Where should we start? A little bit of history perhaps? Why not? I stole these facts from a Los Angeles Times article which appears to have taken them from a documentary film called "Sriracha". So, it turns out the Sriracha Sauce is made in the U.S.A. by a Vietnamese immigrant who was a refugee from the Vietnam War, also known as the American War if you are Vietnamese to differentiate it from the numerous other wars in that 331,212 km² country. That makes Vietnam about 40% of New South Wales in terms of size. In terms of impact on modern history it is fair to say they are punching above their weight. But I digress. Huy Fong Foods is the name of the company which makes Sriracha and it's owner David Tran has been making it since the 1970's when he saw a need for hot sauce in his new home country. He borrowed the recipe and adapted it from a Thai hot sauce recipe which originates in Si Racha District in Chonburi province which is 120 km South East of Bangkok. The snippets of information about David Tran seem pretty cool and are well worth checking out.
And on to the sauce.
The amazing thing about Sriracha is that it is a fermented chilli sauce which is why I have tagged it under preserving.
So... I grabbed a bag of long green chillies because they were on special at the local fruit shop and I de-seeded most of them, not sure how much heat I will be left with, but as they say "live and learn". After de-seeding I put them along with a little ginger and a couple of garlic cloves into my food processor with a tablespoon each of brown sugar, white sugar and salt and on high whizzed for 4 minutes. After about a minute the mix had me a little anxious about the texture but within 2 minutes the liquid had released from the chillies and by the end I was left with a chunky wet chilli mass.
It is almost too easy to call it a recipe. I transferred the sauce to a glass Pyrex bowl with a lid and will now begin preserving until next weekend. Each day I will give it a good stir. The objective is to turn the sauce each day to stop prolonged exposure to the air.
Well that's about it for now. Will (promise I really will) add to this post next Saturday or maybe even Friday if I get too impatient to wait. The process at that point is to add a little vinegar, maybe rice vinegar or white vinegar and process it to a fine sauce. I have seen that in some recipes they cook the sauce after adding the vinegar but I will be playing it by ear and if cooking seems unnecessary I will be bottling and devouring.
So, it's next Saturday. and after stirring or more accurately turning over the chunky green goodness that is my sauce daily from Sunday to Saturday I have taken the next steps to completion. Things to note: After a couple of days you will notice that tiny air bubbles pop up after turning the chilli paste. The reason for this is that the carbon dioxide is attempting to escape from the chillies. At least I think that is what is happening. The chilli paste could be left to ferment longer but for this first attempt I am far too impatient and excited to wait longer than 6 days. In future attempts I hope to lay down longer ferments and see what will be the impact on the flavour and appearance. That is for another day.
Okay so what I need to do is add the chilli mass to a blender with vinegar. I used about 90 ml of rice wine vinegar and white vinegar. I then blended until I had a smoothish green liquid of spicy joy. Okay, so here is where it got a little tricky. The original recipe I watched said that this is all you had to do. Jar it, fridge it and enjoy the fruits of your labours. I looked up a number of recipes on the net and found that most, if not all added a heating step (probably to kill bacteria and mellow flavours). I was unsure but thought I should travel with the herd and decided to heat the sauce in a small saucepan for 10 minutes. The usual here, bring to boil and then reduce heat and simmer. 10 minutes total.
Once done allow to cool (whilst you finish a blog post) and then jar it up for storage. Once cooled sufficiently I decided that the sauce would be improved by pushing it through a strainer. I added a ladle at a time to a small hand held strainer and pushed through the sauce with the back of a wooden spoon. Ladies and Gentlemen we have a jar of Green Sriracha. Yay!!!
Conclusion: The two steps that I added on the run, being the heating of the sauce for 10 minutes and the pushing through a strainer both improved the finished product in my opinion. I think the heating gave a more rounded flavour to the sauce and has hopefully added to it's shelf life. Having said that, a long shelf life may be irrelevant with this first batch because I am planning to eat it pretty quickly. Once it becomes a part of my regular preserving though I may slow down consumption and need it to last more that a week or two. Step two the strainer I think really adds to the professional long and texture of the sauce. Obviously you could leave either or both of these steps out and see how it goes.
Until next time, Happy cooking!!!
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