Sriracha lovers everywhere are feeling the not so pleasant sting of the beloved hot sauce shortage, now in its second year. Drought in Mexico has resulted in a scarcity of chilli peppers – in particular, red jalapeños, the raw material of sriracha – leading Huy Fong Foods, the California-based maker of the iconic condiment, to scale back production.
“It is a challenging crop to grow,” said Stephanie Walker, a plant scientist at the New Mexico State University, who serves on the advisory board of the Chile Pepper Institute. “Jalapeños are really labor intensive, requiring people to de-stem them by hand before they go for processing.”
The special care the chilis require renders them that much more vulnerable to extreme weather conditions, such as the persisting drought in northern Mexico, fueled by the depleted water supply in the Colorado River.
“Normally the pepper is grown by irrigation,” said Paul Gepts, a crop researcher at the University of California, Davis. “But the supply of water has been decreasing and if you don’t have a certain minimum amount of water to irrigate your crops, unless there is rain, there won’t be a crop.”
There are five species of the chilli pepper, spread over the Americas, from Mexico to Bolivia, that have the hotness required for the Sriracha sauce. Some of these varieties are used for other hot sauces and Sriracha dupes.
But the fans of unmistakable green-capped sauce can spot the difference and are staying loyal to the original.
“For Sriracha, its particular flavor and quality really dictates how you have to have jalapeños, because of the unique flavor profile that consumers love,” Walker said. “Those very pungent, kind of tangy, almost citrus notes of the chili.”
Phans 55, a Vietnamese restaurant in Orange county, California, has been running low on the limited Sriracha supply for the past three months.
“Now it’s all gone,” said Andre Nguyen, who works as a server, adding that the sauce is essential for a variety of dishes, from pho to rice.
“The taste of Sriracha is so unique, it’s hard to mimic,” Nguyen said. “Everyone would prefer to have Sriracha over another off brand trying to copy it.”
Resellers on Amazon, eBay and Craigslist are pricing bottles of hot sauce for as high as $120. A representative for Huy Fong Foods said in a statement to the Guardian that while “limited production has recently resumed”, the company has “no estimations of when supply will increase”, or when it will again hit supermarket shelves.
Moving the crop to an area that is less affected by extreme weather and breeding new varieties of the chilli that is tolerant to heat and drought could help avoid future shortages. Still, that is a longer term solution to the problem hitting American shelves imminently.
“We’re going to see these disruptions more often because of climate change,” Gepts said.
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