Food and Cooking

6442 readers

1 users here now

All things culinary and cooking related. Share food! Share recipes! Share stuff about food, etc.

Subcommunity of Humanities.

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

Where did all the Sriracha go? Sauce shortage hiking prices to $70 in online markets (www.cbsnews.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by nihilx7E3 to c/food

23 comments fedilink hide all child comments

tl;dr: sriracha is selling for ~$40-$70 a bottle due to a shortage of red jalapeño crops, caused by climate change (specifically, extremely hot, dry weather as well as landslide effects from various climate events in the previous years). huy fong says sriracha is resuming limited production but did not specify when this production began or how limited it was.

wonder how they'd be doing if they didn't try to screw over underwood ranches, who are apparently not having much trouble sourcing the peppers at all

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] Seathru 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Wasn't there a Sriracha shortage this time last year too? Because I bought a bunch of it and then realized the post-underwood Sriracha was not the same. It's too sweet now with not enough heat.

Edit: yes there was.

[–] nihilx7E3 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Wasn’t there a Sriracha shortage this time last year too?

yeah, there was also one in 2020, & a lot of people (myself included) had trouble getting it in parts of 2021 too. huy fong's had supply issues for years now & it doesn't seem like they're ever getting out of it with how high demand sriracha is

Because I bought a bunch of it and then realized the post-underwood Sriracha was not the same. It’s too sweet now with not enough heat.

agreed, that combined with the insane prices & the fact that hf sriracha is spending more time out of stock than in is the reason i'm giving up on the brand & moving on to other sauces, the last 2 bottles of huy fong we had cost ~$40 a few months ago, & we all agreed it wasn't really worth the price at all

[–] lagomorphlecture 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's not entirely about demand. They screwed over their supplier and that's a lot of it. You can buy from underwood ranch directly for $10/bottle plus shipping and they have it in stock so that tells me it isn't just that jalapenos are unavailable. Maybe jalapenos are only unavailable to Huy Fong because nobody wants to sign a contract to grow for them.

[–] nihilx7E3 2 points 1 year ago

I agree, I mentioned the underwood situation in my post too

[–] snowbell 3 points 1 year ago

My local Asian store had pallets of it at the normal price when everywhere else was out of stock or overpriced.

[–] AK77 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Wasn’t it because they fucked over their single main chilli supplier?

[–] nihilx7E3 1 points 1 year ago

yeah, i mentioned them fucking over underwood in my post lol. i wouldn't say it's solely because of that situation, as climate change is the reason their various cheaper suppliers don't have as many reds to sell in the first place, but losing underwood basically lost them their safety net for situations like this

[–] GhostMagician 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Has anyone tried the Underwood Ranches siracha? I think they were the original supplier. Wondered if it is spicier like how I imagined Siaracha to be like long ago.

[–] lagomorphlecture 4 points 1 year ago

I've tried it and it's not exactly the same but I'm also not incredibly picky and liked it. There are also other brands of Sriracha in the store I shop at not so I'm just going to buy those. I don't want to support Huy Fong (or however it's spelled) specifically after what I heard about how they did underwood dirty. I mean if I find it at the store and it's a good price I'll buy it because this isn't one of those social issues I need to be 100% principled on but I'm not going out of my way to get it.