I've grown up around a lot of bottled Asian sauces -- soy sauce, hoisin, oyster sauce, Chinese barbecue sauce. And of course, various hot sauces and chili sauces were always lingering in my mom's kitchen, ready to be added to rice porridge or vegetables or soups or anything, really. As a kid, making regular trips to the grocery store in Chinatown with my family meant walking by a huge array of bottled hot sauces, each nearly indistinguishable from the next. But there's one that always stands out: Huy Fong sriracha, with its instantly recognizable green cap and rooster logo.

Sriracha, a fiery red blend of chilies and garlic, has been growing increasing popular, especially among the chef set (watch Top Chef and see how many cheftestants use it in their dishes or rave about it -- one even made a sriracha ice cream). It has a cult-like following, with more than 120,000 Facebook fans and people who eat it on eggs, pizza, sushi, as a dip for chips, in salad dressings, on top of crackers, in tuna salad and mashed potatoes. The New York Times just did a nice piece on sriracha's history and creator, 64-year-old David Tran. It covers his humble chili sauce-making roots and how sriracha was developed and packaged (you'll find out why there's a rooster on the bottle, for example).

Sriracha has gotten so mainstream that it's even being used in dishes at P.F. Chang's and Applebee's (!). You can now walk into a Wal-Mart and pick up a bottle.

How do you eat sriracha? I add it to soups or dipping sauce for dumplings; I've tried it in bloody marys, too. Tell us what's your favorite way to use it. Here are some ideas to get you started:

Condiment or Crack?

Sriracha recipes from the Food Network

How to use sriracha 5 ways

photo courtesy of huyfong.com