"Love is like a spice. It can sweeten your life – however, it can spoil it, too." Little did Confucius, the Chinese philosopher, know how much his words word resonate millennia later.
Huy Fong Foods has said it will suspend production of its flagship Sriracha sauce due to a shortage of chilis that it blamed on bad weather. The shortage could last for months.
For someone with Scottish and Irish heritage, the term "spicy" has been applied to anything from a peppered steak to an ambitious pasta sauce.
So I enjoyed pulling out the Sriracha as a sort of party trick, keen to boast to friends my comparative advantage of being moderately partial to spicy food. But the looming shortage means that is now under threat.
I needed to find an alternative, and fast. I tested some of the most popular hot sauce alternatives, as measured by Instacart, alongside Insider colleagues Beatrice Nolan and Harry Kersh from Food Wars.
We ranked those we could get our hands on using our own system, based on a weighted average of taste, consistency and adaptability, with prices as measured by Target.
Disclaimer: This is not a review for the connoisseurs, the scoville counters, or the chili heads. This is for the "spice-curious", keen to add a bit of flavor to their meal but uncertain where to turn as Sriracha begins to disappear from shelves.
Sadly, we have bad news. Little beats Sriracha for ease, and one red hot flag stood out in particular: why do none of the alternatives have a squeezy top? For more breathtaking insights, read on!