14 Store-Bought Condiments You Should Be Mixing With Sriracha

Sriracha is the spicy, versatile, extremely habit-forming hot sauce that goes on everything. It has legions of fans the world over, and its popularity shows no signs of waning.

A traditional sauce originating from the Thai town of Sri Racha, sriracha is a blend of fermented hot peppers, garlic, vinegar, and sugar. The version that catapulted sriracha to worldwide popularity was created by Vietnamese immigrant David Tran in 1980 under the Hoy Fong brand. This version uses mature red jalapeños rather than the traditional Thai peppers, so it sits comfortably at 2,200 SHUs on the Scoville scale. With its vivid red hue and iconic green cap, Hoy Fong Sriracha's devoted following has inspired dozens of imitators since its ascendance to the top of the global condiment scene.

But whichever brand you prefer, a splash of sriracha can singlehandedly elevate a bland meal to a gloriously seasoned masterpiece. But why leave sriracha to do its work singlehandedly? Combine sriracha with these store-bought condiments to add another layer of sublime flavor to your culinary repertoire.

Mayonnaise is a natural match for sriracha, because the richness of the mayo mellows the spice and vinegar sharpness of the sriracha, while sriracha's mild burn transports mayonnaise beyond the realm of bland, gloppy neutrality. It works particularly well with kewpie mayo – the thicker, eggier Japanese version of mayo. The combination is so much more than the sum of its parts and can be used anywhere you'd use regular mayo (which is to say, everywhere).

Drizzle sriracha mayo atop kimbap or tempura sushi rolls, give bound salads like Japanese influenced macaroni salad or classic chicken salad an extra kick by swapping sriracha mayo for standard mayo. Slather it onto roasted chicken to help it retain moisture, or mix the sriracha mayo into creamy salad dressings. Use it to top burgers or sandwiches, or if you're feeling particularly bold, use it in baking recipes. Mayonnaise added to the batter of cornbread, homemade biscuits, or rich and spicy chocolate cake will keep the baked goods extra moist, and sriracha mayo will add the same moistness plus an extra zing of pepper.

Soy sauce is a powerhouse in the kitchen. It's an essential ingredient in everything from meat marinades to salad dressings to a simple salt substitute. When you add sriracha to soy sauce, the umami of the fermented peppers in sriracha combines with the deep umami flavor in soy sauce for an absolute flavor bomb. You can use this lip-smacking duo to make soy sauce chicken thighs, fried rice, chicken and broccoli, or power up the umami when you mix sriracha soy sauce into meaty dishes like bolognese sauce or beef stew. Dash a little onto hard-boiled eggs or onto dumplings. Sriracha soy sauce in a marinade will permeate the tenderized meat, infusing the hot pepper into each bite.

Soy sauce can even get involved in desserts to provide depth and richness, and mixing a little sriracha into the soy sauce will give chocolate and caramel treats a spicy boost. Just be sure to select the right type of soy sauce for your intended use.

Store-bought teriyaki sauce is salty and sweet, but adding sriracha to the mix brings a whole new dimension to the flavor party. There's a lot of overlap in the flavor profiles of the two condiments, as each combines a salty fermented base with a touch of sweetness. The umami flavor of sriracha complements the soy sauce in the teriyaki, while the brightness of the ginger in teriyaki sings alongside sriracha's vinegar base. 

Smoky jalapeño marries beautifully with the typical uses for teriyaki: flame-kissed grilled chicken, beef, or salmon. Rather than drizzling sriracha on top of the finished teriyaki meat, add it directly into the teriyaki sauce to make a spicy teriyaki marinade and glaze. This works particularly well with thinner less sugary teriyaki sauces, but any of popular teriyaki sauce brand will work. The fiery teriyaki-sriracha combo can also be used to flavor rice dishes, as a tofu marinade, or as the sauce for a vegetable stir fry.

Similar to mayonnaise, sour cream brings a creamy, fresh balance to sriracha while sriracha adds interest and novelty to sour cream's plain neutrality. Unlike mayonnaise, sour cream also has the added benefit of soothing sriracha's chile pepper sting, thanks to the ability of dairy fat to bind to capsaicin. That makes sour cream sriracha ideal for anyone who likes the flavor of sriracha but can't cope with the heat. 

Stir it into sour cream, and you get all of the flavor, but no pain! Sriracha sour cream goes great on Mexican-Asian fusion dishes like bulgogi tacos, wrapped up into burritos, or drizzled atop a bowl of black beans or chili. It goes great with potatoes too: a scoop can take a baked potato in a new direction or make a lighter tangier fry sauce for dipping. Mix it into sour cream-based dips like sour cream and onion, french onion dip or ramen dip.

Pickles can be a bit divisive, but for pickle fans, nothing beats the briny, crunchy deliciousness of pickles. Leftover pickle juice has made its way into everything from fried eggs to meat marinades and even cocktails, while store-bought pickle relish remains a convenient way to add that unmistakable pickle tang to your home-cooked meals. Mix sriracha with pickle relish, and you get something akin to a hot pickle, a spiced-up version of your standard sweet or dill pickle relish.

Sub this spicy relish for sliced hot pickles on a chicken sandwich, or sub it for standard relish in potato salad, macaroni salad, and tuna salads. Use sriracha pickle relish to top hot dogs at your next cookout, or spread a thin layer on deli sandwiches in lieu of pickles. It makes a great secret ingredient for appetizers and snacks, too: Add a spoonful to deviled eggs, dips, or dressings to give them an extra flavor boost.

Store-bought barbecue sauce typically contains a tomato base, brown sugar, vinegar, and spice. Depending on which brand of barbecue sauce you prefer, it may be quite sweet, smoky, or tangy, but barbecue sauce typically isn't very spicy. If your favorite barbecue isn't quite cutting it in the tongue-tingling department, adding sriracha can crank up the spice level a few notches.

Sriracha and barbecue sauce also means layer smoky flavors on top of smoky flavor: The light smokiness of fermented jalapeños in the sriracha, the bold smokiness of barbecue, and finally, the smoke of the barbecue cooking method, which usually means cooking over flame. Each brings a slightly different dimension to the dish, so the result is multifaceted and complex.

Brush sriracha barbecue sauce over grilled chicken, slow-smoked ribs, or barbecued brisket. It makes a fantastic cheeseburger topping or can make a quick and easy dipping sauce for your favorite fried snacks. Its uses aren't limited to meat, either, as it would be great on a veggie burger or in a BBQ tofu recipe.

Sriracha may be second only to ketchup for its ubiquity, versatility, and go-anywhere-on-anything shapeshifting abilities. Both condiments have the reputation of making anything taste better if you just drown it in enough ketchup (or sriracha). Together, their powers are unstoppable. 

Elevate your ketchup beyond its basic status and get the bougie bistro artisan ketchup experience at home when you combine sriracha and ketchup together. Ketchup brings in sweetness and salt, while sriracha contributes spice and garlic complexity. Both condiments have acidity from vinegar and umami depth, so there's enough commonality for them to harmonize well together. Sriracha-infused ketchup is perfect for all ketchup's classic applications. Squeeze it onto burgers, fries, hot dogs, or potato chips. Use sriracha ketchup to flavor scrambled eggs, as an ingredient in meatloaf, or as a dipping sauce for chicken nuggets. It could also be used to put a new twist on ketchup-based salad dressings like Thousand Island or Russian dressing.

Piling spicy horseradish on top of already spicy sriracha may seem like putting a hat on a hat, but hear me out! These two condiments are both spicy, but they produce two different kinds of burn. Unlike the mouth-blistering capsaicin present in pepper plans like sriracha's red jalapeños, horseradish contains a compound called isothiocyanate, which produces more of a nasal burn. Far from being more of the same, sriracha and horseradish play off one another. The effect of both condiments together is pleasant and intriguing.

In fact, it's such a lovely pairing; you can find premixed versions of sriracha horseradish on some grocery store shelves. It's primarily used as a sandwich garnish on the same sliced beef sandwiches that typically feature horseradish: corned beef, roast beef, and pastrami. It also makes a tasty, tangy dipping sauce for fried foods such as onion rings, fries, chicken strips, and other pub food favorites. ​​

Hot honey has become omnipresent in recent years, almost relentlessly featured on pizzeria menus, in Instagram recipes, and at high-end burger joints. The timeless combination of sweet and spicy flavors is nothing new, but using pure honey as the vehicle for spice has been revelatory. Mike's Hot Honey, in particular, catapulted the condiment to fame in the U.S., generating dozens of hot honey brands and hundreds of DIY at-home hot honey recipes.

No need to faff about steeping peppers on the stovetop; you can take a shortcut to homemade hot honey by simply mixing honey with sriracha. Sriracha already has a small amount of vinegar and plenty of pepper heat, so it couples easily with honey. Sriracha honey is sweet, spicy, tangy, and irresistible. Because it's so simple, there are tons of ways to use hot honey. It glides easily between sweet and savory dishes, adding peppery pizzazz to everything from dinner to dessert. Use it to upgrade your grilled cheese, drizzle it onto popcorn or ice cream, coat sandwiches, and burgers with it, or add it to charcuterie boards — there really are endless possibilities.

Ranch dressing — also known as American dressing — is one of those guilty pleasures you really should embrace. While it's sometimes scoffed at for being low-brow, the creamy, herbaceous dressing is a delicious symphony of buttermilk, garlic, dill, and vinegar. It's nearly perfect on its own, but adding sriracha takes it in a whole new direction.

Similar to sour cream, ranch's buttermilk base will quell sriracha's burn while maintaining the complexity and umami richness of the peppers. Garlic lovers, listen up: Sriracha plus ranch gives you a double dose of garlic goodness since both condiments have an unmistakable garlic flavor.

Use your zhuzhed-up ranch dressing just as you would any store-bought ranch dressing. Use it as a more piquant version of ranch dressing in a salad, or an inspired burger topping. Of course ranch dressing makes an exceptional dip for everything from chicken strips to fries to pizza crusts, and the addition of sriracha only enhances these uses.

Sriracha can liven up mustard in new and unexpected ways. Like horseradish, mustard contains nasal-burning isothiocyanate compounds, although it has smaller quantities, so mustard feels much milder in the nose. Still, layering the two kinds of burn is a delightful sensory experience that enhances both the mustard and sriracha.

You could use standard mustard, dijon mustard, or honey mustard if you prefer a little sweetness. Sriracha honey mustard would be best as a dip for fried chicken or as a topping for meat dishes like grilled sausage or brats. Meanwhile, regular sriracha mustard makes a perky addition to potato salad, coleslaw, deviled eggs, and burgers or sandwiches. Sriracha mustard can also work nicely as a sticky coating for breading meat, imparting flavor and moisture and adhering to the breadcrumbs with very little additional fat. Mustard emulsifies salad dressing beautifully, and sriracha mustard can add the tiniest hint of spice to your homemade vinaigrettes.

Butter may be the king of all condiments, serving as a crucial ingredient in thousands of dishes while also functioning as a cooking medium and a delectable topping in its own right. Plain, simple butter makes its way onto everything from mashed potatoes, corn, sliced bread, fresh muffins, steaks, and seafood; the list goes on and on. Is there anything that doesn't benefit from the addition of butter? Butter is beautiful solo and even better when formed into compound butter with sriracha. 

Once you've made your sriracha compound butter, you can spread it on sliced bread, melt it to use it as a wing sauce (buffalo sauce is typically melted butter plus hot sauce), or scoop it onto a perfectly grilled steak or tender seafood. Smother your next egg sandwich in sriracha butter , or add a little extra zing to baked goods by melting it onto fresh-baked muffins or cornbread. Anywhere you'd use butter as a topping, you can use sriracha butter.

Peanut butter may not be the first condiment you think of mixing with sriracha, but it's not that unusual. Peanut sauce is made using peanut butter and can be simplified down to just three ingredients: peanut butter, chile, and acid. Sriracha gets you most of the way there since it already contains chile peppers and vinegar. It won't exactly be peanut sauce, but it will be delicious. You could use it in similar ways as you might use peanut sauce, as a dip for spring rolls or fried tofu, for example. This spicy peanut butter also makes a stripped-down, simple satay sauce in a pinch. Just brush it onto skewers of chicken or shrimp and start grilling.

It can also put an unconventional spin on more traditional peanut butter standbys: for example, a quirky take on classic PB&J, or give peanut butter cookies and other peanut butter desserts extra oomph by using sriracha peanut butter.

If hot honey has convinced us of anything, it's that sweet and spicy flavors belong together. Adding jam to sriracha takes this one step further by getting fruit involved. Spice plus fruit is not a new combination; hot sauce brands have been using fruit in their unique creations for decades. After all, botanically speaking, peppers are fruits. The sweeter, ripe red jalapenos in sriracha are particularly well suited to mixing with fruit because they're sweeter than younger green peppers. Berry jams and apricot jam work best in this combination, but there's plenty of room for experimentation with your favorite variety. Depending on how thick your jam is, you may need to melt it a little to get the sriracha to blend in smoothly.

Like hot honey, sriracha jam straddles the line between savory and sweet, so it can be used for everything from meat glaze to a dipping sauce or even an ice cream topping. Sriracha jam could give an added kick to thumbprint cookies and other desserts. Swirl it into yogurt for a peppery, juicy burst of fruit flavor, or spread it onto buttered English muffins for a morning pick me up. If you aren't already hooked on sriracha, these condiment mashups will have you converted in no time.