Spice Racket

At his restaurants, David Chang uses Ssäm sauce, a Korean chili-based condiment that’s like hot sauce but more savory, as if it were ketchup—on pork buns, Brussels sprouts, even roasted meat. Now he wants you to do the same at home. On May 4 he started selling a bottled version of Ssäm sauce online at momofuku.com and at Whole Foods Markets in New York City. Chang won’t say how many bottles his company produced in its industrial Brooklyn kitchen—“it wasn’t a small number,” he hints—but all sold in 24 hours. “We already have to make another batch,” he says. “And we’re still learning how to distribute this stuff.” It will eventually land in grocery stores nationally.

Condiments like this have never been hotter. The leader, of course, is sriracha, the peppery red paste that became a hit for California’s Huy Fong Foods over the past few years. Sales of classic spreads including ketchup and mustard are flat, according to the consumer tracker Euromonitor International, while concoctions from smaller, craft-driven vendors are booming. Spicy ones are selling especially well, and that microcategory is up 7 percent this year. Analysts at IbisWorld put the hot sauce industry at more than $1 billion worldwide annually.