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A severe drought in Mexico recently left a crop of red jalapeños too green to make Huy Fong Foods’ Sriracha sauce, forcing the company to pause production of the beloved condiment until after Labor Day,

This isn’t the first time hot-sauce enthusiasts have faced a Sriracha shortage. In 2013, after locals near the 655,000-square-foot facility complained of sore throats, headaches, and watery eyes, there was a movement to halt production of the sauce. The Los Angeles County Superior Court ultimately at Irwindale, California-based Huy Fong Foods, and the company continued to make 20 million bottles of its hot “rooster” sauce a year.

Then, in 2020, like many other food-production companies, Huy Fong endured COVID-related supply chain issues, made worse by a drought impacting Sriracha ingredients. Just two years later, similar environmental issues created another hiccup.

The Best Sriracha Alternatives

“They hit a gold mine by making a sauce people like,” says Jerry Good of Import Foods. “But it’s not authentic sriracha—it’s so harsh and so strong.”

Good and others stress that there are many varieties of sriracha out there. After all, sriracha isn’t actually a brand, but rather a type of hot sauce, named for the costal Thai city of Si Racha.

Here are a few of our favorite alternatives to Huy Fong Food’s product—some of them practically identical, and others probably healthier—to squirt on your eggs, stir fry, pizza, or whatever. Enjoy.

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The ingredients in Huy Fong Food’s Sriracha include (among other things) potassium sorbate and sodium bisulfite. We don’t even know what those are, so why not opt for a similar but better-for-you product? Sky Valley by Organicville’s Sriracha Sauce uses mostly organic ingredients that you can pronounce. “It’s the cleanest sriracha product on the market right now,” says Teo Insogna, grocery manager for the Los Alamos Cooperative Market in New Mexico.

The only downside? At $8, it’s nearly twice as expensive as the more familiar rooster sauce.

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Insogna also recommends this Thai-style hot sauce, which is chock full of sun-ripened red chilies and garlic. The 125-year-old company is based in Hong Kong but also has a plant in Los Angeles. Let’s hope it can contain it’s spicy odors better than nearby Huy Fong Foods.

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Jerry Good, owner of Import Foods, calls Mama Sita’s all-natural, no-preservative sauce “pretty darn spicy.” A few drops go a long way. Mama Sita’s gets bonus points for packaging its product in glass. “An extremely powerful childe product should not be in plastic,” he says.

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Shark produces what Good calls “real” sriracha. “The sriracha sauce we know is nice and bold and strong but it’s also fruity and gentle—it’s not as harsh as the stuff made in California,” he says. “The chile heat is there but not overpowering.” The glass-bottled sauce is available in medium and strong flavors.

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Ka-Me’s sauce is made primarily from water, red chili, sugar, garlic salt, and rice vinegar—which is all great, except water is the first ingredient. This results in a great tasting, but thinner, sauce.

This sauce, appropriately, originates from the town of Si Racha, Thailand. However, “while the Ka-Me is a ‘Product of Thailand,’ we think the American-made Huy Fong product is far superior,” blog the folks over at hotsaucedaily.com.

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This hot sauce comes in different varieties—hot, super hot, extra garlic, super sour, ginger, galanga, lemongrass. Sounds delicious, right? Too bad this stuff is extremely hard to get in the U.S. Flying Goose is based in Thailand, so you’ll have to place an order online.

“It’s very exciting to finally get my hands on some Flying Goose,” says Brian Meagher at Hot Sauce Daily. “It’s quite hot, with a strong garlic flavor.” But be warned; Meagher also calls the sauce “very pungent and a bit salty due to the MSG that’s in it.”

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Spice up your life with ABC’s Sambal Extra Pedas chili sauce. It was given a burn factor of five (out of five) by ’s Andrea Nguyen, who says “I felt the heat in my hair follicles,” and recommends pairing the paste with barbecue or the like.

8.��Make Your Own
There are plenty of recipes online, such as this one from . All you need are red chilies, garlic, salt, vinegar, and sugar. Oh yeah, and a blender.