16 Creative Ways To Use Sriracha

Whether you make homemade sriracha or buy it, there's no shortage of methods to employ it in your kitchen. Before diving into the cool ways to use it, it's important to note that sriracha is a type of hot chili sauce, not a specific brand. The spicy chili paste originated in Thailand in the city of Si Racha and has transformed into a popular condiment that many people all over the world keep in their homes. Brands and recipes will differ, but it's generally made with red chiles, garlic, sugar, salt, and vinegar. The type of chiles can vary, as well, and you'll often see spur chile, Fresno, red serrano, or red jalapeño in recipes, which can alter the spice level and flavor profile.

It's a staple to pair with Thai cuisine, but there are other creative ways to use sriracha that you can use in drinks, desserts, and other dishes. You might want to stock up on a few bottles so you'll have it on hand, in case there's another shortage. But even if that's the case, there are many brands to choose from, and you could also make it from scratch. Whichever you prefer, you can add this red delight to just about anything.

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Include Sriracha In Steak Sauce For A Kick Of Flavor

From soda to balsamic vinegar, there are many ways to marinate and flavor a steak, so it's no surprise that sriracha is a flavorful ingredient for spicier steak sauce. Most steak sauces don't have a spicy element, and if they do, it's not at the forefront of the ingredient list, so the fermented red sauce is a perfect choice because it has the complexity of a steak classic like Worcestershire sauce, but with added spiciness and tanginess.

There may be nuanced flavor differences depending on what brand of sriracha you use or if you make it from scratch with ingredients such as black pepper, butter, or vermouth, but it will make a flavorsome addition to your meat. Regardless of what you choose, this turns into a spicy, sweet, salty, slightly garlicky sauce that can give your favorite steak an upgrade without much effort.

Drizzle Sriracha Onto Your Favorite Breakfast Sandwich

Hot sauce is a common addition to breakfast sandwiches, but switch things up by squirting on sriracha. Prepare your sandwich as desired — whether you opt for sausage, bacon, ham, spam, egg and cheese, or a different combination. Add the sauce directly onto your meat, bread, or cheese, but you can also get creative. Get in the breakfast spirit by blending the sriracha with honey or maple syrup for a sausage breakfast sandwich, which can help tone down any spiciness from the sriracha. It can also elevate an otherwise simple hack from just squirting on the condiment to mixing it up with another (like maple syrup) and spreading it on your sandwich.

This California-style breakfast slider recipe combines bacon with creamy seasoned eggs, pepper jack cheese, avocado, and alfalfa sprouts on slider buns. Sriracha is included on the sandwich in a spicy mayo, which complements the bacon well.

Mix Sriracha With Mayo To Create A Different Condiment

Spicy mayo — sriracha mixed with mayonnaise — can be added to anything you normally like to eat with mayonnaise. Use it on sandwiches, burgers, bahn mi, fish tacos, fried eggs, sushi, tater tots, and more. Portion out the desired amount of mayo in a small bowl, squeeze the spicy condiment into it, and thoroughly mix it to transform basic mayonnaise into a powerhouse seasoning.

If you prefer a vegan alternative, make vegan chipotle mayo with cashews, sriracha, chipotle peppers, and a few other ingredients. This goes well with portobello fajitas when you want a veggie for a meal. Whether you go with traditional mayo or vegan mayo, the creamy and spicy components complement each other beautifully and can make all the difference in your next feast. Add it to tuna salad, dunk your fish and chips in it, or squeeze a bit onto sushi for a creamy and simultaneously spicy boost.

Upgrade Your Dessert With Salted Sriracha Caramel

For those who treasure adventuring with unforeseen combinations, you might be keen to try making caramel with sriracha. This duo is a perfect way to take your desserts to an irresistible new level, even as simple as dipping chocolate in it, since you'll often see spicy chocolate desserts. To make it, follow your favorite caramel or salted caramel recipe, then add sriracha to the caramel at a ratio of 1 tablespoon per cup to give it a punch.

Try this tasty twist if you want to make a peppery caramel that you can add to a bowl of ice cream or dip fruit in, such as pineapples, apples, or strawberries. It's also great on waffles, cinnamon rolls, and fruit-based desserts like tarts and crumbles. The sweetness shines through the spice, and you get the subtle flavors of butter and heavy cream in the caramel to round off the spicy but also slightly sweet sriracha. This might just be your next favorite dessert topping.

Whip Up A Cocktail With Sriracha

Plenty of cocktails have a spicy element, so the next time you want to whip up an evening beverage, add a bit of sriracha. Make a delicious, refreshing bloody Mary like this the one, which has jalapeño and hot sauce. You could incorporate hot sauce with sriracha or switch hot sauce entirely for sriracha. Bloody Marys aren't everyone's beverage of choice, so if you don't like the peppery tomato flavor, go with a sriracha peach smash. This summery cocktail blends the sweetness of peach with the red chili sauce for an unusual but rejuvenating drink. This is perfect for the spice lover who wants to enjoy an amazing drink that isn't over the top.

Sriracha won't leave your tongue ablaze like a ghost pepper hot sauce might, so it's more approachable for cocktails. However, if you're making the sauce from scratch, you can customize the heat level based on the type of chiles and how many you add. If you're using store-bought, squeeze more sriracha in for a hotter drink that has complexity not just from the peppers, but from the sauce's vinegar content, too.

Splash It Into Some Soup

If you are seeking a way to add flavor to soup quickly, sriracha can provide both color and zing with just a squirt of the bottle. There is no need to chop up any chiles to get a kick or squeeze lemon for acidity, since sriracha hits those notes for you without the extra effort.

Unless everyone eating it wants a spiced soup, don't add it to the whole pot, so the entire soup isn't affected and people's tongues aren't hit with unexpected spice and heat. Instead, add it directly into your personal bowl. Make a quick 15-minute homemade egg drop soup with the spice of sriracha and red chili pepper flakes. This is a soup that you can make in a jiffy with just a handful of ingredients. For a spicier meat-based soup, try adding sriracha to your chicken soup or chicken noodle soup.

Sriracha Can Bring Heat To Avocado Toast

The buttery richness of avocado toast can totally get a promotion with the red heat of sriracha. It not only provides a beautiful color combination of green and red, but you will find a scrumptious flavor harmony of the nutty, creamy avocado and vinegary, garlicky sriracha. Squeeze the sauce onto already plated avocado toast or mix it directly into the mashed avocado mixture bowl.

If you want it to be at the forefront of your toast, decorate the avocado with a zig-zag of sriracha, and then add other components like tomatoes, eggs, radishes, or scallions to make it more filling and vibrant. Spicy toppings are a common ingredient in avocado toasts. Sriracha is one way to ramp up the heat, but you could also include crushed red pepper flakes, jalapeños, or a crack of fresh pepper when you want a heavier kick.

Add A Dash Of Sriracha To Your Morning Coffee

Including sriracha into your morning cup of joe might seem a bit odd, but it's the perfect way to flavor your coffee. If you love black coffee, this hack might not be for you, but you should give this tip a try if you value experimenting with flavors. Opt for a lighter roasted coffee, which has a more delicate taste that goes well with the acidity of the sriracha. The bitter notes you find in a dark roast might be too overwhelming paired with the sauce.

Squeeze the sriracha directly into your mug and give it a good mix. You don't need more than a few drops as you want it to complement your coffee, not overtake it. While this is one of the more creative ways to use sriracha, it could ramp up your morning pick-me-up in a way that parallels other spicy coffee varieties. But it also has a tangy and slightly sweet undertone for a complex cuppa. For something even sweeter, give it sophistication with a teaspoon of sriracha caramel.

Season Roasted Vegetables With Sriracha

Provide roasted vegetables with a quick enhancement by mixing in sriracha. You can enjoy this with broccoli, cauliflower, zucchini, bell pepper, onion, carrots, potatoes, turnips, and more can make just about any vegetable taste better. You can integrate other seasonings like rosemary, furikake, or pepper or leave it up to the red sauce to do the leg work since it has chiles, garlic, sugar, and vinegar to offer a well-rounded seasoning.

Whether you mix veggies for a colorful combination or pick one that you need to use up, evenly coat the vegetables in the sriracha and allow time for the flavors to marinate before popping them in the oven. The earthy vegetables and spicy sriracha create an incredible flavor duo that you can pair with your protein of choice. Using a condiment you already have at home is one of the easier ways to enhance veggies for a weeknight meal.

Use Sriracha In Salad Dressings

Include sriracha in your favorite dressing, like in a sriracha tahini dressing. Add sriracha to your favorite store-bought ranch. Use this versatile spicy, garlicky sauce as a salad dressing or a dip for carrots, celery, or chicken wings. Make or utilize your favorite Caesar dressing, and then mix in the sriracha. If you're making a large batch, use 1 tablespoon of sriracha; otherwise, you can discern how much you want for a personal amount if you're making a one-off salad. This upgraded Caesar hits many tasting notes since it's creamy, tangy, salty, and spicy with the addition of sriracha.

Blend the sriracha into a tart and spicy vinaigrette, which is an ideal dressing when you want something a bit lighter and not mayo or cream-based. There are plenty of delicious dressing combinations you can fuse with sriracha sauce to make a spicier interpretation. Try your revitalized dressing in a quinoa salad bowl loaded with veggies, chickpeas, and fresh basil.

Give Your Egg Salad A Spicy Upgrade

Make a spicy egg salad with traditional ingredients, and then include the key component: sriracha. This has a tasty blend of creamy eggs and mayo, freshness from lemon juice, celery, and chives, and then the bang of sriracha to make it a mouth-watering egg salad. If you want to make egg salad without mayo, use more lemon juice, mustard, and sriracha to act as the binder to keep the salad from falling apart.

If you still want a creamy component, swap the mayonnaise for cream cheese or Greek yogurt to make a piquant egg salad that you can't help but get seconds of. Everyone's egg salad recipe ranges a bit, but this is a fun way to switch gears when you want to heighten a classic dish in a way that isn't too difficult but can still impress. It hits different notes which means you can serve it on toast, eat it in a bell pepper or as a lettuce wrap, or add a couple of generous scoops onto salad or a bed of greens.

Warm Up With A Spicy Sriracha Hot Chocolate

This might be one of the more creative ways to use sriracha, but it's not too far off base since spicy hot chocolates are available at coffee shops, as well as premade mixes you find at the grocery store. These often come made with ancho chile or cayenne pepper, which adds a spicy inclusion but not much else. Give your hot chocolate dimension with sriracha. This works because the vinegar and garlic get mellowed by the creaminess of the milk, while its chile and sugar components get to shine.

It's piquant and rich but can completely change in taste depending on the type of chocolate (bittersweet, milk chocolate, cocoa powder) and milk (2% milk, whole milk, nut milk) that you select. Top with mini marshmallows and a sprinkle of cayenne pepper to seal the deal, or give it a more well-rounded flavor with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a splash of vanilla. You only need a small dash of this red sauce to your hot chocolate for a spicy beverage that's perfect for warming up on a cold night.

Create Pickled Vegetables With Sriracha

Whether you like larger pickled veggies or prefer pieces or shreds, add a potent punch to your pickled foods with sriracha. Depending on your recipe, you can add the sriracha during the boiling processor squirt and mix it with the rest of the ingredients if it's a brief refrigerator pickle. It's spicy and tangy with a hint of garlic but also has a sugar component, which you'll also see in the pickling process, which makes it a perfectly balanced match for pickled veggies.

This is an excellent choice for those who aren't big on heat since it's not as hot as some other peppers with a higher Scoville rating. Use whatever vegetables you want, but if you need ideas, popular pickled vegetables include the iconic cucumber, as well as garlic, corn, jalapeños, beets, and mushrooms. This is tasty to try with pickled radish since they, too, have a slight spice to them that you can serve by themselves as an appetizer. Spicy pickled red onions are a terrific option to include if you over-salted a meal, like pasta or fish tacos.

Mix It With Peanut Butter

Pairing peanuts with a spicy element isn't a new concept. Kick things up a notch by mixing sriracha with peanut butter for a hotter nut butter that you can use in many dishes. Go the more classic route with a spicy peanut sauce that you can serve with tofu, mix into ramen, or use as a salad dressing. This drool-worthy sauce can enhance anything from noodles to chicken to vegetables with the complexity of garlic, ginger, peanut butter, sriracha, soy sauce, and other ingredients.

Since sriracha has Thai roots, it makes sense to make a Thai-inspired peanut spicy peanut sauce to eat with traditional Thai food like sate gai skewers, Panang curry, or Massaman curry, which often contains peanuts, as well. If you want something that has Thai components but in a new format, spread the sriracha peanut butter combination onto bread along with basil for a memorable, smooth, herby, and spicy sandwich.

Experiment By Making Sriracha Skittles

Mixing spicy and sweet makes for an enchanting mixture that satisfies the senses, but this TikTok trend of mixing Skittles and sriracha takes things to new heights. It's an unconventional mixture, but it blends the popular spicy, sweet duo in a new way. You'll mainly taste the chiles and sugar in the sriracha, as the vinegar and garlic don't come through too much paired with the extremely sweet Skittles.

Unlike other ways to use sriracha, you don't have to do anything too fancy or leave it to marinate. Dump the bag of Skittles into a bowl and pour on the sriracha, but you could also add a sprinkle of Tajín or freeze-dry them for more dimension or a switch in texture. This version is more tart since the lime in the Tajín also brings out the vinegar in the sriracha. The Skittles and sriracha blend might be something to endeavor on an adventurous evening of sweet and spicy taste tests, in addition to ice cream with sriracha and Oreos with sriracha.

Incorporate It To Make Sriracha Butter

Compound butters are a pleasant way to incorporate additional flavor to your standard stick of butter, but zing things up by making sriracha butter. Mix the sriracha into room-temperature butter and combine until it reaches an orange hue from the blend of the yellow butter and red sriracha. Roll it into a log, wrap it in parchment paper or plastic wrap, and place it in the fridge until it's hardened, then cut it into coins to serve.

If presentation isn't a factor, place it in a container with a lid to scrape out with a knife or serve melted over veggies. The two ingredients work to make a creamy, hot, and subtly tangy condiment that you can add to your favorite pasta, slather on bread as you fry up a grilled cheese sandwich,or add a pad to freshly grilled steak.It also adds a sharp acidity and garlic notes that work beautifully with seafood like grilled lobster or oven-baked crab legs. Include parsley, chives, or additional chopped garlic for an herby and spicy compound butter.

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