So for my second blog post here I have decided to do something different and dedicate a blog post to a condiment.

But what a condiment.

This condiment goes by the name of Sriracha (otherwise known as T??ng ?t in Vietnamese) and is a Thai chilli sauce that is loved all over south East Asia. There are many different brands and all of them vary slightly in terms of spiciness and flavour.

I have tried many of the different brands and the one that I keep going back to is the classic Sriracha by ‘Huy Fong Foods’. As you can see in the picture there is a picture of a rooster on the front, because of this I called it ‘rooster sauce’. Most of the other brands are slightly too watery and don’t have as much of a kick of chilli.

I had my first taste of Sriracha about 7 years ago when I went to a Vietnamese restaurant by the name of ‘Dao vien’ I was quite naïve then and I ordered what other people seemed to be eating. What I actually ordered was one of the greatest things ever, a steaming bowl of pho (stay tuned for a future blog post on this dish).

In a little plastic tray on the corner of my table were a number of sauces and condiments. I knew what most of them were except for this ruby red sauce, I wasn’t willing to ruin my noodles by pouring copious amounts of this unknown sauce in my bowl so the dish was so spicy it was inedible. So I put a littlesqueeze on my finger and tasted it…

What I tasted for the first 5 seconds was the intense flavour of minced bird’s eye chillies. After a few seconds my tongue subsided and I was able to taste the sauce and I fell in love. It has intense garlic, acidic and salty flavours along with the chilli. I was so enamoured with the sauce that knowing my father is also a fellow chilli addict I brought him back to the same restaurant the next week just to try this sauce. Now we both have a bottle in the pantry for unexpected chilli hits.

So another great thing about Sriracha is that it goes well on anything, not just Asian food. It’s fantastic on pizza, cous cous, pasta, chicken wings, and hot dogs. If you put a couple of drops in some mushroom risotto I am sure you will pass out. In the picture attached this is what my good friend sindi cooked for me, chicken wings cooked in a caramel sauce (a traditional Vietnamese home recipe) and some rice to which I thought it definitely needed a little hit of the rooster sauce.

In summary I think that everyone who reads this blog and likes spicy food should try this sauce as it’s amazing.