7 Recipes Made Better with Sriracha

We love Sriracha in the test kitchen. It’s not only our favorite hot sauce objectively, but it’s also the one we reach for in our home kitchens—it’s perfect for drizzling over slices of avocado or a heaping plate of cheesy scrambled eggs, and it’s great as an alternative to Buffalo sauce on hot wings. You can try it in the following seven recipes as well.

To produce Vietnamese beef pho broth with the flavor and complexity of the real deal without the fuss, we blanch ground beef in water to make the base for our broth. To the broth, we add fish sauce, ginger, cinnamon, sugar, star anise, cloves, salt, and peppercorns to bring complex spice notes. To serve, we add cooked rice noodles plus wafer-thin slices of easy-to-find strip steak, which cook in the hot broth. We also served the traditional garnishes: bean sprouts, basil sprigs, lime wedges, hoisin, extra fish sauce, and—you guessed it—Sriracha.

It’s traditional to serve pho with thinly sliced beef or chicken, but we were after a vegetarian version that packed just as much flavor and was just as satisfying. To produce a broth with the flavor and complexity of the real deal in a slow cooker, we knew we had to create a flavorful base. To a combination of vegetable broth and water we added dried porcini for beefy flavor, onion, garlic, soy sauce, lemon grass, star anise, and cloves to bring complex spice notes. For substance and meaty texture, we added portobellos, which can hold up to the long simmering time in the slow cooker and impart their earthy flavor. The must-have garnishes—bean sprouts for crunch, basil (preferably Thai basil, though Italian basil will work), lime wedges, Sriracha, and additional soy sauce—balanced the straightforward meatiness and mellow sweetness of the broth with heat, acidity, and freshness.

To produce great grilled flavor and glaze the chicken breasts in a relatively short period of time, we brine the meat while the grill heats to season it and keep it moist during cooking. Milk powder hastens the Maillard reaction and provides a surface for the glaze to adhere to. For a savory glaze with balanced flavor, we use Sriracha and a small amount of corn syrup, which is less sweet than other sweeteners, to provide viscosity but not a lot of sweetness.

This incredibly easy and multidimensional recipe features tender shredded pork, flavorful sauce, and a crunchy pickled slaw. We found that we could make a sauce and season our pork all at once by combining hoisin, ginger, and Sriracha in the slow cooker. Boneless country-style pork ribs were a great choice for the slow cooker; after a few hours of braising, they were moist and extra-tender.

To re-create the succulent pork found in the best restaurant stir-fries (usually achieved by low-temperature deep frying), we soaked the pork in a baking soda solution, which tenderizes and moisturizes the meat, and then coated it in a velvetizing cornstarch slurry, which helps it retain moisture as it cooks. We use Asian broad-bean chili paste in the stir-fry, but if you can't find that ingredient, Sriracha makes a fine substitute. 

A thin, crispy exterior and a spicy-sweet-salty sauce are the hallmarks of Korean fried chicken. The Korean chile paste known as gochujang gives our sauce the proper spicy, fermented notes—but if you can't find gochujang, Sriracha will do the trick. 

Simple rice bowls—individual portions of rice topped with vegetables, eggs, and spicy sauce—are popular across Asia, but the crisp crust on Korean dolsot bibimbap makes it the ultimate version. Traditionally served with gochujang, bibimbap is also excellent with Sriracha. 

Which of these recipe looks most appealing? Let us know which you'd be most likely to make at home (and why) in the comments! For more information on Sriracha: 

• What Is Sriracha? (And Why Do We Love It So Much?)