What’s Sriracha?
Sriracha (pronounced See-Ra-Cha) is a yummy hot sauce that’s made using vinegar, garlic, sugar, salt and its star ingredient - red chillies that have been ripened in the sun.
Sriracha is added to soup, pasta, pizza, hotdogs, hamburgers, chowmein, spring rolls, chips and any other delicious dish you can think of to take its taste to the next level (sorry if I made you hungry).
How did Sriracha become popular?
A Chinese man named David Tran and his family ran from their home country of Vietnam in 1979, because the Vietnamese Government started treating its Chinese residents really badly. The Tran family escaped on a ship named Huy Fong to America.
Tran was a good cook. He was especially talented in making hot sauces. To survive in the USA, he adapted a popular Thai recipe of a hot sauce called Sriracha and began selling it out of the back of his car.
People loved Tran’s sauce and soon it became extremely popular. Today, Sriracha has millions of fans not just in the USA but across the world. What was once a shop in the back of a car has turned into a huge company called Huy Fong (named after the ship on which Tran escaped) that manufactures the world’s most famous hot sauce.
Why has the production of Sriracha stopped?
Mexico, the country where Huy Fong sources its star ingredient, has run out of red chillies thanks to climate change.
Mexico is going through a drought that caused its chilly crop to fail. Extreme weather conditions have also lowered the quality of Mexico’s chillies, resulting in further shortages.
No red chillies equals no Sriracha, sadly.
Is Sriracha over forever?
Fortunately, the autumn harvest of red chillies in Mexico is just a few months away. Huy Fong is confident it will end the Sriracha shortage. The hot sauce will be back on shelves from September onwards.
This is probably not the last time climate change is going to interfere with our menus. Let’s hope that we don’t have to go without our favourite foods for too long.
