Honey-Sriracha Chex Mix.
I have written before that Chex Mix is one of the traditional foods of my people, dating back to the before time. My maternal grandmother would make it for the holiday season, before Chex Mix became the popular prepackaged snack product of today. This was so long ago that Chex hadn’t even started selling pre-made Chex Mix spice packages (affiliate link).
My sister made the Honey-Sriracha variant for the holidays a few years ago, and I immediately adopted it as a favorite seasonal snack. You can still find the recipe on the Chex web site. But I don’t trust the Chex people not to reorganize their site someday, so here’s an archive.is version as well.
I’ve made this enough times that I feel comfortable experimenting. Also, some people have issues with nuts. So I generally leave the peanuts out when I make this. In this batch, I substituted oyster crackers (and, as a supply chain note, it took me almost a week to find oyster crackers) and Cheez-Its for the popcorn and peanuts. I also doubled the amount of butter, Huy Fong Sriracha, and honey. Each pan is about three cups of corn and rice Chex, about a cup of oyster crackers, and about a cup each of Cheeze-Its and waffle pretzels, with four tablespoons butter, six tablespoons sriracha, and four tablespoons honey in each.
I personally prefer to use the oven rather than microwaving, but no judgment on you if you use the later. It takes about an hour to do this in the oven, stirring every 15 minutes. I’d store the finished product in gallon-sized zipper bags, in my refrigerator or freezer to avoid it going stale.
To my taste, this is spicy, but in a subtle way. The sriracha gives it sort of a slow pleasant burn. This would make a good spicy bar snack. Have a refreshing beverage at hand.
Speaking of refreshing beverages, I did whip up a batch of hot buttered rum batter, and have made hot buttered rum twice now. The first time, I think I used too large a mug: my proportions were off, and I thought it tasted too watery. The second time, I used a normal sized mug, and I can see what the fuss is about: it seemed to be nearly perfectly proportioned, not too watery or too buttery or too rummy. I could have easily sucked back another one of those.
Still haven’t tried homemade eggnog yet, and this weekend is going to be action packed. Maybe sometime next week, if it stays cold.
(And speaking of spicy bar snacks: another recipe I want to try.)