Posted on 01/19/2019 1:14:48 PM PST by Zhang Fei
Sriracha sauce. It's everywhere. Even beer and donuts. The fiery chili paste concocted by Vietnamese-American immigrant David Tran has conquered the American market and imagination in the past decade.
But the original Sriracha is actually Thai and comes from the seaside city of Si Racha, where most residents haven't even heard of the U.S. brand, which is now being exported to Thailand.
I decided to go to the source to get the dirt on the sauce, and sat down with 71-year-old Saowanit Trikityanukul. Her grandmother was making Sriracha sauce when David Tran was still a baby, in what was then South Vietnam.
"If my grandmother was still alive today, she'd be 127 years old," Saowanit says, sitting in her garden in Si Racha, (the preferred anglicized spelling of the city's name) overlooking the Gulf of Thailand. She remembers helping her grandmother in the kitchen as an impatient 9-year-old.
"My job was to mix all the ingredients together. But I wasn't very happy doing it and I didn't really pay attention. I regret that now," she says. "Because I could have learned a lot."
Her grandmother is widely credited with being the first to make and sell the sauce. But Saowanit says it was really her great-grandfather, Gimsua Timkrajang, who made it first. Family lore says he traveled a lot on business to neighboring Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos and noticed they all had different sauces sweet, salty, sour but nothing that combined all three.
"So, my great-grandfather got an idea that he wanted to make one sauce that went along with all Thai foods," she says, "very creamy and different from other sauces."
And he got it. Not that it was easy making it. Saowanit remembers one batch that took weeks, even months, to prepare.
(Excerpt) Read more at npr.org ...
Post 20 for you to practice.
Y’all realize that for us Yanks to enjoy any form of sriracha sauce is an act of ‘cultural appropriation’ to the snowflakes and sjw(s) of the LEFT.
So ... before they get their oar in this discussion, I’ll say this for their concern, FU!
What type of fish sauce do you use?
I meant to ask post #10. oops.
Well, I’m one of “those people” who thinks Long John Silver’s is his kind of fish.
:)
And when I’m able to go, which is rare these days, I go for their fish meal with their malt vinegar and their hot sauce.
Oh, I love it. I bought a couple of bottles of their hot sauce years ago.
I like simple hot sauce as in... peppers, vinegar, salt. Read the label.
“I like simple hot sauce as in... peppers, vinegar, salt. Read the label.”
Garlic does not belong in hot sauce.
Tabasco, Red Devil and La Victoria Salsa Brava are the gold standards.
Sounds worth trying.
I have several books from ATK/Cook’s Illustrated and they’re all great. Just wanted to add a plug. One of the best cookbooks I’ve seen is ATK’s “Cooking School.” Highly recommended.
Thai food.
The spices make snot run down your face.
And you happily shovel in the next bite.
What type of fish sauce do you use?
[This hot sauce is made about 18 miles from my house in Irwindale CA. The city tried to shut them down in 2013 for nuisance smell. It got real ugly for a time, fortunately the city backed off and we have our Sriracha!]
I put garlic in everything, yes everything. Not just garlic, but RAW Garlic. I ate a half a clove of garlic this morning and chased it with a swig of coffee.
I’m straight as an arrow but there is nothing like what I call “hot cock sauce”.
That’s a keeper - thanks for posting.
I make my own Tabasco sauce also. Nowadays in the Springtime you can find Tabasco pepper plants in many garden centers. Once you get them going they produce peppers like crazy. If you live in a growing zone that freezes in winter you can grow them in a pot, bring them in for the winter and put them back outside when it warms up. They are perennials and will give you peppers for as long as you take care of them.
And me
I was there in the 80s
Kachin province...sapphires and rubies....and war
Not like Sierra Leone for diamonds but still rough
More geopolitics at stake in Burma
I was young dumb and full of c*m
I agree.....garlic makes it a hot garlic tomato sauce
Not hot sauce
High five
My wife lives for her Tabasco
I like Tabasco for gumbo and other creole food
But my go to vinegar style hot sauces are:
Crystal or Red Dot or Texas Petes or Cholula for every day
Pickapeppa hot red sauce ....if you can find it....scotch bonnets
Matouks calypso sauce
Marie Sharp from Belize is ok too
Siracha is for Thai or pho
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