoye at 7:00 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


I think it's so popular in the US because of masculinity narratives around very hot-spicy food and because of orientalism.

I've also seen the exact opposite narrative WRT American food, and people who really brag up their Scoville units and get into crazy shit like this are more into the culty end of things. I've just ordered some of the product that's mentioned in the article and am eager to see what it's like.
posted by Halloween Jack at 7:06 AM on January 17, 2019


I swear we /just/ went through this with Andrew Zimmern shitting on Asian restaurants founded by Asians. This sense of "authenticity" is overwhelmingly an ahistoric pissing content between tedious white people with roots in the post-WWII boom and is ruining everything.

Huy Fong sriracha is authentic Huy Fong-style sriracha, and there is a wondrous range of other styles of chilli oils and sauces. If you are going to pull this, you should start referring to ketchup as inauthentic kecap, or we can just accept that there are Asians everywhere and they are allowed to alter/adapt their own foods.
posted by seraphine at 7:11 AM on January 17, 2019 [15 favorites]


Huy Fong also manufactures Sambal Oelek Chili Paste. I much prefer Sambal Oelelk to the standard Sriracha sauce. I like both the taste and the texture of the paste and find it to be more versatile. A thin layer of the paste with some mayonnaise is quite nice on sandwiches!
posted by Agave at 7:15 AM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


Any time-tested recipes for a homemade fermented sriracha anyone would care to recommend?
posted by slkinsey at 7:17 AM on January 17, 2019


Next thing you're going to tell me is that when immigrants came over from $place that they didn't make authentic $placeFood, but made a variant influenced by $otherCulturesCuisines and their own personal preferences.

Well put. And further, "authentic" cuisine often varies wildly from cook to cook in $place. At the very most, $placeFood reflects the taste palette of $place.

Cooks the world over love to tinker, and crossing international borders doesn’t invalidate that.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 7:32 AM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


Ok but which brand of fish sauce is the authentic one.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:35 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


btw btw btw btw -- sambal (either oelek or the malaysian/singaporean kinds) with cheddar cheese is da bomb.
posted by cendawanita at 7:40 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


I have a horrible sense of smell that interferes with how things taste. So many Sriracha sauces end up tasting like spicy ketchup. :(

Still tasty though.
posted by 80 Cats in a Dog Suit at 7:42 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


I wish so much of food culture didn't start with "that thing you like? It's garbage!"

And funny how a food's quality seems to scale linearly with its inaccessibility. The only "good" food (whatever that means) tends to be gated behind prohibitive pricing, limited access (hidden/class selected), or geographic remoteness. Surprise surprise, most food snobbery is just blatant class signalling or cultivating a sad sort of self-worth.

Huy Fong stuff is fine. Whatever you like is fine. If you like it, it's worth more than anything served across the globe or in some trendy chef's limited time popup restaurant. Authenticity means nothing, especially when it comes to food.
posted by FakeFreyja at 7:46 AM on January 17, 2019 [12 favorites]


Any time-tested recipes for a homemade fermented sriracha anyone would care to recommend?
posted by slkinsey at 7:17 AM on January 17 [+] [!]

Its Alive on youtube has an interesting recipe for fermented hot sauce.
posted by FleetMind at 7:54 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


The thing I don’t like about Huy Fong Sriracha is that it invariably explodes in my face and pours down the sides of the bottle and my hand like a science fair model volcano because of pressure built up as it continues to ferment. Guess I don’t use it fast enough.
posted by rodlymight at 7:55 AM on January 17, 2019


Which one is authentic? Is authenticity even a thing?

I've long argued that the invention of the concept of authenticity instantly renders it an unachievable characteristic.

I don't know about the class signaling, though. Sriracha is cheap. I too grew up in a home where colors and flavors were largely foreign concepts. While some of the "foreign" (as my parents would have seen them) foods I sometimes eat now as treats tend towards the higher end (fancy cheeses, sushi), the foods I've mostly ended up incorporating into my day-to-day cooking aren't expensive at all. I shop at H-Mart, Kalyustan's, and let's not forget the shout-out to Bangkok Center Grocery. You wouldn't mistake any of these places for high end, and they are all readily accessible by public transit.
posted by praemunire at 8:42 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


Rooster sauce is good, but Spicy Chili Crisp is my jam.

Can anyone recommend a brand of sriracha that is more authentic a better representation of what one might find in Thailand?
posted by slogger at 8:59 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


It should be noted that the "local tastes" that rooster sauce was developed for are those of the large Chicano and immigrant populations in the SGV. I have no idea how it went from something you put on mini-mall pho to everywhere, that was a surprise.
posted by betweenthebars at 9:12 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


I feel like authenticity is a measurable characteristic. It exists in opposition to colonialism.

That's a strange way to define authenticity when it comes to food. Can French, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, or Russian cuisine be "authentic" even if it comes from some of the biggest colonizers?
posted by FakeFreyja at 9:16 AM on January 17, 2019 [5 favorites]


I feel like authenticity is a measurable characteristic. It exists in opposition to colonialism. Because the dynamic is that economically powerful countries occupy, colonize, coopt, and exploit less powerful ones. And then the powerful countries move in a bunch of people who expect limited authenticity tastefully fused with their native cuisine. And that watered down stuff invariably squeezes out local, familial, "authentic" food ways.

I think this is flawed in that colonized countries often have an equal interest in the "authentic" cuisine of occupiers. You could argue that is a status thing, but I think a more direct conclusion from the fact that everybody likes the idea of "authentic" cuisine is that everybody likes the idea of "authentic" cuisine.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 9:29 AM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


It's medium-hot, has a bright but not too vinegary flavor, and works well on lots of things. It's an improvement on Tabasco, which was the best hot sauce most American restaurants offered prior to sriracha appearing on the scene. With Tabasco, by the time your meal is meaningfully hot you've just dumped a tablespoon of vinegar on it.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:03 AM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


In summation, America is bad at spicy food and the more Southeast Asian stuff we can get over here the happier I'll be.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 10:04 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


That's a strange way to define authenticity when it comes to food. Can French, Japanese, Portuguese, Italian, or Russian cuisine be "authentic" even if it comes from some of the biggest colonizers?

I had this discussion with a friend who lives in Hong Kong, and from my understanding the "authenticity" (jeez this is a common thread lately here) that the elite foodies hold to the highest regard comes when a group of people have created unique and delicious dishes and flavor palettes from minimal and/or a surprising combination of ingredients out of invention due to, well, being broke and/or lacking access to a range of ingredients. That's why you see dishes like Burgoo, an Appalachian stew commonly made of random ingredients (including animals most people have historically mocked as something that only poor hillbillies eat, like squirrel or opossum), is now a foodie gem and is showing up on menus in upscale restaurants. So yeah, it could definitely be attributed to food from the countries you noted, but it tends to also be linked to colonialism because countries that have been colonized have been, on the majority, "poorer".
posted by Young Kullervo at 10:17 AM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


(In summary, authenticity with food seems to be "Yeah, I'll totally eat this food you turned your nose up to because I, like the people who created it, understand its true deliciousness").
posted by Young Kullervo at 10:19 AM on January 17, 2019


The problem with the search for “authenticity” in food is that it implies the culture of origin exists in a state of unchanging purity, and all diasporic culture can do is degrade away from that perfection. Sriracha sauce itself proves that this isn’t the case, because we can trace it back a few generations to its inventor!

The family of Gimsua Timkrajang has the more authentic sriracha sauce in the sense that their versions are closer to the inventor’s. But that doesn’t make them more authentic as in, closer to some ineffable sense of “true Asian-ness.” Which is largely what non-Asian people care about when they talk about their desire for authentic Asian food.
posted by bettafish at 10:20 AM on January 17, 2019 [14 favorites]


Huh, to me rooster sauce is too sweet! I want more garlic and salt. I'm OK with the amount of heat, but half the sweetness would be welcome. But that's my American palette warped by the fact that I eat almost no sugar, so when I do it tastes intensely sweet to me. Mostly I use Sambal Oelek or straight up Chili-Garlic sauce when I want Asianish heat in something.

Any conversation about "authenticity" when discussing New World chiles in Asian foods is starting off from a problematic point. The very existence of capsacum in hot sauce depends on the colonialism of Europe, not to mention the aggressive mercantilism of Europe, Arab traders, and spice traders of the East as well.
posted by Nelson at 10:21 AM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


The problem with the search for “authenticity” in food is that it implies the culture of origin exists in a state of unchanging purity, and all diasporic culture can do is degrade away from that perfection. Sriracha sauce itself proves that this isn’t the case, because we can trace it back a few generations to its inventor!

What is the term for when people consider indigenous, non-Western cultures as inherently pure and good? I was discussing how everyone was just so eager to promote the Hu in the name of cultural diversity, with the mentality that being Asian = inherently good, in metal that they completely ignored the signals that they might be Mongolian fascists and I couldn't think of it.
posted by Young Kullervo at 10:24 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


It's medium-hot, has a bright but not too vinegary flavor, and works well on lots of things. It's an improvement on Tabasco, which was the best hot sauce most American restaurants offered prior to sriracha appearing on the scene.


You started off good. There's nothing wrong with Tabasco. It may not be the right sauce for every dish, but like the rooster sauce it works with a lot of things.

I have found the hipness of the rooster surprising, but not really the appeal. It's not too hot, it's very sweet, it goes with a lot of foods that Mexican style sauces don't, with the texture it's kind of a spicy ketchup and Americans love ketchup.

I haven't eaten it much in a while, but I always thought it had a lot of fishy taste to it. That and the sweetness put me off after while. Now I look it up and see no mention of fish in the ingredients.

This sense of "authenticity" is overwhelmingly an ahistoric pissing content between tedious white people

Yes.
posted by bongo_x at 10:36 AM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


The best sriracha sauce I had was homemade. But since my wife is the real cook, I can't give you the recipe. All I know is we started off with a garden bush of hot purple Hungarian peppers (and garlic, of course) and that there were several days of bubbling fermentation before it was decanted into an empty Rooster bottle and quickly dispatched on everything we ate.
posted by kozad at 10:44 AM on January 17, 2019


I grew up a while back in the Midwest. Garlic was considered exotic. Rooster sauce, wasabi mayo, tamari sauce, etc. are all available widely and are fine additions to my pantry. You damn kids don't know how good you have it. /geezer mode
posted by theora55 at 10:45 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


I think it's so popular in the US because of masculinity narratives around very hot-spicy food and because of orientalism.

I don't think the real hot sauce dick-measurers give the rooster stuff the time of day, as a hot sauce. But having one condiment that packs a few strong, simple flavors is also kind of a staple of bro-cooking. It's like ketchup got a couple more dimensions.
posted by atoxyl at 10:48 AM on January 17, 2019 [6 favorites]


I don't think the real hot sauce dick-measurers give the rooster stuff the time of day

Now they don't, sure, but I'm an Old who had my first sriracha in 1994, and I vividly remember a lot of posturing about it.
posted by Frowner at 10:55 AM on January 17, 2019 [2 favorites]


Huy Fong also manufactures Sambal Oelek Chili Paste. I much prefer Sambal Oelelk to the standard Sriracha sauce.

Same. For me the issue with their Sriracha is that I taste a really unpleasantly strong artificial chemical taste.
posted by srboisvert at 10:56 AM on January 17, 2019


When I was 19, I visited Italy with my family and when I came back, I wouldn’t eat at American Italian restaurants because they weren’t authentic. Probably stuck to that for 5 years. Now, my oldest son loves to go to Olive Garden because of the unlimited breadsticks.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I also used to look down on Vietnamese or Thai restaurants that would also serve Japanese or Chinese dishes. About 4 years ago, I visited Malaysia and experienced how they really didn’t make those sorts of regional distinctions at most restaurants and it was all really very good. I even had “Italian” pasta at a restaurant that didn’t resemble anything I’d ever had in Italy or the US. It was good, though.

So I guess I’m saying I learned to just get over myself and enjoy food for being good and authenticity is only a small portion of the overall equation.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 11:01 AM on January 17, 2019 [9 favorites]


I use it in soups and stews and such, so I never *just* add rooster sauce. I can add additional sour or sweet or bitter notes with other ingredients.
posted by acrasis at 11:01 AM on January 17, 2019


I feel like authenticity is a measurable characteristic. It exists in opposition to colonialism.

Naturally, the only people allowed to determine authenticity are well off white people. Any authenticity determination that doesn't appear in some high-toned magazine, report or foodie blog lacks authenticity.

Authenticity really is a good way for people from colonizing countries to smack down people from various ethnicities who are making good for themselves. Again, Sriracha.
posted by happyroach at 11:01 AM on January 17, 2019 [3 favorites]


Cuisine is so gregarious by nature, that much of the language of appropriation is a bit of a stretch. This isn't a bunch of white kids wearing Native American headdresses at Burning Man or hanging dream catchers under their rear-view mirrors.

I'll stake my claim in the ground that when it comes to cuisine, there's practically no such thing as authenticity.

The only authenticity that exists is perhaps only at the family-and-friends scale. Grandma's turkey soup. Dad's special bacon scrambled eggs. Mom's spaghetti. Gus's melted cheese and ham on toast.
posted by tclark at 11:46 AM on January 17, 2019 [8 favorites]


Here is a lovely article from Diane Tran's blog on Sriracha origins and differences. link. From the same blog taste off. And recipes with testing here

My quick observation was that the most common table side chili sauce (tuong ot) in Vietnam had, to my palate, a strange taste with aspartame and low chili percentage. The rooster was considered too expensive and I only found it in a very upscale, for Viet Nam, grocery store and a German food store in Huê.

Authenticity is so relative. Food transforms and is transformative; more masticating less litigating.
posted by jadepearl at 12:21 PM on January 17, 2019 [4 favorites]


Authenticity aside, my Malaysian sister-in-law swears up and down that Ngiu Chap is vastly superior to Pho.
posted by Big Al 8000 at 2:45 PM on January 17, 2019


Most Malaysians would tend to have that opinion only because if asked honestly they find the Vietnamese flavour profile different enough that it's worth opinionating about*. But we're full of posturing too, lol.

*Hard to explain, comparatively it feels like Vietnamese pho has more sour notes and less non-chilli spice so it can feel ... Incomplete (at least that's what I thought when I first had it)
posted by cendawanita at 3:11 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


Metafilter: more masticating less litigating.
posted by sammyo at 4:49 PM on January 17, 2019


Ngiu Chap and Pho are both delicious and exotic-tasting to my midwestern US palate. I get what you’re saying about the flavor differences, though — pho tends to strike me as almost floral and the Ngiu Chap that I’ve had was beefier and hotter.

The winner for me, though, was laksa although as I understand it, the laksa you get on Borneo is very diffferent than laksa from mainland Malaysia.

I have no idea as to which one is more authentic. ;-)
posted by Big Al 8000 at 7:02 PM on January 17, 2019


Now they don't, sure, but I'm an Old who had my first sriracha in 1994, and I vividly remember a lot of posturing about it.

I assumed you were talking about the current sriracha fad because I didn't know it had any mindshare among white Americans before then except those physically present at Vietnamese restaurants. I suppose there was a time when being a hot sauce snob meant you knew about, say, Tapatío.
posted by atoxyl at 8:13 PM on January 17, 2019


The winner for me, though, was laksa although as I understand it, the laksa you get on Borneo is very diffferent than laksa from mainland Malaysia.


oh for sure different... every state (inc singapore) has its own version (not just in terms of broth but also noodles)... even within ethnic groups too have different versions

as for a local hot sauce that's available overseas, try and find some Lingham's
posted by cendawanita at 9:00 PM on January 17, 2019 [1 favorite]


Oh my god, don’t even get me started on ginger — I love it so much, I eat huge chunks of it every day.

Anyway, I’ve always thought of rooster sauce as LA’s own thing, the success story of an immigrant who settled there and made this hugely successful company named after the boat that he came on. I get that people aren’t all going to be satisfied with how good it is, but authenticity doesn’t even enter into it for me — it’s decent enough, and I always felt like it, in its cultural syncretism, sort of captured what makes LA awesome.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:29 AM on January 18, 2019 [7 favorites]


I mean, think about it, what’s more LA than a Vietnamese immigrant making hot sauce that grows wildly popular among the diverse and discriminating palates of Angelenos? People who grew up with all kinds of chiles and salsas and stews and things. Calling this stuff inauthentic only means, to me, that you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. This stuff is as authentically LA as anything I can think of, and even though I don’t really prefer it (and even though I don’t live in LA anymore), I still feel a weird sense of civic pride in it.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:35 AM on January 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


I've been keeping quiet about gochujang because I'm hoping the same thing never happens to it.
posted by tobascodagama at 7:38 AM on January 18, 2019 [3 favorites]


Too late, gochujang is now where sriracha was in 2001 - the edge of mainstream with its advocates pushing it further into the Indiana palate every day. You can find it in just about every grocery store in the U.S., not sure about elsewhere.

I just wish someone made a widely available version that wasn't super sweet and packed to the lid with HFCS.
posted by FakeFreyja at 8:21 AM on January 18, 2019 [1 favorite]


Ooh ooh ooh ooh ooh

*clears throat*

Metafilter: an ahistoric pissing content between tedious white people
posted by ominous_paws at 9:46 AM on January 18, 2019 [8 favorites]


(I've sworn off hot sauce arguments since two people I'd previously respected went hard in the paint for cholula over Frank's, can you BELEIVE - but I will put in one vote for tabasco in the right place, ie when you want a buttload of vinegar zip on top of the heat ie for me, always)
posted by ominous_paws at 9:46 AM on January 18, 2019


Tabasco is a fine hot sauce. (Although I slightly prefer Crystal or Frank's, if I'm having a vinegar-based sauce.)

But, too many restaurants turn to Tabasco as the "default" hot sauce, without considering whether it's the right match for their food.

IMO, it usually isn't. Vinegar-based sauces are good on Southern / soul food, certain styles of chili, and...not much else.
posted by escape from the potato planet at 10:01 AM on January 18, 2019 [2 favorites]


AND ANYTHING WITH MELTED CHEESE
posted by ominous_paws at 10:02 AM on January 18, 2019


Except sriracha is also good with cheese. But maybe less universally. Man, this is why I recused myself from such discussions in the first place.
posted by ominous_paws at 10:16 AM on January 18, 2019


Huy Fong's sauce and its origins in LA I think explains to a degree its ubiquity - it fits into the North American palate. Its sweet & savoury and relatively mild - like a spicier tomatoless ketchup. So any kind of Bro-ness with it is frankly weird - I do have a friend who gets into that with other hot sauces and I always send him this sketch from Goodness Gracious Me when he starts bragging about Scovilles he's consumed.

Personally, I tend to think of Rooster sauce as a gateway hot sauce for people. As an example, my in-laws have some in their kitchen and they are old people who when I first met them had 2 culinary "spices" in their repertoire - salt and occasionally black pepper. My young son too has really responded to it but tends to treat it like ketchup. Like others above I think of it as just ok - fine for certain things or bland situations. My personal preference, largely because I had it long before I ever had Rooster sauce or its Thai antecedent is Maggi Masala Chilli Sauce.

As for what chili sauce might explode next? My money is on chili crisp rather than gochujang as people can't stop talking about it.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:39 AM on January 18, 2019


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