Fermented Sriracha (Serious Eats)

A homemade sriracha: red jalapeños, garlic, brown sugar and salt fermented in a sealed jar for about a week, then blended with vinegar, strained and simmered until it clings to a spoon.

Untested: not yet made in this kitchen. It is here for the Peppers and Hot Sauce pages and is adapted from the source named in the Notes.

Ingredients

• 1½ pounds red jalapeños, stems snipped off, leaving green tops intact
• 6 cloves garlic, peeled
• 4 tablespoons light brown sugar
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• ½ cup distilled white vinegar

Directions

Key ingredients

Salt

1. Pulse the jalapeños, garlic, sugar and salt in a food processor until very finely chopped. Pack the mixture into a clean jar, seal it and keep it at room temperature in a cool, dark place.
2. Check the jar daily. Bubbles should form at the bottom in 3 to 5 days; from then on, open the jar, stir and reseal it daily until the chiles stop rising in volume, another 2 to 3 days.
3. Blend the mash with the vinegar until completely smooth, 1 to 3 minutes. Strain it into a saucepan, pushing through as much pulp as possible.
4. Bring the sauce to a boil, then simmer until it clings to a spoon, 5 to 10 minutes. Cool and refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 6 months.

Notes

Source Adapted from Joshua Bousel, “Homemade Sriracha,” Serious Eats (2012, modified 2025). The page’s ingredient list spells the pepper “jalalpeños”; it is corrected here. Bousel calls the result a homage with “a brighter, fresher flavor” than Huy Fong’s, not a copy of it.

Salt The source gives no salt percentage. By weight, 1 tablespoon of kosher salt over 1½ pounds of jalapeños works out to roughly 1.5 to 2.5 percent of the peppers, depending on the brand of salt (an estimate, not the source’s figure).

The ferment It is short (5 to 8 days) and sealed, with no airlock; the daily opening releases the gas. The commercial Thai sauce, by its distributor’s account, is aged at least three months with vinegar added weekly.

Acidity An unassisted pepper ferment does not reliably reach pH 4.6, the line below which botulinum cannot grow: in published trials, spontaneous pepper mashes finished around pH 4.8 to 4.9 while mashes given a starter culture reached about 3.7. A sour taste is not proof. This recipe does not rely on the ferment: the vinegar acidifies it, the final boil means the finished sauce is no longer live, and it is kept refrigerated. A pH meter is the way to know; see /preservation/measuring-ph/.

The dish The Peppers and Hot Sauce section (/hot-sauce/) covers sriracha’s Thai origin in Si Racha, the Huy Fong bottle, and how fermented and vinegar sauces differ.

The photo The photograph is a stand-in: bottles of Thai Sriraja Panich chili sauce, not this homemade version.