Just when it felt like the dull throb of winter was melting into spring, we have another sub-freezing day on our hands. At this time of year, we have to look for heat wherever we can get it – especially on our food. Luckily, we have Sriracha – that garlicy, ketchupy bottle of hot sauce that’s so versatile, one man devoted an entire cookbook to it.

Meet Randy Clemens: a man in love with a condiment. Obsessed with Sriracha after one fateful meal, he began using it in everything – buffalo wings, cornbread, even dessert. He compiled his favorite dishes – from the standard (fried rice) to the intriguingly odd (peach-Sriracha sorbet) in The Sriracha Cookbook: 50 “Rooster Sauce” Recipes That Pack a Punch.

We talked to Clemens about the sauce’s long trip from the Far East to our dinner tables – we even managed to nab a Sriracha recipe for corn chowdah!

PRK: The first thing I have to know is: how do you pronounce Sriracha, anyway?

RC: There’s a lot of interpretations of it, but Sear-rawh-chuh is the most common. It’s not 100 percent – like, if you were in Thailand, it’s incorrect – but in America, that’s just how it goes.

PRK: What drew you to profile this particular sauce?

RC: I initially had some about twelve years ago at a friend’s house – a Vietnamese friend of mine – and I had become a fan of his mom’s cooking pretty quickly. And I stayed over one night and woke up in the morning to find a big giant pot of fried rice that she made. And just sitting next to it was a bottle of Sriracha, and I had never had it, never seen it, never heard of it.

And I just gave it a try and fell in love with it. I got my own bottle pretty quickly and started using it on top of different foods, not just Asian food but any food I might have and after that I had the idea of maybe cooking with it. So, I started simple, with nothing revolutionary, just maybe an Asian stir fry that I stirred Sriracha into while I was cooking it. And then one day I just wanted to make Buffalo wings and I had the idea, what if I substituted Sriracha in place of French’s Red Hot? And it was just fantastic – I really, really liked it.

I started playing with it more in the kitchen and eventually I kind of had this idea to – and I’ve been doing food writing for about five years here and there, rather informally for some newspapers and magazines, and I just wanted to go to the next logical step and it just sounded like something I could do – and here we are.

PRK: What was the process of creating the cookbook like? Did you spend hours experimenting with new recipes, or did years of experimentation with Sriracha make the book easy to compile?

RC: I had a pretty good idea just from making things over the years. It was just a matter of writing down quantity at that point. Some of the recipes I had before I had written down a basic idea about how much of everything, so it was just a matter of fine-tuning them. It went pretty smoothly – there weren’t a lot of hiccups and there weren’t any rejects, really. Everything I tried ended up really good; some went through little changes here and there. I had a couple of friends who tried some of the recipes and their only feedback was, “It’s really hot.” So I toned a few of them down just a touch. But for the most part, it went surprisingly smoothly – most of what I thought would work actually did, which was great, I was pretty fortunate.

PRK: For a sauce that’s so ubiquitous at Asian restaurants, Sriracha as we know it – the one with a picture of a rooster on the bottle – seems to have a uniquely American story.

RC: The brand that most everyone associates with Sriracha is the Huy Fong Foods brand and that is – it’s made in California and it’s very much an American interpretation, if for no other reason than the fact that the creator of the sauce used American ingredients. He was making hot sauces in Vietnam before he came here… he had to leave the country because of the aftermath of the Vietnam War. He had originally gone to Boston and wanted to keep making hot sauces, because it’s what he knew and it’s what he did, and he came to California because of the large crop of red jalapeños. So rather than using Asian chilies or peppers he was used to, he went with peppers that were here – which makes a big difference, flavor-wise.

It definitely is a much different sauce than you’d find in Thailand. It’s based on a Thai sauce from the town of Si Racha and the Thai version, versus the American version, is very, very different. Similarities, definitely, but much different texture – the American Huy Fong Foods version is much thicker, it’s got a squirt bottle, whereas the Thai version is more of a pouring – you always pour it out the bottle, it’s more of a dipping sauce. It’s got about the same amount of heat, but it’s a little sweeter and not quite as much of a garlic punch.

PRK: Which do you prefer – the Thai or the American version?

RC: That’s like asking to pick my favorite child. I keep them both around. My favorite Thai brand is probably Shark brand, and that’s the one you can find most readily in the United States. It’s not easy to find, but it’s available, and worse comes to worst you can actually order it on Amazon, they have it. But I always have a bottle of the Huy Fong Foods and Shark brands in my house at all times.

PRK: Do you ever get sick of making all these Sriracha recipes?

RC: No! Everyone laughs at my day job, my real job – not writing – every time we have lunch, not every day, but certainly there’s plenty of things that I put plenty of Sriracha on, and everyone gets a laugh out of it and they ask me that question – “Aren’t you tired of that stuff?” The answer’s no. I wrote this book because I’ve been such a crazed fan of this stuff for so long and I don’t know that anything will ever change that. If something better comes along, I’d certainly be willing to try it, but I don’t know that it could ever be topped, because it balances so many flavors: the heat, the sweet, the salty, you’ve got the sour, it manages all these different flavors and it really perks up whatever you’ve got. If you ever go on Twitter and watch things that come through, what people are saying about Sriracha, it’s hilarious – it’s like culinary duct tape, it fixes anything.

PRK: We’re sharing the corn chowder recipe with our readers – it looks great.

RC: I like that one a lot, it’s one of my favorites. I tried to be mindful – I’ve worked in food for a long time, I worked at a Whole Foods for a couple of years, so I’ve always been kind of mindful for offering good, hearty main courses for vegetarians and things like that, so that was one of the big ones I wanted to include in there. And I love corn chowder, so that was a natural for me, and it just comes out such a beautiful color – this rich orange that I love.

PRK: What’s your favorite recipe from the book?

RC: My newest favorite, and it’s because I had it at a book release party and they made it so damn well, are the Sriracha- Jalapeño poppers. Those are just so fantastic – they’re hot, that goes without saying, but those are fantastic. The buffalo wings, the Honey and Sriracha-glazed Buffalo Wings, and the Spam and Sriracha fried rice are two favorites that will forever be there because fried rice was what I first [tried]– that’s my take on my friend’s mom’s fried rice that I had that first experience with Sriracha and the buffalo wings were the first moment that I can remember having an idea of “Hey – this is something cool, maybe I could do something with recipes with Sriracha.” So those are delicious but also a little sentimental, a little nostalgic.

And now:

Fire-Roasted Corn Chowder
Makes 6 to 8 servings

8 ears fresh sweet corn, husked
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 red bell peppers, seeded and diced
2 red onions, diced
5 cloves garlic, minced
6 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup Sriracha, plus more for garnish
3 sprigs fresh thyme
2 bay leaves
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
Smoked paprika, for garnish
Torn leaves of fresh cilantro or flat-leaf parsley, for garnish

Roast 4 ears of corn over a direct flame (on a preheated grill or over a gas burner) until the corn kernels begin to blacken, turning every few minutes until all sides have roasted. After the roasted ears have cooled, scrape the kernels from the cobs, and reserve.

Heat the oil in a large Dutch oven over medium heat. Add the bell peppers and onions and cook until softened slightly, 5 to 7 minutes. Meanwhile, scrape the corn kernels from the remaining 4 ears of corn. Add the raw corn kernels and garlic, and cook until the garlic is aromatic, 1 to 2 minutes. Add the stock, Sriracha, thyme, and bay leaves. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat and simmer for 45 minutes. About 10 minutes before the soup is finished, gently heat the cream over low heat, keeping it just below a simmer.

Once the soup has cooked for 45 minutes, discard the thyme and bay leaves. Puree the soup using an immersion blender. (A food processor or blender can be utilized with caution, pureeing the hot liquid in small batches.) Mix in the warm cream and add the reserved roasted corn. Cook for an additional 3 to 5 minutes, until thoroughly heated.

Season with salt and pepper to taste. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with a few lines of Sriracha, a generous sprinkle of smoked paprika, and torn cilantro or parsley leaves.