After years of being intimidated by the Sriracha hot chili sauce at Thai restaurants, I recently discovered a bottle in the refrigerator door at the apartment I'm subletting in the Petworth neighborhood in D.C. The producer, Huy Fong Foods, says the sauce "is excellent in soups, sauces, pastas, pizzas, hot dogs, hamburgers, chowmein or on anything else to give it a delicious, spicy taste." I agree. I've started squirting it on nearly everything I eat, except perhaps breakfast cereal and peanut butter sandwiches.
The sauce, made from sun-ripened chilies ground into a paste with garlic, is unarguably hot. But it is also rich in color and even boasts some of the sweetness that left me addicted to Marie Sharp's hot sauce during a trip to Belize a few years ago.
