When there's an opportunity, I'm mixing sriracha sauce in with ketchup for potatoes, eggs, and anything else I might eat with either sriracha or ketchup. Sriracha sauce's flavor is too intense for some things alone. Adding the sweet delicious flavor of ketchup to the spicy chili pepper and garlic flavor of sriracha sauce results in a delicious mix.
For a long time before seeing this ketchup, I figured the smartest thing (Kraft)Heinz could do is throw gobs of money at Huy Fong Foods to either license the brand or buy it outright. Then combine the leading ketchup with the leading sriracha sauce to make a new gold standard in specialty ketchup.
Sriracha isn't a trademark, so anyone can make a "Sriracha Sauce," but nobody can do it like Huy Fong. I've tried a few different brands and they can't get the flavor right. Throughout the U.S., if you ask for sriracha sauce at a restaurant, you're asking for and expecting Huy Fong's version.
The labeling is done well. It's made to look a lot like a bottle of Huy Fong Sriracha sauce.
But turn the bottle around and you'll see it's made by Red Gold, a company that specializes in canned and processed tomato products. The ingredients show that this is simply Red Gold's ketchup mixed with actual Huy Fong's sriracha sauce. I'm happy to see that. Don't mess with what works.
Contenders
Sriracha sauce and ketchup mixed at about a 1:2 sriracha:ketchup ratio on the left and the Sriracha Ketchup on the right
I decided to take this ketchup head to head with my typical mix of sriracha and ketchup. I ended up putting more sriracha sauce in with my ketchup than the Sriracha Ketchup includes, so I diluted it with more ketchup. At about 1:3 the two ketchup mixes had the roughly the same spice level, so that's probably the ratio Red Gold uses.
Weapon of choice: waffle fries
Flavor
Trying the Sriracha Ketchup, I noticed that it had a sweeter, more tomatoey flavor than my own concoction. At the same spice level, it had noticeably less garlic flavor. I consider this a loss because the balance of garlic and chili pepper flavors in Huy Fong's sauce is what makes it so special. The flavor of the peppers carries through a bit better, as does the spice.
Spice
The spice level is pleasant, not anywhere near overwhelming for my tastes. For reference, I can eat a typical jalapeno's pieces raw without displeasure but wouldn't be doing that for a spicier pepper.
Texture
The texture of the Red Gold-made ketchup was smoother than my own mixture, probably due to thorough industrial-scale mixing. Visually, you can see larger particles of peppers in the Sriracha Ketchup, but on the tongue you won't notice a difference in texture from pure ketchup.
Conclusion
Overall, this is a good ketchup. I'll use and enjoy it until I run out of it. Will I rebuy it? I doubt it. I'm pretty value conscious and smaller specialty bottles of ketchup carry a premium. Plus I like to stock regular ketchup and pure sriracha sauce separate in my fridge, and have no issue with the inconsistency of mixing them myself.
For a standardized specialty ketchup, it does its job fairly deliciously. It gets a mark off for using a low enough sriracha-sauce-to-ketchup ratio that the garlic flavor is drowned out too much.
4 out of 5 public domain clip art chilies
So everything meet in California (didn't know that Huy Fong Foods was a California company). The origins of Ketchup is actually also from the Indochina and Malayan region and did originally not have anything to do with tomatoes. I think the word is Chinese, but the varied types I have tried are from Malaysia and Indonesia. Dark sweet sauce based on soya, fish and mushroom... n'stuff.
That doesn't sound like ketchup at all! I prefer the sugary tomato stuff :)
No, the tomato sort has conquered the hearts of the Anglo-Saxons to an extent where the word ketchup is used for exactly that, but I guess that this is the reason that it always clearly states TOMATO-Ketchup on the bottles.
Personally I find both types to sweet. I prefer mustard, Tabasco, or Worcestershire-sauce, but we always have Heinz tomato-ketchup in the fridge as it is very popular among the younger inhabitants of my apartment.
(and we actually always have the Malayan variety too, as my wife really likes it.)
I won't lie, I've never thought of combining the two sauces. Sounds good!
I'm glad I can contribute to the furthering of creatively mixing sauces.
I was quite the sauce mixer back in the day - when I walked to school uphill both ways carrying a pail of water in each hand in the snow...maybe I should rethink using the phrase "back in the day" since I'm only in my 20's.
The guys and I used to roll up to McDonalds and order a bag of double cheeseburgers (or double cham-ba-lams, as we called them) and we would dip them in their Buffalo sauce and Ranch at the same time. Mmmm those were the days.
But now I'm old and have learned how unhealthy McDonald's is...sooo..yeah.
Aaaanyways, thanks for letting me know that I'm not the only one out there that mixes sauces! Haha
Cool))) Unfortunately, in Ukraine there is no sauce))
Aww. I bet there's some similar sauce to sriracha there. Something with a lot of red chilies and garlic? It's good stuff. Though I think Huy Fong does it best. Are there American food import shops anywhere?
I will look for)))
Thanks for the review. I'm a spiced guy too!
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
You're welcome! Favorite pepper?
Ah man, i love Sriracha. Never had the ketchup though. Haven't seen it in our markets here in South Africa yet.
Mixing your regular sriracha with regular ketchup is just as good. Is ketchup popular in SA?
Yes very!
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Thanks man
Nice Review! Upvoted!
Thank you very much :)
No sriracha here. and i am spice-addict.
Aww =[
Cheer up:
i am dead hahahahahahahahah
you could try another one,I can't remember the name. Calling iteself the most spicy source in the world.
Splendid review, I love some sriracha! Never mixed it with ketchup before being an old schooler but hey! This Dawg is willing to try a new trick!!
Awesome, perhaps you're another convert ;)
tommorow ill go to shop that imports such things and look for this.
you made me hungry
Have you ever had Huy Fong's Sriracha (minus the ketchup)? You'll probably have an easier time of finding that. Look for that rooster on the bottle.
nope i didnt but already see one spot selling that here :)
Red Gold makes excellent ketchup, better than the other leading brands in my opinion. I'll try their sriracha ketchup. Being Italian and a retired chef) I frequently make sauce for pasta. Red Gold crushed tomatoes tend to be a bit watery. I prefer Cento which is thicker.
I still think Heinz is the best, maybe because mostly what I had growing up. But as you can see in my pictures, I'm willing to stray for a ketchup that tastes about the same, in this case the one from Aldi :P
I always bought Heinz until I tried Red Gold.
Ketchup with a bite? It renders mustard irrelevant. I'll have to try some of this stuff on my lunch.
Was that really your lunch???
Actually, I ate a salad and a muffin.
You call that a burger? This is a burger:
That's what they call a Paleo Burger.
Oh, I see you've played Burgey-Drummy before
I use sriracha almost every day. Don't like ketchup.
the hotter the better but with a user name like yours, I don't need to tell you lol
It's a great sauce for sure, I use it on eggs straight. Fried potatoes need some ketchup mixed in for the best effect though.
In Mexico they use it on popcorn when you go to the movies. I've seen 3-year old kids eat habanero lolipops that most men couldn't handle.
I love the photos:)
Thanks. Not the best because of my indoor lighting sources but I did what I could with two. I'll have to assemble a third one and hope I have a bright enough bulb for it :)
You are too hard on yourself. They look pretty impressive to me.
It's the color cast that bothers me about the light setup. There's no easy fixing it in post :)
It doesn't look to bad too me but then this monitor I'm using is pretty crappy and it isn't calibrated:) I think we tend to look at our photos more harshly than others do!
RS for you! I love spicy stuff and I approve of this post with 100% voting power LOL
I made my own hot pepper magic dust from 14 strands I grew years ago and I use it daily. I had about 70L of peppers in the harvest.
I did LOL when you said this
4 out of 5 public domain clip art chilies
Thank you very much @barrydutton. Yeah dried pepper flakes are awesome for everything, especially when they've got some good flavor too.
Actually I went and found the album, it is start to finish here. I decided to go past flakes and make it into my Magic Dust of Glory, it was a good decision! The roasted flavour of some of the peppers I did came out beautiful in the heat, after the dehydration. --- https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10153002351685915.1073741925.584855914&type=3
At first I was going to dry them all separate and grind them that way too, so I could really taste the difference btw them all but in the end, I had a giant bowl of this really nice browned dust of glory.... really beautiful flavours and heat and put it all together. I have a pretty large album back about 2 yrs on my Fascistbook personal page with it all there.
The whole process was painstaking but every day I use this stuff, I am so glad I did it myself.
I watered and fed them myself and talked to them every Friday night outback lol.
I'm supposed to be sending some to @papa-pepper and he said he is sending me something but with my injuries it is hard to get out of the house and worse now, with winter in #Canadastan in full effect.
Have a good end to your week, I feel a kinship with you now, that we have this in common lol.
Thumbs Up!!
Good post, thank you. We go thru more sriracha in our home than any other sauce in the refrigerator.
Thanks! Yeah it's good stuff. I get the big bottle when I run out.
The sauce is made in china?
Huy Fong's sriracha is made in California actually