Leftists Lied About Sriracha Shortage

October 6th, 2023

Telling the Truth Gives Them Chest Pains

I can’t find my favorite chili garlic sauce. Like we need another shortage. And the people who claim global warming is the problem are apparently lying.

It’s very disheartening to see people blame everything on man-caused global warming, which probably doesn’t exist. Drought? Global warming. Floods? Global warming. Heat? Cold? No change? All caused by global warming.

There are people out there claiming sexual perverts are disporportionately harmed by global warming. Explain that.

The shortage began with Huy Fong sriracha sauce, which is a below-par sauce made in California. It’s the one with the chicken on the bottle. At some point, hipsters decided they had to put sriracha on everything, including things that taste bad with sriracha on them, and, being the mindless herd creatures they are, they decided Huy Fong was the only brand worth buying. This seems to have established a large consumer base.

A year or two back, Huy Fong’s production dropped. Hipsters lost it. They scrambled to corner the sriracha market. For a while, Huy Fong’s unimpressive sriracha commanded astounding prices. Now you can buy it on Amazon for the low, low price of $14 per bottle, which is still grotesquely inflated.

I didn’t care. I like sriracha on a few things, but Huy Fong’s product isn’t that great. It leans toward ketchup. I have an ancient, nearly-full bottle in my fridge.

You want good sriracha? Try Shark brand. It’s amazing. You can get it at a site called Import Foods. I have two bottles. The medium and the hot are virtually identical, so buy the cheaper one.

Shark is a real Thai product, made in Thailand. By Thais. The California guy who runs Huy Fong is Vietnamese. “Huy Fong” sounds Chinese to me, but let’s not go there.

The eco-nuts want us to think a drought in Mexico caused the Huy Fong shortage, but even the MSM says otherwise. It turns out Huy Fong committed fraud and nearly destroyed Underwood Farms, the CALIFORNIA (not Mexico) operation that supplied most of the peppers. Underwood Farms sued and won $14 million, and the verdict has been affirmed on appeal. The original verdict came down in 2019, so the problems existed before that.

Underwood Farms now sells its own line of sauces, and Huy Fong is hopping mad but can’t do anything about it.

I would have called the Underwood Farms brand “Su Yu,” but no one asked.

I don’t eat Huy Fong sriracha, so why do I care? Because now they aren’t shipping their chili garlic sauce, a different product which is excellent. It suddenly disappeared from stores. My guess is that they redirected a lot of peppers to the sriracha operation, because sriracha is now liquid gold.

I used to dump chili garlic sauce on my hummus when I ate breakfast. I did that until two days ago. Then I went to the store and saw no Huy Fong products at all. I Googled and saw Reddit posts in which people asked what else they could use. It looks like chili garlic sauce vanished quite a while ago in most places, but I didn’t know because I bought it in big bottles which take a long time to empty.

Now, breakfast is a sad and gloomy affair, during which I pretend Frank’s Red Hot is an adequate substitute for chili garlic sauce.

I managed to locate the sauce on the web at a reasonable price, in a very strange place. I haven’t bought it yet because I am looking at alternatives.

I read that you can make your own sauce from red jalapenos or Serranos, sugar, garlic, salt, and vinegar. These peppers are not hard to find because, hello, there is no pepper shortage. Peppers are everywhere, as are sauces that have no connection to Huy Fong.

I may make my own sauce before springing for the real thing. The site I found advertises two jars for an okay price, but it doesn’t say how big the jars are. That makes me want to wait.

I also learned that there are other Asian pepper sauces I should be looking at, so I may order a few. One is called sambal, and there are different kinds of it. At least one type is flavored with shrimp paste, which sounds pretty good. I found three varieties of sambal, and I may order all of them. Import Foods recommends sambal oelek to replace chili garlic sauce.

Asians make the best pepper sauces. Mexicans aren’t even in the running. I’ve tried all sorts of Mexican sauces. Some are pretty good, but nothing compares to Huy Fong chili garlic sauce or Shark sriracha. Yesterday, I bought a goopy sauce made by Thai Kitchen, and it’s fantastic. It’s not good with hummus, because it’s sweet, but it’s a wonderful discovery. It’s used on egg rolls. I may as well start looking around to see what else I’m missing.

Americans make a lot of bad hot sauces. I think Tabasco may be the most overrated sauce, after Huy Fong sriracha. It’s harsh and flavorless. Frank’s and Crystal are better, and you can get a quart of Crystal for 4 dollars.

It’s kind of strange that Mexicans make mediocre hot sauces compared to nearly everyone in the Far East. After all, the New World has had peppers forever, but the rest of the world didn’t get a chance until around 1500.

So in a nutshell, leftists lie again, Shark is better than Huy Fong, and it may be a couple of weeks before I can make breakfast great again.

8 Responses to “Leftists Lied About Sriracha Shortage”

  1. Juan Paxety Says:

    OK. You did it. I ordered some of each. I wish I could get Datils to grow here.

  2. Steve H. Says:

    I don’t know if datils are worth the effort. I have a productive plant, and they’re not really that exciting. Also small. I think big, juicy habaneros would have been better, but my habanero plant is just starting to produce.

  3. Juan Paxety Says:

    When I lived in Jacksonville Beach,I grew them in pots. They grew lots of fruit, hot as any habanero, and one was plenty to give unique flavor to a whole pot of pilau. Maybe I need to plan a trip to St. Augustine this spring for some good seedlings.

  4. JPatterson Says:

    Oh my friend, whose writings i have consumed without payment, but whom I’ve never actually met, let me take this opportunity to introduce you to my little friend:
    Trader Joe’s Chili onion Crunch,1 Pack ( 6 ounce) https://a.co/d/6K51MyB

    You’re welcome.

  5. Brk Says:

    Hot Hungarian wax are worth a try. They aren’t incredibly hot, but the plants have been bulletproof every time I’ve grown them. Hugely productive and nothing eats them. Nice and fleshy with fairly thin skin. Two plants and you’ll be more than set in a good year.

  6. Steve H. Says:

    Juan, I like the datils, but they’re very small. If I thought I was getting impressive flavors from them, I would be more enthusiastic and more willing to take the time to deal with tiny peppers. I’ve only tried them in chili, though, so maybe I’ve covered up the taste.

    I really like the huge red habaneros I occasionally get in stores. I’m hoping the plant I have is going to produce that kind of habanero.

    Years ago, I bought a mislabeled pepper bush grown by Bonnie Plants. It was supposed to be a bell pepper, but I got long, hot, skinny peppers instead. They were excellent. Very sweet, and they tasted a lot like cherries. I think they may have been cayennes. I wish I could find them again. Maybe if I look for Bonnie cayennes.

    JPatterson, thanks for the link. I may get that stuff.

    Thanks for the tip about the wax peppers, Brk. I will look into them.

  7. lauraw Says:

    Man, I can’t believe the way Huy Fong destroyed their business. Try to save a few bucks by destroying your supply chain. Way to go!

    I grew Hungarian Wax this year that were incredibly productive but all tastelessly mild, except for the very first fruit (which was PERFECT), which matured when the days were still pretty dry. The remainder of this Summer in the Northeast we have had more rain than I ever remember and it has been cooler, too. The soil here is clay loam, and it has been saturated by constant deluges. My understanding is that this will tame heat in peppers, unfortunately. I had so wanted to ferment them up into some sauce for consuming over Winter.

    Will have to go check out Shark brand sriracha, thanks for the tip.

  8. John Bowen Says:

    Sky Valley has a red and a green Sriracha that is pretty good. So is their Sambal Oelek and Sweet Thai Chili Sauce. The Costco I work at in Cincinnati has the Srirachas in a two pack for $6.99 in pending delete status, so I’ll probably pick up another sell unit before they’re all gone.

    Mae Ploy has always been the OG Sweet Thai Chili Sauce, but there’s a whole bunch of imitators now.

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