Your Summer is going to have less heat than usual this year. The Washington Post reports that after years of wavering availability and recipe changes, Huy Fong is facing severe weather that threatens its pepper supply — conditions that could lead to yet another sriracha shortage.
Over the past few years, fans of Huy Fong Sriracha, the hot and garlicky chili pepper sauce in the iconic rooster bottle with the green cap, have experienced a roller coaster of emotions and heartbreak typically reserved for sports fans and soap opera viewers.
As Food & Wine reports, the company recently canceled all forthcoming shipments to wholesalers and notified them that sriracha production is on pause until after Labor Day — nearly four months from now. There is currently a severe drought in Mexico, where Huy Fong’s red winter jalapeño peppers are grown, and the high temperatures and dry conditions can cause the plants to stop ripening altogether, never achieving their prized red color. According to a letter obtained by the Post, the company says the peppers haven’t achieved the ideal shade (they’re still too green), and it would affect the hue of the finished product. As such, Huy Fong will wait until the next growing season later in 2024.
To the casual observer, this shortage might not seem like the biggest deal. After all, there are dozens of varieties of sriracha available in most supermarkets and specialty shops whose supply doesn’t appear to be threatened as Huy Fong’s is. Yet the prevalence of Huy Fong is arguably the reason that any other brands have proliferated in the United States at all. The product debuted in 1980 at a time when America’s global cuisine was more siloed, and it took decades for Huy Fong to make the leap from Asian supermarkets to the American mainstream.
Even now, in the age of endless fusion and experimentation, the rooster bottle’s sweet heat and garlicky punch maintains a dedicated fandom, which is why it’s so important to get the look and feel right. A greener pepper just wouldn’t achieve the desired effect.
“It’s a double-edged sword when the success of this particular sauce comes from a jalapeño that can only be produced in California or Mexico,” climate scientist Guillermo Murray-Tortarolo told the Post. Yes, California: Until a protracted legal dispute dissolved the partnership in 2016, Huy Fong’s peppers were supplied by Underwood Ranches, a California-based business that now produces its own competing sriracha.
This is far from the first hiccup Huy Fong has experienced in recent years. In 2020, like so many other consumer packaged goods, the sriracha experienced shortages due to a combination of COVID-spurred supply chain issues and a drought that was affecting the crops. However, when the company suspended production again in 2022 citing similar climate issues, Underwood Ranches told CNBC in 2023 that it could have met the demand had it still been Huy Fong’s supplier. The latter had instead been sourcing its peppers from Mexico and was thus facing down Mexico’s drought. Now, the same issue appears to be plaguing the pepper supply.
Where does this cycle of disappointing jalapeño harvests leave us? Consumers might have to seek heat elsewhere until the rooster returns to shelves. There are plenty of other brands that can help fill the void — Yellowbird, Ninja Squirrel, Fix, Three Mountains, and others — but if nothing but Huy Fong will do, prepare to pay dearly on the secondary market once they disappear from store shelves.
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