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Get your Sriracha popcorn ready. Griffin Hammond, an Illinois-based filmmaker who produced a short documentary on our favorite hot sauce, is about to launch his film online. On December 11, viewers will get a close look at how this condiment with a cult-like following came to be.
Hammond is a self-proclaimed Sriracha addict who uses the sauce almost every day.
"I've often been told to make the film you want to see, and as someone who loves Sriracha, I realized I had a lot of unanswered questions," says Hammond.
The film will cover the history of the smoking hot cock sauce, which has seen a few snags along the way that will make the film engaging. In 2007 where they had such a high demand for their product that Tran literally could not find enough of the right chiles to make the sauce, and was forced to ask his customers to wait til he could find the right ingredients. And of course now there's the debacle about where the hot sauce will be produced now that the Irwindale plant has been banned from producing their odor-producing product.
Hammond believes that though Philly might be courting Huy Fong to move to their city, the hot sauce is inextricably tied to California, and L.A. in particular. The red jalapeños -- 100 million pounds of them -- are grown on 1,750 acres of the Golden State's land.
"It's clever marketing for Philadelphia to invite Huy Fong Foods to move, but there's no way [it can happen]," he says. "The chiles are grown in California, and processed in Irwindale within two hours of harvest. Besides, Los Angeles is very proud of Sriracha."
The doc's online teaser, which can be viewed below, features plenty of prominent L.A. experts, including Randy Clemens, author of "The Sriracha Cookbook," Thai Culinary Ambassador and chef Jet Tila, and of course Huy Fong Foods' founder David Tran.
Though the production did hit some expected delays, the release couldn't be better timed since the hot sauce is certainly in the spotlight.
You can watch the teaser for the film below:
