We love hot sauce in the test kitchen. The hot-sauce industry has never been hotter (heh heh) than it is now, and so there is now an abundance (and probably more accurately an overabundance) of choice on your supermarket's condiment shelf. To determine the absolute best hot sauce on the market, we taste tested nine brands—straight up, over white rice, and on Buffalo chicken tenders—and in the end, our favorite was definitely Sriracha. (More specifically, we love the kind made by Huy Fung Foods in California. Buy a bottle. Like, right now.) Sriracha has been hot (pun intended) for a few years now, so you’ve probably seen it at your favorite breakfast joint or pho spot—that squeeze bottle adorned with an illustration of a rooster and filled with red sauce that looks a lot like ketchup is the stuff we’re talking about.
So, what exactly is Sriracha (and why do we love it so much)?