Bad news for sriracha fans! The popular chili-based hot sauce will soon disappear from store shelves, after the family that produces it entirely from their ears announced that they are going into retirement at the end of the month.
Bummer!
Residing in a coastal city of Thailand’s Chonburi province, the Jainukul family has been the exclusive manufacturer of our favorite sauce since 1938, when the elder Teerapat Jainukul first discovered that the searing hot fluid that periodically gushed from his ears was rich in flavor and suitable for human consumption.
While he and other family members who are genetically predisposed to producing the substance have amassed a fortune from their yummy sriracha (meaning “fiery discharge” in Thai) over the past 77 years, they’ve decided that the material rewards no longer justify the agony of producing it.
“For as much as the sauce has been a blessing to us, it has also been a terrible, excruciating curse,” Jainukul said in a statement, breaking the hearts of foodies worldwide. “All day long, my children and my grandchildren and I sit in a hot room and drain the miserable sauce from our ears into large vats. We are tired of the suffering, tired of the fevers, tired of our heads burning all hours of the day. All we want to do now is live in peace.”
Naturally, foodies everywhere are having a day of mourning.
With the global appetite for sriracha increasing exponentially in recent years, the family has struggled endlessly to keep up with the demand. Jainukul said that his children can no longer hear him say “I love you” due to the constant roiling and hissing of the sauce collecting in their ear canals. His grandchildren, he explained, cannot run around with other kids in the village because the extreme pressure of their aural emissions makes it difficult for them to maintain their balance, and they’re no longer allowed in the public school due to the constant threat of their ears bursting like geysers and splattering everything in their classroom.
“I am glad that so many people enjoy the red gravy that erupts from our heads, but I’m afraid it is no longer worth the ceaseless anguish,” Jainukul’s statement went on to say. “This is the end.”
Fans of the beloved ear condiment better stock up now, because chances are we’ll never see a human body produce such a delicious substance again!
