Sriracha Is The Flavorful Ingredient Addition For Spicier Steak Sauce

Home cooks will, by their nature, accumulate recipes for their go-to sauces, condiments, and seasoning mixes. We here at Tasting Table recognize that tastes have been trending towards the spicy, so we wanted to recommend the perfect way to add some kick to your favorite steak sauce. After careful consideration, it has to be sriracha, the beloved hot chili sauce. It is satisfyingly spicy, for sure, but also brings in added flavor dimensions — all of which will fit in seamlessly with most traditional steak sauce ingredients. Best of all, and just like steak sauce, while you can buy sriracha off the shelf, you can also make it at home.

Traditional steak sauces tend to feature similar ingredients, and for good reason: They deftly combine salty, sweet, piquant, and umami flavors in a way that really goes with seared beef. These usual suspects include ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, vinegar, and salt. Now, this can be dressed up any way you like, with substitution of soy sauce or cider vinegar, and/or the addition of prepared mustard or powdered garlic and onion. There's nothing in sriracha that will conflict with these flavors. It's got a fermented tang like Worcestershire sauce, and along with the heat brings a deeply satisfying garlic punch.

If you've just gotten off work and plan on popping by the store to pick up a hanger steak, your favorite brand of steak sauce, and (now) a bottle of sriracha, you are 100% good to go. Just whisk the two condiments together in a ramekin with a fork in a ratio that tastes right to you.

Sriracha is a fermented mixture of chili peppers, garlic, vinegar, salt, and sugar. But if you are making the hot sauce at home, you can choose to increase or decrease the amounts of any of these ingredients to achieve your preferred balance. Also — don't be intimidated by the idea of fermentation. All you're really doing is placing the blended ingredients in a sealed jar and leaving them alone in a dark place for several days. The results will be so magical that you'll be ready to take on the challenge of homemade Worcestershire sauce.